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{{Use mdy dates|date=September 2023}}
{{Infobox Simpsons episode
| image          = 
| caption        = 
| season         = 9
| episode        = 14
| director       = [[Pete Michels]]
| writer         = [[David X. Cohen]]
| production     = 5F11
| airdate        = {{Start date|1998|02|15}}
| guests         = *[[Phil Hartman]] as [[Troy McClure]] (as [[Noah]]{{efn|In the opening scene, the family is watching a television program about [[Noah's Ark]]}})
*[[James Earl Jones]] as the narrator
*[[Jack Ong]] as the Chinese fisherman
| blackboard     = 
| couch_gag      = The family is portrayed as frogs (with [[Maggie Simpson|Maggie]] as a [[tadpole]]) on a lily pad.<ref name=bbc/>
| commentary     = [[Matt Groening]]<br />Mike Scully<br />[[George Meyer]]<br />David X. Cohen<br />Pete Michels
| prev           = [[The Joy of Sect]]
| next           = [[The Last Temptation of Krust]]
}}
"'''Das Bus'''" is the fourteenth episode of the [[The Simpsons season 9|ninth season]] of the American animated television series ''[[The Simpsons]]''. It originally aired on  [[Fox Broadcasting Company|Fox]] in the United States on February 15, 1998. In an extended parody of ''[[Lord of the Flies]]'', [[Bart Simpson|Bart]], [[Lisa Simpson|Lisa]], and other students from [[Springfield Elementary School]] are stranded on an island and are forced to work together. Meanwhile, [[Homer Simpson|Homer]] founds his own Internet company. It was written by [[David X. Cohen]] and directed by [[Pete Michels]]. Guest star [[James Earl Jones]] narrates the final scene of the episode.<ref name=bbc/>

==Plot==

The [[Springfield Elementary School]] [[Model United Nations]] club is going on a field trip. On the bus, [[Bart Simpson|Bart]], [[Nelson Muntz|Nelson]], [[Ralph Wiggum|Ralph]], and [[Milhouse Van Houten|Milhouse]] play a game by racing fruit down the aisle, which ends with Milhouse rolling a [[grapefruit]] that gets stuck under the bus's brake pedal. When [[Otto Mann|Otto]] tries to press down on the pedal, it squirts juice into his eyes, causing him to lose control and drive the bus off a bridge into a large body of water. While swimming for help, Otto gets swept away by the current and picked up by foreign fishermen, who plan to use him for [[Slavery in the 21st century#Fishing industry|slave labor]] below the deck of their ship.

The students swim to a nearby desert island, where everyone falls to accusing each other before Nelson points out that the bus accident was Milhouse's fault. Bart tries to tell everyone that being stranded is fun, and imagines a lavish island lifestyle similar to ''[[The Swiss Family Robinson]]'', but reality sets in when the island is found to be largely barren. With no natural food, no survival skills and no adult supervision, the kids end up relying on a [[cooler]] of snack food that Bart retrieves from the sunken bus. [[Lisa Simpson|Lisa]] quickly imposes a [[rationing]] system on the cooler, only for the kids to awake the next morning and find that all the food has been eaten overnight. They accuse Milhouse of eating everything, while Milhouse instead tries to blame a mysterious island "monster". As they prepare to [[lynching|lynch]] him, Lisa reminds them of why they travelled in the first place – the Model UN – and [[presumption of innocence|Milhouse is allowed a trial]], with Bart as a judge.

