Bart's Girlfriend - Production

Production

"Bart's Girlfriend" was written by Jonathan Collier and directed by Susie Dietter. David Mirkin, who was show runner at the time, originally had the idea of Bart having a girlfriend that was more evil than he was. Mirkin gave the idea to Collier to write it with the help of the show's executive producer, James L. Brooks. Collier said later that he thought it was a case of Brooks coming up with good ideas and him "giggling insequentially". The idea for the ending of the episode was to have none of the characters learn anything from the experience.

Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons, felt that Jessica Lovejoy was hard to draw in his own style but at the same time make her attractive. Julie Kavner, who provides the voice of Marge Simpson on the show, was particularly impressed by the eyes. Jessica was made the Reverend's daughter to give the impression that she was good at first and then to show that she was rebelling against the righteousness of her family. In the scene where Bart talks to Jessica outside her house, her baton playing was in the script but the exact choreography was not. Dietter liked its incorporation because it gave Jessica something else, other than Bart, to pay attention to. This was also done in the final scene when Jessica scrubs the church steps and plays with the scrub brush.

Academy Award winning actress Meryl Streep was called in to do the voice of Jessica. Nancy Cartwright, who provides the voice of Bart Simpson on the show, was a huge fan of Streep and she assumed that Streep would record her lines individually, but all of their recordings were done together. Streep showed up alone with no entourage at the Village Recorder in West Los Angeles at 2:30 P.M., where she recorded her parts with Cartwright. Streep was continually doing many different versions of her lines. Mirkin felt she was easy to work with because she was versatile and keen to do a lot of different things, and as Mirkin expressed it, "easily evil". Cartwright said in an interview with The Pantagraph that she really wanted Streep's autograph, but was afraid to ask for it. After the recording session, Streep tapped Cartwright on the shoulder, and said her kids were big The Simpsons fans and that she would be in "big trouble" if she did not get Cartwright's autograph.

In a take off of John Travolta in the 1983 film Staying Alive, Bart struts down a street in Springfield after he is invited to dinner at the Lovejoys, just as Travolta strutted through Times Square to the same tune. That joke was written by Jace Richdale, who was the co-executive producer of The Simpsons at the time. When Homer is musing over Bart's first date, he begins to sing "Sunrise, Sunset" from Fiddler on the Roof, before moving on to "Cat's in the Cradle", and then "Yes, We Have No Bananas". He then begins to weep due to the people in the song having no bananas. The joke was reportedly very expensive for the writers to put in because they had to pay thousands of dollars for the rights to use the songs on the show.

"Bart's Girlfriend" originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on November 6, 1994. The episode was selected for release in a 2001 video collection of selected episodes titled: The Simpsons – Love, Springfield Style. Other episodes included in the collection set were "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Marge", "The Two Mrs Nahasapeemapetilons", and "I'm with Cupid". The episode was included in The Simpsons season 6 DVD set, which was released on August 16, 2005, as The Simpsons – The Complete Sixth Season.