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:
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)