With Milhouse on trial, Nelson has no case for the prosecution other than trying to [[coercion|coerce]] a confession out of him, and the trial ends with Bart reluctantly acquitting Milhouse due to insufficient evidence. However, the other kids refuse to accept Bart's verdict, and the situation descends into outright [[ochlocracy|mob rule]] as Milhouse, Bart and Lisa are chased into a cave. There, the children are spooked by the island's "monster", which turns out to be a [[wild boar]]. On one of the boar's tusks is an empty bag of chips, revealing that it had eaten all the snacks. Lisa realizes that there must be a nearby food source to sustain the boar, and sees it licking [[lichen|slime from a nearby rock]]. Lisa however is the only one who takes to licking the slime herself, with the other kids killing and eating the boar instead. A narration by actor [[James Earl Jones]] recounts that the kids learned to live in peace and [[Deus ex machina|were rescued soon after]] by "oh, let's say, [[Moe Szyslak|Moe]]".<ref name=bbc/>

[[Subplot|Back at home]], [[Homer Simpson|Homer]] discovers that [[Ned Flanders]] has his own home-based [[Dot-com company|Internet business]] and decides he wants to start his own company. However, it turns out that Homer has no idea how to run an Internet business, does not provide any goods or services, and does not even own a computer. He is later visited by [[Bill Gates]] and his goons, who offer to buy out Homer's company but instead destroy his office.

==Production==
According to the [[DVD]] commentary for ''The Simpsons''{{'}}&nbsp;ninth season, the couch gag was suggested by [[Dan Castellaneta]]'s niece.<ref name=Scully>{{cite video |people=Scully, Mike |date=2006 |title=The Simpsons The Complete Ninth Season DVD commentary for the Deleted Scenes |medium=DVD |publisher=20th Century Fox}}</ref> To make the fishermen's speech as accurate as possible, Cohen called a friend who spoke Mandarin. When the [[Chinese people|Chinese]] actors came, the actors did not feel [[Standard Mandarin|Mandarin]] was geographically appropriate, and it was changed to [[Cantonese]], which is spoken more in [[China|China's]] coastal regions and would be more appropriate for sailors and fishermen.<ref name=Cohen/> In a deleted scene, Homer furnishes his home office with anti-stress toys, but becomes angry and stressful himself when he tries each of them due to their failure to work or their immediate breakage due to shoddy manufacturing. The producers said the decision to cut that scene was for timing purposes.

==Cultural references ==
Most of the episode's plot, namely a group of children trapped on an island and the breakdown of law, order and civility, is a reference to [[William Golding]]'s 1954 novel ''[[Lord of the Flies]]'', including the use of [[deus ex machina]] as a plot device that saves the children.<ref name="Cohen" /> A main diversion was while the episode showed the kids learning to live in peace, the novel had the boys' "war" broken up when they are rescued by a Navy ship, which, ironically, was in the middle of a war itself. The title comes from the 1981 film ''[[Das Boot]]'', although it would be "{{lang|de|Der Bus}}" in German.<ref name="bbc" />

When the children are squabbling in the classroom, [[Seymour Skinner|Principal Skinner]] restores order by banging his shoe on the desk. Skinner's actions are a reference to the [[shoe-banging incident]] by [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] leader [[Nikita Khrushchev]] at the [[United Nations|UN]] in 1960.<ref name="Scully" /> The bus plunge off the overpass was inspired by the climax of the 1994 film ''[[True Lies]]'', although some animators remarked a similar scene happened in the 1989 James Bond film ''[[Licence to Kill]]'', where a corrupt cop helps to free the Bond villain from custody.<ref name="Cohen">{{cite video |people=Cohen, David |date=2006 |title=The Simpsons The Complete Ninth Season DVD commentary for "Das Bus" |medium=DVD |publisher=20th Century Fox}}</ref>

When the kids are on a manhunt of Lisa, Bart and Milhouse, they use charcoal ash on their faces like war paint, and Ralph Wiggum paints his in a cat style akin to [[Peter Criss]] of [[Kiss (band)|KISS]]. When escaping from the other children, Bart, Lisa and Milhouse have to swing across a gap on a vine; Milhouse goes across first, but refuses to throw the vine back (calling out that "there's no time") in a reference to the opening scene of the 1981 film ''[[Raiders of the Lost Ark]]'', where Satipo does the same to [[Indiana Jones (character)|Indiana Jones]] (but as an act of betrayal).<ref name="ult">{{cite book |title=[[Simpsons World The Ultimate Episode Guide: Seasons 1–20]] |publisher=[[HarperCollins|Harper Collins Publishers]] |year=2010 |editor=Bates, James W. |editor2=Gimple, Scott M. |editor3=McCann, Jesse L. |editor4=Richmond, Ray |editor5=Seghers, Christine |isbn=978-0-00-738815-8 |edition=1st |page=443}}</ref>

