Difference between revisions of "The Cad and the Hat"

Revision as of 09:59, July 1, 2026

"The Cad and the Hat"

Episode Information Episode number: 611 Season number: S28 E15 Production code: WABF08 Original airdate: February 19, 2017 Title screen: Abraham Lincoln and George Washington are flying toward each other in hot-air balloons with "Vote Lincoln" and "Vote Washington" on them, and they collide, causing the hot-air balloons to explode. Couch gag: Robot Chicken couch gag 2 Guest star(s): Magnus Carlsen as himself Seth Green as the Nerd Patton Oswalt as Bart's guilt Showrunner: Al Jean Written by: Ron Zimmerman Directed by: Steven Dean Moore

"The Cad and the Hat" is the fifteenth episode of broadcast season 28 of The Simpsons and the six hundred eleventh episode overall. It originally aired on February 19, 2017. The episode was written by Ron Zimmerman and directed by Steven Dean Moore. It guest stars Magnus Carlsen as himself, Seth Green as the Nerd, Patton Oswalt as Bart's guilt.

Synopsis

When Bart betrays Lisa by throwing away a hat she becomes attached to, he has to deal with his guilt—literally, as it manifests to Bart. Meanwhile, Homer is revealed to be a chess savant.

Plot

Bart and Lisa tell the story of a time when they didn't get along. At Springfield Bay, Mayor Quimby declares the beach is open again as the sea is now safe to swim in, but only because they lowered the safety standards. Seeing this on television, Homer decides that the family will go on a trip to the beach. At the beach, the family goes to Sunblock Sam's to buy some supplies. Bart gets a temporary tattoo that says "Bad to the Bone", while Lisa finds a sunhat. Lisa tries the sunhat on and imagines herself riding a flying unicorn and making the world a better place. She buys the hat, which she affectionately names "Sunny". Back at the ocean, Bart tries swimming with his new temporary tattoo on, but it immediately washes off, causing him to start sobbing. Marge takes Homer away from the women playing volleyball and over to the chess tables. There, Homer plays a game against Jasper and beats him, which surprises the family. Homer reveals that as a child, he used to play chess against Grampa, who would always beat him and laugh.

When the family is going home, the school bullies compliment Lisa's hat and tease Bart, with Bart then getting attacked by a seagull in an attempt to prove that he's "bad to the bone." This causes Bart to become annoyed at Lisa since her purchase at the shop only led to positive things for her. At the Krusty Burger drive-thru, Lisa is asleep in the car. Bart takes her hat and throws it out the window and into the scrapyard next door, with the hat landing on a car. That night, while Bart is trying to sleep, his guilt manifests, although Bart is adamant that he doesn't feel guilty about throwing away Lisa's hat. However, as Bart and his guilt talk, his guilt grows in size. Later, Lisa wakes up in the night and realizes she is missing Sunny. She looks all over for the hat, goes to the Springfield Police Department, and finally goes to see if Sunblock Sam's has another of the same hat for sale, but Shauna tells her that they don't. Dejected, Lisa goes back home. Bart wakes up again to find that his guilt still hasn't left him.

The following morning, Bart comes downstairs for breakfast and is rather chipper. Marge asks him if he has seen Lisa's hat, and his guilt grows in size again. Meanwhile, Homer plays chess against the other barflies at Moe's and beats Lenny, Carl, and Barney simultaneously. Homer tells Moe about how he became so good at chess. Grampa and he used to play chess together every day, but Grampa would always beat him and laugh as he did so. Homer then went to find a chess professor to teach him the game. Eventually, he became good enough to beat Grampa, who was annoyed at Homer beating him and they never played chess again.

