Reception
In its original American broadcast, "Radioactive Man" finished 51st in the ratings for the week of September 18 to September 24, 1995. It acquired a Nielsen rating of 9.5. The episode was the fourth highest-rated show on the Fox network that week, following The X-Files, Beverly Hills, 90210 and Melrose Place. Since airing, the episode has received mostly positive reviews from fans and 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 the episode a "wonderful pastiche" on the Tim Burton Batman films, and added that Milhouse is an obvious candidate for Fallout Boy. DVD Movie Guide's Colin Jacobson enjoyed the episode, but he does not consider it a "classic". He said that it offers "more than a few amusing bits", and added that "spoofing the movie business isn't anything new, but the show does it well in this solid program." Jennifer Malkowski of DVD Verdict considered the best part of the episode to be when Krusty tries to prove the "range" of different characters he can do to the casting director. The website concluded its review by giving the episode a grade of A-.
Nancy Basile of About.com named it one of her twenty favorite episodes of the show, and said that she thinks the friendship between Bart and Milhouse in the episode is "endearing" and "touching". She added that she thinks the episode "pokes fun at Hollywood very effectively", and that "To top it off, funny favorite characters Rainier Wolfcastle and Lionel Hutz are also in the episode." Graham Beckwith of The Lantern singled out Rainier Wolfcastle's line "My eyes! The goggles do nothing!" from the episode as one of The Simpsons "greatest one liners". Total Film's Nathan Ditum ranked Rooney's performance as the eight best guest appearance in the show's history, commenting that he is "desperately funny and self-effacing as a parody of his fallen child-star self."
Read more about this topic: Radioactive Man (The Simpsons Episode)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)