TVSquad

(S06E14) When you see the words "Written by John Swartzwelder" appear on the screen, you know you're in for a great episode.

This episode begins with Bart pulling yet another prank on Principal Skinner by affixing a sign to Skinner's weather balloon that reads, "Hi, I'm big butt Skinner" and is held by a likeness of Skinner constructed so the balloon acts as his butt. Skinner exclaims: "It won't come down for months! Curse the man who invented helium! Curse you, Pierre Jules Cesar Janssen!"

Bart tries to deny he pulled the prank, but the fact that he has blueprints and notarized photos of himself planning it doesn't really help his case. As punishment, Skinner enlists Bart to help him with his amateur astronomy. He tells Bart to meet him at 4:30 the next morning, to which Bart replies, "There's a 4:30 in the morning now?"

While Skinner is busy looking through his telescope and not seeing anything, he spots his weather balloon and runs after it, instructing Bart not to touch anything. Of course, as soon as Skinner leaves Bart spins the telescope around and it serendipitously aims at a comet which hasn't been discovered yet.

The next day, Bart becomes the envy of all the geeks at school. When one asks when they can see the comet, Bart says, "it's right behind you." That's impossible, since it's the middle of the day, but Bart is actually correct because the comet is now heading straight for Springfield.

While his family panics, Homer tries to calm them down by telling them they can just take the bridge out of town if Professor Frink's rocket doesn't destroy the comet. The rocket, in fact, does not destroy the comet, and instead blows up the only bridge going out of town. This doesn't stop people from trying to jump the bridge with their cars, however.

Congress tries to pass a bill to evacuate the town, but at the last minute someone attaches an amendment to use $30,000 of the tax payers' money to fund "the perverted arts" so the bill doesn't pass. Homer is still calm, however, and tells his family that the comet will probably just break up in the atmosphere and be no larger than a chihuahua's head when it hits Earth. Until that happens, he and the family will have to wait it out in their bomb shelter, and by "their bomb shelter" I mean "Flanders' bomb shelter."

Homer demands to be let into Flanders' shelter, which the infinitely kind Flanders has actually built large enough for both families. Homer still insists Flanders and his family get out, but Marge tells him to shut up and get inside. Before long, the entire town has been crammed inside the shelter, but there's too many people so one person has to leave. Homer, naturally, votes for Flanders, and Ned dutifully leaves, but not before telling his son Todd to shoot him if he tries to get back in.

Guilt finally sets in and everyone comes out to join Ned on a hilltop. The comet, just like Homer predicted, breaks up and the single remaining piece lands next to a chihuahua, but not before popping Skinner's weather balloon, which lands on Ned's bomb shelter and reduces it to a pile of rubble.