Bart Star

Following a Health convention held in Springfield, the children of Springfield (including Bart) are deemed to be overweight. To help them stay in shape, the parents enroll their children in pee-wee football. The coach, Ned Flanders, helps keep the team undefeated, but Homer heckles him relentlessly. Flanders finally snaps and turns the job over to Homer.

Homer initially acts tough towards Bart, but when he is reminded of how his father was hard on him as a child, he decides to be nicer to Bart (and meaner to his father). The next day, he becomes a lousy coach and decides to cut many players from the team, and replaces star quarterback Nelson with Bart, causing an uproar from the team. Bart is unable to play the position well and causes the team's first loss and ruined their undefeated season; Nelson bluntly threatens Bart's life if he loses again. While training at night Bart meets Joe Namath, who promises to help him, but soon after Joe's wife fixes the car, which had broken down due to vapor lock, Joe leaves without helping Bart.

Lisa suggests that Bart pretend he is injured to get out of quarterbacking, which he eagerly does, but Homer claims that without Bart the team must forfeit. Bart tells Homer that he sucks at being quarterback; Nelson concurs. Homer, still not getting it, encourages Bart yet again to keep at it. This causes Bart to become angry and quit the team. Homer, instead of realizing his own fault, gets angry at Bart and cuts him from the team. Homer also cuts Milhouse, much to Milhouse's delight. Homer and Bart have a fallout. Homer calls Bart a quitter. On the next game, Nelson is made quarterback again and the team wins, but Homer has nobody to celebrate with and becomes lonely. Afterwards, Homer finds Bart and persuades him to rejoin the team. He apologizes to Bart for blindly encouraging him for something that Bart was not good at. The next day, during the championship game, the score is tied when Chief Wiggum comes to arrest Nelson. Bart decides to pretend he is Nelson, assuming the charges are minor (they are actually burglary and arson). The team finally wins the championship, and unsuccessfully tries to carry Homer off the field. Joe Namath reappears to give his final thoughts on the episode and on vapor lock, the third most common cause of engine stalling.

The credits show Homer cutting all the people who worked on the episode (except for Joe Namath), including the woman who shushes in the Gracie Films logo.

Das Bus

The Springfield Elementary School Model United Nations club is going on a field trip. On the bus, Bart, Nelson, Ralph and Milhouse are playing a game by racing fruit down the aisle. Milhouse rolls a grapefruit that gets stuck under the brakes. When bus driver Otto attempts to press down on the pedal, it squirts juice into his eyes, causing him to lose control and drive the bus off a bridge.

Otto attempts to swim for help but ends up being swept away by the current. It is later revealed Otto is picked up by Chinese fishermen, who plan to use him for slave labor. The students – Bart, Lisa, Milhouse, Nelson, Lewis, Ralph, Martin, Wendell, Sherri and Terri – swim to a nearby tropical island. Bart tries to tell the children that being stranded on an island is just like TV where life is easy and cocktails are plentiful, comparing it to The Swiss Family Robinson, only with more cursing. Reality soon sets in when the island is found to be largely barren and the children lack survival skills. With no food found on the island and no adult supervision, the children rely on snack food retrieved from the sunken bus by Bart. They awaken the next morning to find the snacks all gone. Suspecting Milhouse because of his pot-belly and nacho cheese breath, the students put him on trial and he blames the loss on a mysterious island "monster".

Back at home, Homer discovers that Ned Flanders has his own home-based Internet business, Flancrest Enterprises. Homer complains to Marge that everyone except the Simpson family are getting rich off the Internet, and he wants a piece of the action, despite knowing nothing about it. He launches his own dot-com company, Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net, which is later bought out by Bill Gates and his goons. Unfortunately, Bill Gates' "buying out" procedure is having his goons destroy Homer's office and break all of his possessions, stating that he "didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks".

During the trial held by the students, there is insufficient evidence to prove Milhouse ate all the food. Because of this, Bart, acting as judge, acquits Milhouse. The other students are not happy with this verdict and attempt to kill Milhouse. Lisa tries to stop the violence, but gets pushed by Nelson. Bart, angered by this, tells everyone to leave Lisa alone. The other students end up chasing Bart, Lisa, and Milhouse into a cave, where it is revealed that Milhouse's "monster" is actually a wild boar. On one of the boar's tusks is an empty bag of chips, revealing that it was the actual culprit for eating the snacks. Nelson apologizes to Milhouse for the misunderstanding, who reveals that he only took "two sandwiches and a bag of Doritos". The kids kill the boar and eat it (except for Lisa, who adheres to her vegetarianism and licks slime from a rock instead, since the slime is what the boar is feeding on to survive on the island). The episode concludes with a comically obvious deus ex machina ending, narrated by James Earl Jones:

So the children learned how to function as a society,
and eventually they were rescued by, oh, let's say...Moe.

I love Joe Namath's strange cameo, but besides that Bart Star is forgettable. Das Bus is good.

Das Bus is best. Period.