At home, they watch television where Marge sees a commercial for the Chazz Busby Ballet Academy and tells Lisa that she always wanted to become a ballerina.
On stage, the ballerinas go out of control, and Lisa tells the audience that ballet is a dangerous practice for children and quits, prompting Busby to leave.
The couch gag is a parody of the 1949-1966 Warner Bros. Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner cartoons directed by Chuck Jones.
[3][4] When Bart emerges from the dumpster, eavesdropping on Lisa to see if she's smoking, his face is camouflaged and "The End" by The Doors plays in the background.
This is a parody of the scene in the 1979 film Apocalypse Now in which Willard emerges from the water camouflaged, about to kill Colonel Kurtz, with the same music playing.
[5] Richard Keller of TV Squad stated that he enjoyed the week's episode, but commented that it "wasn't as strong as the previous two.
"[3] Robert Canning of IGN thought that the episode was good and that it "started off very, very strongly" but commented that it seemed to lose its comedic pace as it progressed.
He particularly enjoyed the episode's couch gag, stating that "It was a great reminder of the early, innocent days of cartoon comedy but with a modern Simpsons twist".
She wrote that the episode "was exceedingly familiar, but it provided the framework for some pretty decent gags" such as Marge's box of shattered dreams.