==Reception==
In its original broadcast, "Das Bus" finished 17th in ratings for the week of February 9–15, 1998, with a [[Nielsen ratings|Nielsen rating]] of 9.9, equivalent to approximately 9.6 million viewing households. It was the third highest-rated show on the Fox network that week, following ''[[The X-Files]]'' and ''[[King of the Hill]]''.<ref>{{cite news |title=CBS wins; olympics disappointing |work=Sun-Sentinel |agency=Associated Press |page=4E |date=February 20, 1998}}</ref> In a 2006 article in ''[[USA Today]]'', "Das Bus" was highlighted among the six best episodes of [[The Simpsons season 9|''The Simpsons'' season 9]], along with "[[Trash of the Titans]]", "[[The Last Temptation of Krust]]", "[[The Cartridge Family]]", "[[Dumbbell Indemnity]]", and "[[The Joy of Sect]]".<ref>{{cite news |last=Clark |first=Mike |title=New on DVD |work=[[USA Today]] |publisher=Gannett Co. Inc. |date=2006-12-22 |url=https://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/reviews/2006-12-21-new-on-dvd_x.htm?csp=34 |access-date=2007-10-24}}</ref>

The authors of the book ''I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide'', Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, called it a "fantastic episode", adding: "Ignore the Internet business side, and wallow in the cleverness of the children trapped on the island. Bart has never been cleverer, Nelson more menacing, and Milhouse more geekish. Great stuff with a delightful ending that is so witty and obvious, that it's annoying you never imagined they'd get away with it."<ref name=bbc>{{cite web |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/simpsons/episodeguide/season9/page14.shtml |title=Das Bus |access-date=2007-12-27 |author1=Martyn, Warren |author2=Wood, Adrian |year=2000 |publisher=BBC|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070526054803/http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/simpsons/episodeguide/season9/page14.shtml|archive-date=2007-05-26}}</ref>

The episode has become study material for sociology courses at [[University of California, Berkeley]], where it is used to "examine issues of the production and reception of cultural objects, in this case, a satirical cartoon show", and to figure out what it is "trying to tell audiences about aspects primarily of American society, and, to a lesser extent, about other societies". Some questions asked in the courses include: "What aspects of American society are being addressed in the episode? What aspects of them are used to make the points? How is the satire conveyed: through language? Drawing? Music? Is the behavior of each character consistent with his/her character as developed over the years? Can we identify elements of the historical/political context that the writers are satirizing? What is the difference between satire and parody?"<ref>{{cite web |url=http://sociology.berkeley.edu/documents/undergrads/syllabi/Soc190_1.pdf |publisher=University of California Berkeley |title=The Simpsons Global Mirror |year=2008 |author=Thomas B. Gold |access-date=2011-07-18 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090407081710/http://sociology.berkeley.edu/documents/undergrads/syllabi/Soc190_1.pdf |archive-date=2009-04-07}}</ref>

==Notes==
{{Notelist}}

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
{{wikiquote|The_Simpsons#Das_Bus_.5B9.14.5D|"Das Bus"}}
{{portal|The Simpsons}}
* {{snpp capsule|5F11}}
* {{IMDb episode |id=0701085}}

{{Lord of the Flies}}
{{The Simpsons episodes|9}}

[[Category:The Simpsons season 9 episodes]]
[[Category:1998 American television episodes]]
[[Category:Fiction about castaways]]
[[Category:Cultural depictions of Bill Gates]]
[[Category:Television episodes written by David X. Cohen]]
[[Category:Television episodes set on fictional islands]]
[[Category:Television episodes about the Internet]]
[[Category:Model United Nations]]
[[Category:Television episodes directed by Pete Michels]]
[[Category:Works about the United Nations]]