My Sister, My Sitter
Encyclopedia
"My Sister, My Sitter" is the seventeenth episode of The Simpsons
' eighth season
. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on March 2, 1997. In the episode, Marge and Homer go to a party and leave Lisa to babysit Bart. Being unhappy with this, Bart does everything he can to annoy Lisa. Eventually, Bart becomes injured and Lisa has to find a way to get him medical attention without losing her reputation as a good babysitter.
The episode was written by Dan Greaney
and directed by Jim Reardon
. The script was written to focus on the relationship between Bart and Lisa and the episode has further been used to discuss the difficulties in letting children babysit themselves. The episode received mostly positive reviews.
" books, Lisa decides to become a babysitter. However, because of her age, no one takes her seriously. One day, Ned states that Maude has been taken hostage
in the Holy Land
and he must leave to get her released and he agrees to let Lisa babysit Rod and Todd. After a relatively uneventful night, Ned puts out the good word for Lisa, who experiences a business
boom.
Meanwhile, the Springfield
Squid
port
re-opens and throws a gala. Marge and Homer decide to go and they leave Lisa to babysit Bart and Maggie. Bart is insulted by the fact that his younger sister is going to be babysitting him. To make things difficult, Bart torments her by, among other things, ordering a giant sub
, hiring Krusty
for a bachelor party
, dialling 9-1-1
, asking them to perform a "sisterectomy", and feeding Maggie coffee
ice cream
for dinner. Eventually, Lisa angrily jumps at Bart, but misses, triggering Bart to fall backwards down the stairs, dislocating his arm
, and forming a large bump on his head. Bart then realizes that if Lisa does not take him to the hospital she will not be able to babysit anymore. To make his condition worse, Bart locks himself in his room and hits his head on the wall "to make the lump bigger" then falls unconscious.
Lisa tries to call Dr. Hibbert
, but thinks better of it when she realizes that her reputation as a good babysitter will be ruined. She then tries to take an unconscious Bart and hyperactive Maggie to Dr. Nick Riviera
's clinic. There is a long line in the waiting room and Lisa fails to get an appointment. She finally decides to take Bart and Maggie on foot instead of in an ambulance to the hospital. After a while, Bart falls down a cliff and into a muddy river right in front of the crowded Squidport. Everyone assumes that Lisa murdered Bart and that she is on drugs, and is about to drown Maggie. The next day, Bart gets treatment and apologizes to Lisa for jerking her up and ruining her babysitting business. She forgives him, but is still distraught that her reputation as a babysitter is now ruined, although she receives a few requests from Flanders and Dr. Hibbert (he understands the incident) later on due to lack of time to spend with their children.
and written by Dan Greaney
. Like several earlier episodes, "My Sister, My Sitter" deals with the relationship between Bart and Lisa. Greaney specializes in writing Bart and Lisa episodes from the perspective of a kid. Elaine E Sutherland, who is a member of the Law Society of Scotland's Family Law Sub-Committee and Professor of Child and Family Law at the Law School, Stirling University, used the episode to describe the potential problems of letting one of your kids babysit the rest. While one child may be mature enough to babysit, it is not certain that the other kids accept the babysitters authority. According to Alan S. Brown and Chris Logan, the writers of the book The Psychology of the Simpsons: D’oh!
, the episode is an example of how feminine anger rarely solves the problem on The Simpsons. “Here, Lisa’s rage and ongoing frustration contribute to her difficulty in making good decisions about what to do with her emotion,” they write. Keeping with the babysitter theme, there are cultural references to The Baby-Sitters Club
. Lisa reads book #14 - The Formula Formula, while Janey is on book #20 - The President's Baby Is Missing.
