A Father's Watch

"A Father's Watch" is the eighteenth episode of the twenty-eighth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons, and the 614th episode of the series overall. The episode was directed by Bob Anderson and written by Simon Rich. It aired in the United States on Fox on March 19, 2017. Plot Two recently deceased frogs meet in heaven and say they are proud to have died for a noble cause: so Bart can dissect them in science class for the pursuit of knowledge. However, they are horrified and angry when Bart laughingly mutilates the body he left behind. Marge despairs over Bart's terrible report card, and goes to parenting expert Dr. Clarity Hoffman-Roth's lecture for advice. Following her recommendation of giving kids trophies for achieving either laughably simple tasks or doing absolutely nothing, Homer opens a trophy store. However, Bart volunteers to be the store's assistant and, after his shoddy work is revealed, Homer loses his temper and rants at length about what a "pathetic loser" Bart is and always will be, unaware that a devastated Bart has heard what he said. Meanwhile, Lisa lashes out against the Trophy Culture – not least because her genuine achievements earn smaller trophies than the non-achievements of classmates like Ralph Wiggum. Bart visits Grampa and finds out that Grampa's father (who is not shown but was mentioned in "The Winter of His Content" as being alive and estranged from Grampa) was a widely respected expert on child abuse in his day, and passed down a rare watch to Grampa, which Grampa then gives to Bart. Soon, Lisa causes a different movement by getting another parenting expert, Dr. Fenton Pooltoy, to speak to Springfield's parents, who says that too much praise creates millennials - in his words, "a generation of soft, entitled narcissists who drop out of college to become DJs", and his no trophies or false praise approach is embraced by the parents of Springfield. However, Lisa's plan backfires because Marge oversimplified it as "all trophies are bad" and throws out of all of Lisa's genuinely earned awards. Meanwhile, Homer's trophy business success comes to a crashing halt, and a happy Bart flaunts Grampa's watch to Homer, who always wanted the watch as a symbol of his own father's respect that he never received, but Bart loses the watch in the forest near Springfield and badly injures Milhouse while failing to retrieve it.