The Simpsons: Every Season 1 Episode Ranked

There is quite an air of the Tracey Ullman shorts in Bart the Genius with sluggishly illustrated backdrops, disproportionate character designs and bizarre sounding voice overs.

In this episode, Bart is mistaken to have an exceptionally high IQ after cheating on a test and ends up being moved over to a more challenging school. He faces difficulty in learning within this new environment but contrarywise gains new found respect from his family as a result of his supposed intelligence. It’s all very entertaining with plenty of good jokes, one standout being a typical game of scrabble where the family can only make two/three letter words.

The storyline is a bit simplistic and often veers away from the focus – there’s a frivolous scene plonked in the middle where the family make fun of an opera show. It’s not exactly a deep, meaningful episode like what would come later on in the series but it does briefly touch on the importance of identity and provides a few tender father-son moments between Bart and Homer.

It's clear the producers were obviously getting used to making the transition of going from quick after-school cartoon shorts to full length episodes. The potential is there but Bart the Genius lacks the fine-tuning and detail that we’d see in future seasons.