In this episode, Homer gets into trouble when he complains about expensive birthday parties while Bart becomes attracted to Milhouse's cousin Annika.
The committee offer Homer a chance to remove the black mark by ensuring that Rod has a magical birthday party, to which he grudgingly agrees.
When Bart learns that Annika is heading to the airport to fly home, Grampa reveals that he was in love with a waitress at the main diner near the base but was not brave enough to attract her attention, so he stopped his regular maintenance job and took a supersonic flight that nearly killed him but won over the waitress — who was Mona, Homer's mother.
Ending his story, Grampa urges Bart to be careful with making a grand gesture to win over a girl, as it may not last especially if he is pretending to be someone he is not.
Annika scoffs at his typical "American gesture" but Bart responds by telling her he actually does not like her because she does nothing but complain and is only nice to people when she wants something from them.
In March 2015, Entertainment Weekly reported that Carice van Houten would guest star as Milhouse's Dutch cousin, Annika, who would spark Bart's romantic interest.
Club gave the episode a C−, saying "There are ghosts of any number of potentially fruitful stories all through ‘Let’s Go Fly A Coot’, none of which the writers (it’s credited to Jeff Westbrook) develop beyond their most basic, cursory outlines.