The idea of revamping the waterfront came from cities like Baltimore, who were always trying to fix formerly horrible places. Chris Turner, the author of the book Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece Documented an Era and Defined a Generation
, writes about the scene at the Squidport: ”The “satirical” setting seems almost documentary”. The Squidport is a local revitalization project, which recast a historic industrial area as a pedestrian mall. He calls this an example of how “hyper-consumer culture of Springfield moves front and center” On the waterfront, Rainier Wolfcastle opens a restaurant called "Planet Hype". This is a parody of the international theme restaurant franchise Planet Hollywood
. Wolfcastle is a parody of Arnold Schwarzenegger
, who launched Planet Hollywood along with Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg in 1991. According to Matt Groening
, the show had written an entire episode around Planet Hollywood, which featured the voices of Schwarzenegger, Stallone, and Willis as The Three Stooges type of characters. The episode was never animated, because it turned out that it was only the publicist of Planet Hollywood's idea and the actors did not want to participate.
of 9.0, equivalent to approximately 8.7 million viewing households. It was the fifth highest-rated show on the Fox network that week Since airing, the episode has received mostly positive reviews from television critics. The authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, called it "a clever episode, if a little disjointed - the two stories don't gel as well as normal." Tim Raynor of DVDTown.com said that the episode "is full of the usual, fun antics that you would expect from Bart or any of the other dumb Simpsons." DVD Movie Guide's Colin Jacobson said that "the segments in which Lisa babysits the various kids in town are a delight" and that the episode "mixes wacky moments with reality as it places Lisa in a logical position. Her conflict with Bart creates realism and also brings out the comedy."
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
The Simpsons (season 8)
The Simpsons eighth season originally aired between October 27, 1996 and May 18, 1997, beginning with "Treehouse of Horror VII". The show runners for the eighth production season were Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein. The aired season contained two episodes which were hold-over episodes from season...
. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on March 2, 1997. In the episode, Marge and Homer go to a party and leave Lisa to babysit Bart. Being unhappy with this, Bart does everything he can to annoy Lisa. Eventually, Bart becomes injured and Lisa has to find a way to get him medical attention without losing her reputation as a good babysitter.
The episode was written by Dan Greaney
Dan Greaney
Daniel "Dan" Greaney is an American television writer. He has written for The Simpsons. He was hired during the show's seventh season after writing the first draft of the episode "King-Size Homer", but left after season eleven...
and directed by Jim Reardon
Jim Reardon
Jim Reardon is an animation director and storyboard consultant, best known for his work on the animated TV series The Simpsons. He has directed over 30 episodes of the series, and was credited as a supervising director for seasons 9 through 15...
. The script was written to focus on the relationship between Bart and Lisa and the episode has further been used to discuss the difficulties in letting children babysit themselves. The episode received mostly positive reviews.
Plot
Inspired by "The Babysitter TwinsThe Baby-Sitters Club
The Baby-sitters Club is a series of novels written by Ann M. Martin and published by Scholastic between 1986 and 2000, that sold 17 milllon copies. Many of the novels were ghostwritten, including 43 by Peter Lerangis. However, Ann Martin wrote the first 35 novels.The series is about a group of...
" books, Lisa decides to become a babysitter. However, because of her age, no one takes her seriously. One day, Ned states that Maude has been taken hostage
Hostage
A hostage is a person or entity which is held by a captor. The original definition meant that this was handed over by one of two belligerent parties to the other or seized as security for the carrying out of an agreement, or as a preventive measure against certain acts of war...
in the Holy Land
Holy Land
The Holy Land is a term which in Judaism refers to the Kingdom of Israel as defined in the Tanakh. For Jews, the Land's identifiction of being Holy is defined in Judaism by its differentiation from other lands by virtue of the practice of Judaism often possible only in the Land of Israel...
and he must leave to get her released and he agrees to let Lisa babysit Rod and Todd. After a relatively uneventful night, Ned puts out the good word for Lisa, who experiences a business
Business
A business is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and administered to earn profit to increase the wealth of their owners. Businesses may also be not-for-profit...
boom.
Meanwhile, the Springfield
Springfield (The Simpsons)
Springfield is the fictional town in which the American animated sitcom The Simpsons is set. A mid-sized town in an undetermined state of the United States, Springfield acts as a complete universe in which characters can explore the issues faced by modern society. The geography of the town and its...
Squid
Squid
Squid are cephalopods of the order Teuthida, which comprises around 300 species. Like all other cephalopods, squid have a distinct head, bilateral symmetry, a mantle, and arms. Squid, like cuttlefish, have eight arms arranged in pairs and two, usually longer, tentacles...
port
Port
A port is a location on a coast or shore containing one or more harbors where ships can dock and transfer people or cargo to or from land....
re-opens and throws a gala. Marge and Homer decide to go and they leave Lisa to babysit Bart and Maggie. Bart is insulted by the fact that his younger sister is going to be babysitting him. To make things difficult, Bart torments her by, among other things, ordering a giant sub
Submarine sandwich
A submarine sandwich, also known as a sub among other names, is a sandwich that consists of a long roll of Italian or French bread, split lengthwise either into two pieces or opened in a "V" on one side, and filled with various varieties of meat, cheese, vegetables, seasonings, and sauces. The...
