Bart's Comet

"Bart's Comet" is the fourteenth episode of the sixth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons.

The show's writing staff saw an issue of Time magazine that presented the threat of comets hitting Earth on its cover, and so decided to create an episode in a similar vein.

Whilst Skinner is distracted by retrieving the weather balloon, Bart accidentally locates a comet, which scientists soon discover is headed straight for Springfield.

[3] According to showrunner David Mirkin, examples of "Swartzwelder humor" in the episode include the American fighter pilots mistaking Groundskeeper Willie for an Iraqi jet and cutting to Grampa and Jasper outside a 1940s general store.

As a result, according to show creator Matt Groening, many of the staff appear on lists of gay people on the Internet.

[3] Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, the authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, called it an "excellent episode" and praised the "great moment when the ever-pious Maude Flanders happily sacrifices her Neddy".

[8] TV critics Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall cited the episode as how The Simpsons "always had the culture and the species on its mind even when it was clowning around", pointing to the moment near the end of the episode when the camera slowly pans across the Springfieldians' faces in the bomb shelter while Ned Flanders sings "Que Sera Sera": "a moment of existential terror that gives way to graceful resignation.

"[9] In the July 26, 2007 issue of Nature, the scientific journal's editorial staff listed "Bart's Comet" among "The Top Ten science moments in The Simpsons".