Bart the Fink
episode of The Simpsons (S7 E15)
"Bart the Fink" is the fifteenth episode of the seventh season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on Fox in the United States on February 11, 1996. In this episode, Bart inadvertently exposes Krusty the Clown as one of the biggest tax cheats in American history. With his career ruined, Krusty fakes his own death and adopts an alias, until Bart and Lisa convince him to become a television clown again.
The episode was written by John Swartzwelder and Bob Kushell, and directed by Jim Reardon. Comedian Bob Newhart guest stars as himself. The episode's title is a play on the 1991 film Barton Fink.
Since airing, the episode has received mostly positive reviews from television critics. It acquired a Nielsen rating of 8.7, and was the fifth-highest-rated show on the Fox network the week it aired.
Plot
The Simpson family attends the reading of a distant relative's will and walks away with $100 each.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2452495. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1996 and 1991.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bart the Fink” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.