Barter deals and spies
| Episode of the series The Simpsons | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| title | Barter deals and spies | ||
| Original title | The Crepes of Wrath | ||
| Country of production | United States | ||
| original language | English | ||
| length | approx. 22 minutes | ||
| classification | Season 1, episode 11 11th episode overall ( list ) |
||
| First broadcast | April 15, 1990 on FOX | ||
| German-language first broadcast |
December 13, 1991 on ZDF | ||
| Rod | |||
| Director | Wesley Archer , Milton Gray | ||
| script | George Meyer , Sam Simon , John Swartzwelder , Jon Vitti | ||
| synchronization | |||
► Main article: Dubbing The Simpsons | |||
| chronology | |||
| |||
Barter transactions and spies ( English original title: The Crepes of Wrath ) is the eleventh episode of the first season of the American cartoon series The Simpsons .
action
After Bart lights a cherry on the school toilet while Principal Skinner's mother Agnes is sitting on it, he goes to his house to talk to his parents about it. Because of Bart's pranks, Skinner recommends a student exchange program. Bart then flies to France to a winery owned by the two men Cesar and Uguolin.
Contrary to his expectations, his exchange parents are very tough, because he has to do heavy work for them, hardly gets anything to eat and has no free time. Bart finally discovered that Cesar and Uguolin their wine with antifreeze stretch and they have to buy in the city a new, as it is empty. When Bart meets a police officer there, he tells him about it through his new language skills in French , whereupon his host parents are arrested.
In the meantime, the Simpsons get the exchange student Adil Hoxha from Albania in return . He is interested in Homer's job at the nuclear power plant and wants to see it. After doing this, he sends secret messages to the family of his government in Albania in the tree house. Days later, Adil is arrested by the FBI for espionage and sent back to his country.
Finally, Bart comes back home and tells his family, among other things, his new knowledge of French.
Cultural references
Cesar and Ugolin are named after the French films Jean Florette and Manon's Rache from 1986. Bart's gift to Maggie from France refers to the French children's film The Red Ballon from 1956. On their way to the winery, Bart and Ugolin pass several sets of famous paintings, in particular Le Bassin aux Nymphéas by Claude Monet , Champ de blé aux corbeaux by Vincent van Gogh , Le rêve by Henri Rousseau and Déjeuner sur l'herbe by Édouard Manet . The choice of antifreeze for the crime is a nod to the 1985 glycol wine scandal .
production
Barter and Spies was the first episode of The Simpsons , written by George Meyer, who co-wrote it with Sam Simon, John Swartzwelder, and Jon Vitti. The episode was inspired by the French film Manon's Revenge . The authors tried to find out which country the exchange student should come from and ended up choosing Albania. They hadn't seen the country on television very often and decided that the episode should pay homage to the Albanian John Belushi . The authors did not know much about the country and therefore could not think of a good name, which is why they gave it the surname "Hoxha" after the former Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha . They used both real Albanian in the scene where Adil is saying goodbye to his family, and real French in the scenes where Bart is in France. The authors did some research at a specific airport in France for the recordings of Bart at the Paris airport.
reception
The first broadcast of the episode The Crepes of Wrath ended the Nielsen Ratings for the week of April 9-15, 1990 with a rating of 15.9 in 29th place. It was the second most watched show on Fox that week.
The episode received mostly positive reviews. Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, authors of I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide , wrote, “The first Simpsons episode dedicated to the mockery of a nation, and where better than that to start in France? A masterpiece, [...] ”In a DVD review of the first season, David B. Grelck gave the episode a rating of 2.5 out of 5 and wrote:“ While the laughs on this episode are a bit dry, it is Upper plot a clue to the craziness to come. ”Colin Jacobson of DVD Movie Guide wrote,“ It is clear that by the time this episode was being produced, the writers were starting to find their groove. From start to finish, Crepes was a solid experience as the show began to offer more style and sophistication. " Hollywood Video's Scott Collura commented on the episode, saying ," It's one of the best of the first season. “In 1997, TV Guide's David Bauder named this episode the best episode of The Simpsons and the 17th best of all TV series of all time. In 2006 IGN Entertainment listed The Crepes of Wrath as the best episode of the first season, saying, “It has a strong central storyline with a beard who is extradited to France as an exchange student and forced to work for two unscrupulous winemakers who mix antifreeze into the wine. ”In a May 18, 1990 edition of Entertainment Weekly, Ken Tucker rated a scene from this episode in which Lisa and Adil argue about democracy over dinner and are finally taught by Homer as "one of the funniest sitcom moments this year". The episode's cultural reference to the French short film The Red Balloon was declared by Total Film's Nathan Ditum as the third best reference film in the series' history.
In Planet Simpson , author Chris Turner notes that many of the French characters and locations in this episode are largely derived from American stereotypes about France. He continued, "[Caeser and Ugolin] are perfect versions of the clichéd French so loathed in the United States." The episode has become study material for sociology courses at the University of California, Berkeley , where it is used to " To investigate issues of production and reception of cultural goods, in this case a satirical animated series "and to find out what" it tries to tell the audience primarily about aspects of American society and, to a lesser extent, about other societies. "
Web links
- The Crepes of Wrath in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The Crepes of Wrath on The Simpsons.com
- Entry of barter deals and spies on Simpsonspedia.net
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e The Crepes of Wrath In: BBC.co.uk . Retrieved August 29, 2008
- ↑ a b c d Wes Archer . (2001). DVD commentary for the episode "Barter and Spies". In: The Simpsons: The Complete Season One [DVD]. 20th Century Fox .
- ↑ a b c d George Meyer . (2001). DVD commentary for the episode "Barter and Spies". In: The Simpsons: The Complete Season One [DVD]. 20th Century Fox .
- ↑ Richmond, Ray: ABC stages a major surge in ratings and ties NBC for week , The Orange County Register. April 18, 1990, p. L03.
- ↑ Grelck, David B .: The Complete First Season . WDBGProductions. September 25, 2001. Archived from the original on February 2, 2009. Retrieved on September 15, 2011.
- ^ Colin Jacobson: The Simpsons: The Complete First Season (1990) . DVD Movie Guide. Retrieved August 29, 2008.
- ↑ Scott Collura: The Simpsons: The Complete First Season Movie Review at Hollywood Video . Hollywood video. Archived from the original on April 27, 2008. Retrieved on August 29, 2008.
- ^ TV Guide 100 Greatest TV Episodes ( Memento from December 29, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) In: The Augusta Chronicle . Retrieved August 29, 2008.
- ↑ Goldman, Eric; Dan Iverson, Brian Zoromski: The Simpsons: 17 Seasons, 17 Episodes . IGN. September 8, 2006. Archived from the original on September 12, 2007. Retrieved on August 31, 2008.
- ↑ Ken Tucker: The Simpsons Review. In: EW.com . Retrieved May 5, 2012 .
- ^ Nathan Ditum: The 50 Greatest Simpsons Movie References . In: Total Film , June 6, 2009, p. 18. Retrieved July 22, 2009.
- ↑ Chris Turner: Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece Documented an Era and Defined a Generation , ISBN 0-679-31318-4 , p. 345.
- ^ Thomas B. Gold: The Simpsons Global Mirror . University of California Berkeley. 2008. Archived from the original on April 7, 2009. Retrieved July 18, 2011.