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Children of a Lesser Clod

episode of The Simpsons (S12 E20)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionDec 20, 2025
Entity authorityQ980661
Source-derived summary

"Children of a Lesser Clod" is the twentieth and penultimate episode of the twelfth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It first aired on the Fox network in the United States on May 13, 2001. In the episode, after spraining his knee during a basketball game, Homer begins taking care of the neighborhood kids to cure his boredom, prompting jealousy from Bart and Lisa, who feel that Homer is giving the kids the attention they never had.

The episode is written by current showrunner Al Jean, and directed by Mike Frank Polcino. The title is a parody of the play Children of a Lesser God and its film adaptation.

Plot

The family goes to the local YMCA to attend one-time-only free classes. Homer participates in a basketball class, but suffers a torn ACL after a dunk attempt ends with the backboard crashing down on his leg. After Homer gets surgery, he is told by Dr. Hibbert that he cannot go to work and must stay home, where he finds himself extremely bored. One evening, Ned asks Homer to watch Rod and Todd while he attends a Chris Rock concert (that he believes is a Christian rock concert).

Editorial summary

“Children of a Lesser Clod” enters the record as episode of The Simpsons (S12 E20). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Children, Lesser and Clod can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2001—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2001-05-13. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Children, Lesser and Clod.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Children of a Lesser Clod” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Children, Lesser and Clod provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 20, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q980661. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2001.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  2. Expand the search: follow Children of a Lesser Clod primary sources, Children of a Lesser Clod archive and Children research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Children of a Lesser Clod” 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.