Back at the Simpson house, Bart's guilt ruins everything that Bart tries to do. Eventually, his guilt becomes too much for him to handle and he admits what he did to Lisa. Lisa refuses to forgive Bart, saying that she hopes his guilt will continue to grow. At Springfield Elementary School the next day, Bart tries to give Lisa multiple gifts in an attempt to get her to forgive him. However, nothing he gives her works as Lisa says that she has a wound that nothing will heal. At Barney's Bowlarama, Moe reveals to Homer that the reason he is so good at chess is that chess represents his desire to kill his father, which Homer realizes is right. Meanwhile, Bart arrives at the scrapyard again just as the car that Sunny fell on is getting crushed into a cube.

At home, Homer is burning all his chess pieces when Marge reveals that she has Magnus Carlsen on Skype to talk with him. Magnus convinces Homer to continue playing chess and have a final match against his father. At the scrapyard, Bart is trying to figure out how to get Sunny out of the cube. He gets Rod and Todd to help, using the power of miracles to lift the cube, but that does not work. Bart then figures out that Buzz Cola dissolves the metal of the cube. Bart has Rod and Todd lift the cube into a pool of Buzz Cola, which dissolves enough of the car to get Sunny out. Meanwhile, Homer goes to the Springfield Retirement Castle to challenge his father to a chess game. Many people watch a live feed of the game at Moe's Tavern. However, during the game, Homer realizes that his father is more important to him than winning and he forfeits.

Bart arrives back home with Sunny and takes it to Lisa, who still does not forgive Bart. Bart gives up and goes to leave the room, only for Lisa's guilt to manifest and convince her to forgive Bart. Lisa starts crying and she and Bart make up as Lisa finally forgives Bart. Bart's guilt then flies into the sky, hits a plane, and crashes into the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant's cooling towers. It then emerges as a giant monster, which Mr. Burns thinks will be useful. Homer's guilt then appears to him, but Homer tells him that he has plenty of demons already, so he has to get in line.

Lisa concludes the story saying that even Bart has a conscience, and Nelson hits him in the arm for it and tells Lisa that her gaffer, Jack, is dating his mother. Homer is then seen Skyping with Magnus Carlsen, but Magnus closes the call, as Homer has bothered him too much.

Production

Chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen voices himself in the episode. Showrunner Al Jean said that Carlsen convinces Homer to play one last chess game against Grampa to test the theory on whether he;s only good at chess because he wants to kill his father.^[1]

Reception

It its original airing, "The Cad and the Hat" was watched by roughly 2.44 million people and scored a 1.1 rating, making it the highest-rated show on Fox that night.^[2]

Dennis Perkins of The A.V. Club gave the episode a C+ stating that the episode "betrays the series’ tone and internal rules to a distracting degree." He also says that "the episode is dispiriting in how disposably it treats its world, while reaching for a pair of emotional epiphanies that fall flat in the execution." He also took issue with the many crazier jokes in the episode, such as cola burning through Bart's stomach and Bart's guilt becoming a giant monster, saying "The Simpsons plays loose with whatever laws of science govern Springfield at times, but these sorts of jokes are “cartoonish” without earning the right, dramatically or comedically."^[3]

Tony Sokol of Den of Geek gave the episode a 2.5/5 rating. He opens his review saying that the episode "gives more evidence to the couch gag theorem: The longer the opening sequence, the flimsier the episode." He did not find Bart's guilt funny and wrapped up his review stating "The episode had a promising premise, that Bart could feed his guilt until it became a horrifically monstrous thing of beauty, but he had to deflate it before it could eat even his shorts."^[4]

As of June 2026, "The Cad and the Hat" has a 6.5 rating on IMDb.^[5]

International airdates

Country Date Channel Note Ukraine April 9, 2017 NLO TV [6]

Gallery

References

Promo videos

• Robot Chicken Couch Gag at YouTube
• Check out this time-lapse footage of the stop-motion animated couch gag from #TheSimpsons last night
• @Pattonoswalt plays Bart's guilt in this Sunday's all-new episode of #TheSimpsons.
• Bart Comes Face To Face With His Own Guilt at YouTube
• Lisa Searches Desperately For Her Missing Hat at YouTube

Wikisimpsons has 31 images related to "The Cad and the Hat".