Release
The episode originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on March 19, 2000. It was viewed in approximately 8.77 million households that night. With a Nielsen rating of 8.7, the episode finished 28th in the ratings for the week of March 13–19, 2000. It was the second highest-rated broadcast on Fox that week, following an episode of Malcolm in the Middle (which received a 10.0 rating and was watched in 10.1 million homes). On October 7, 2008, "Bart to the Future" was released on DVD as part of the box set The Simpsons – The Complete Eleventh Season. Staff members Mike Scully, Dan Greaney, Matt Selman, and George Meyer participated in the DVD audio commentary for the episode. Deleted scenes from the episode were also included on the box set.
"Bart to the Future" has received mixed to negative review from critics, unlike "Lisa's Wedding" which met with positive response. Nancy Basile of About.com listed it as one of the episodes she felt "shined in season eleven". While reviewing the eleventh season of The Simpsons, DVD Movie Guide's Colin Jacobson commented on "Bart to the Future", writing: "This kind of fantasy episode can be hit or miss, and that trend holds true here. However, more of 'Future' succeeds than flops. Though a few gags bomb, most of them prove pretty good. At no point does this become a classic, but it amuses much of the time." Hayden Childs of The A.V. Club wrote in 2011 that the episode "was not so good, although better than many of the real stinkers yet to come at that point. Still, it utterly failed to rise to the challenge of 'Lisa’s Wedding.'"
In a 2003 article, writers of Entertainment Weekly listed "Bart to the Future" as the worst Simpsons episode of all time. They elaborated that "Choosing the lamest Simpsons episode is like picking the crowning installment of Shasta McNasty — it's all relative. So while 'Bart to the Future' was likely better than anything else on TV the week it first aired, even Mojo the monkey could've banged out a more inventive script Plus, the whole looking-into-the-future premise is merely reliving past glory, carried out far more successfully in 1995's 'Lisa's Wedding.'" Also in 2003, Ben Rayner of Toronto Star referred to "Bart to the Future" as "a lame 2000 outing" and noted that Entertainment Weekly "rightly dubbed the 'worst episode ever'". Winnipeg Free Press columnist Randall King wrote in his review of season eleven that the episode "Alone Again, Natura-Diddily" (which features the death of the character Maude Flanders) was "proof that the dependably brilliant series could – and did – go seriously wrong when it turned 11. Killing off Maude was a sin compounded by the Bart to the Future episode ".
In his 2006 book Watching with The Simpsons: Television, Parody, and Intertextuality, Jonathan Gray analyzed the many advertisement parodies featured in The Simpsons. He commented on "Bart to the Future", writing: "As if ads in children's toys or in churches are not enough, in 'Bart to the Future,' an episode in which an Indian shaman at a casino treats Bart to a vision of his future, even his vision is interrupted when future-Bart says, 'I guess I am an embarrassment,' and a ghost responds, 'You sure are. But, hey, there's an embarrassment of riches at the Caesar's Pow-Wow Indian Casino. You can bet on it!' Here The Simpsons uses parody with great effect, not only to illustrate how annoyingly and disrespectfully ads infringe on any territory, but also to mock their logic and rhetoric."
Read more about this topic: Bart To The Future
Famous quotes containing the word release:
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—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)