, hiring Krusty
Krusty
Herschel Shmoikel Pinchas Yerucham Krustofski, better known as Krusty the Klown, is a fictional character in the animated television series The Simpsons. He is voiced by Dan Castellaneta. He is the long-time clown host of Bart and Lisa's favorite TV show, a combination of kiddie variety television...
for a bachelor party
Bachelor party
A bachelor party , also known as a stag party, stag night or stag do , a bull's party , or a buck's party or buck's night , is a party held for a man shortly before he enters marriage, to celebrate his "last night of freedom" or merely to spend...
, dialling 9-1-1
9-1-1
9-1-1 is the emergency telephone number for the North American Numbering Plan .It is one of eight N11 codes.The use of this number is for emergency circumstances only, and to use it for any other purpose can be a crime.-History:In the earliest days of telephone technology, prior to the...
, asking them to perform a "sisterectomy", and feeding Maggie coffee
Coffee
Coffee is a brewed beverage with a dark,init brooo acidic flavor prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant, colloquially called coffee beans. The beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia,...
ice cream
Ice cream
Ice cream is a frozen dessert usually made from dairy products, such as milk and cream, and often combined with fruits or other ingredients and flavours. Most varieties contain sugar, although some are made with other sweeteners...
for dinner. Eventually, Lisa angrily jumps at Bart, but misses, triggering Bart to fall backwards down the stairs, dislocating his arm
Dislocation
In materials science, a dislocation is a crystallographic defect, or irregularity, within a crystal structure. The presence of dislocations strongly influences many of the properties of materials...
, and forming a large bump on his head. Bart then realizes that if Lisa does not take him to the hospital she will not be able to babysit anymore. To make his condition worse, Bart locks himself in his room and hits his head on the wall "to make the lump bigger" then falls unconscious.
Lisa tries to call Dr. Hibbert
Julius Hibbert
Dr. Julius M. Hibbert, usually referred to as Dr. Hibbert, is a recurring character on the animated series The Simpsons. His speaking voice is provided by Harry Shearer and his singing voice was by Thurl Ravenscroft, and he first appeared in the episode "Bart the Daredevil". Dr...
, but thinks better of it when she realizes that her reputation as a good babysitter will be ruined. She then tries to take an unconscious Bart and hyperactive Maggie to Dr. Nick Riviera
Dr. Nick Riviera
Dr. Nick Riviera, usually referred to as Dr. Nick, is a recurring fictional character on the animated television series The Simpsons. He is voiced by Hank Azaria, and first appeared in the episode "Bart Gets Hit by a Car". Riviera is an inept quack physician, and a satire of incompetent medical...
's clinic. There is a long line in the waiting room and Lisa fails to get an appointment. She finally decides to take Bart and Maggie on foot instead of in an ambulance to the hospital. After a while, Bart falls down a cliff and into a muddy river right in front of the crowded Squidport. Everyone assumes that Lisa murdered Bart and that she is on drugs, and is about to drown Maggie. The next day, Bart gets treatment and apologizes to Lisa for jerking her up and ruining her babysitting business. She forgives him, but is still distraught that her reputation as a babysitter is now ruined, although she receives a few requests from Flanders and Dr. Hibbert (he understands the incident) later on due to lack of time to spend with their children.
Production and themes
The episode was directed by Jim ReardonJim Reardon
Jim Reardon is an animation director and storyboard consultant, best known for his work on the animated TV series The Simpsons. He has directed over 30 episodes of the series, and was credited as a supervising director for seasons 9 through 15...
and written by Dan Greaney
Dan Greaney
Daniel "Dan" Greaney is an American television writer. He has written for The Simpsons. He was hired during the show's seventh season after writing the first draft of the episode "King-Size Homer", but left after season eleven...
