Reception
In its original broadcast, "Bart Carny" finished 13th in ratings for the week of January 5-11, 1998, with a Nielsen rating of 11.9, equivalent to approximately 11.7 million viewing households. It was tied with King of the Hill as the second highest-rated show on the Fox network that week, following The X-Files.
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 "one of the most dismally unfunny episodes ever, lifted only by the brief appearance of a talking camel and Homer's clever way of getting Cooder and Spud out of his home. Whereas most of the series' politically incorrect moments are funny and well-observed, this episode seems to be saying that fairground folk and travelers really are deeply unpleasant criminals who are both irredeemable and unworthy of help. Nasty-taste-in-the-mouth time." Despite the negative review from I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, Isaac Mitchell-Frey of the Herald Sun described the episode as "brilliant", and highlighted it along with episodes "The Trouble with Trillions" and "The Joy of Sect" and it has been described by the other Simpsons writers in the DVD audio commentary as "criminally underrated".
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