. Like several earlier episodes, "My Sister, My Sitter" deals with the relationship between Bart and Lisa. Greaney specializes in writing Bart and Lisa episodes from the perspective of a kid. Elaine E Sutherland, who is a member of the Law Society of Scotland's Family Law Sub-Committee and Professor of Child and Family Law at the Law School, Stirling University, used the episode to describe the potential problems of letting one of your kids babysit the rest. While one child may be mature enough to babysit, it is not certain that the other kids accept the babysitters authority. According to Alan S. Brown and Chris Logan, the writers of the book The Psychology of the Simpsons: D’oh!
The Psychology of The Simpsons
The Psychology of The Simpsons: D'oh! is a non-fiction book analyzing psychology themes in the television series The Simpsons. It contains content from several contributors, including psychologists, counselors and school therapists. The book was edited by Alan S. Brown, Ph.D., and Chris Logan, and...
, the episode is an example of how feminine anger rarely solves the problem on The Simpsons. “Here, Lisa’s rage and ongoing frustration contribute to her difficulty in making good decisions about what to do with her emotion,” they write. Keeping with the babysitter theme, there are cultural references to The Baby-Sitters Club
The Baby-Sitters Club
The Baby-sitters Club is a series of novels written by Ann M. Martin and published by Scholastic between 1986 and 2000, that sold 17 milllon copies. Many of the novels were ghostwritten, including 43 by Peter Lerangis. However, Ann Martin wrote the first 35 novels.The series is about a group of...
. Lisa reads book #14 - The Formula Formula, while Janey is on book #20 - The President's Baby Is Missing.
The idea of revamping the waterfront came from cities like Baltimore, who were always trying to fix formerly horrible places. Chris Turner, the author of the book Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece Documented an Era and Defined a Generation
Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece Documented an Era and Defined a Generation
Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece Documented an Era and Defined a Generation is a non-fiction book about The Simpsons, written by Chris Turner and originally published on 12 October 2004 by Random House...
, writes about the scene at the Squidport: ”The “satirical” setting seems almost documentary”. The Squidport is a local revitalization project, which recast a historic industrial area as a pedestrian mall. He calls this an example of how “hyper-consumer culture of Springfield moves front and center” On the waterfront, Rainier Wolfcastle opens a restaurant called "Planet Hype". This is a parody of the international theme restaurant franchise Planet Hollywood
Planet Hollywood
Planet Hollywood, a restaurant inspired by the popular portrayal of Hollywood, was launched in New York on October 22, 1991, with the backing of Hollywood stars Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Demi Moore, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.-History:...
. Wolfcastle is a parody of Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger is an Austrian-American former professional bodybuilder, actor, businessman, investor, and politician. Schwarzenegger served as the 38th Governor of California from 2003 until 2011....
, who launched Planet Hollywood along with Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg in 1991. According to Matt Groening
Matt Groening
Matthew Abram "Matt" Groening is an American cartoonist, screenwriter, and producer. He is the creator of the comic strip Life in Hell as well as two successful television series, The Simpsons and Futurama....
, the show had written an entire episode around Planet Hollywood, which featured the voices of Schwarzenegger, Stallone, and Willis as The Three Stooges type of characters. The episode was never animated, because it turned out that it was only the publicist of Planet Hollywood's idea and the actors did not want to participate.
Reception
In its original broadcast, "My Sister, My Sitter" finished 47th in ratings in a tie with Melrose Place for the week of February 24 - March 2, 1997, with a Nielsen ratingNielsen Ratings
Nielsen ratings are the audience measurement systems developed by Nielsen Media Research, in an effort to determine the audience size and composition of television programming in the United States...
of 9.0, equivalent to approximately 8.7 million viewing households. It was the fifth highest-rated show on the Fox network that week Since airing, the episode has received mostly positive reviews from television critics. The authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, called it "a clever episode, if a little disjointed - the two stories don't gel as well as normal." Tim Raynor of DVDTown.com said that the episode "is full of the usual, fun antics that you would expect from Bart or any of the other dumb Simpsons." DVD Movie Guide's Colin Jacobson said that "the segments in which Lisa babysits the various kids in town are a delight" and that the episode "mixes wacky moments with reality as it places Lisa in a logical position. Her conflict with Bart creates realism and also brings out the comedy."
External links
- "My Sister, My Sitter" at The Simpsons.com