The dog ate my homework Helper, the family dog, eating his homework. "I didn't know dogs actually did that", he says, and finds his teacher equally incredulous since he had used that excuse before. In a later episode, when the dog goes to work for the police, Bart must eat his own homework for the excuse to work. When Mrs. Krabappel begins dating Ned Flanders, the Simpsons' neighbor, at the end of the 2011 season, she sees Santa's Little Helper in the Simpsons' yard and asks if he is the dog who has eaten Bart's homework so many times. Bart's attempts to demonstrate this and
Media in The Simpsons this mocks "how many children's programs have become little more than the ad to the merchandise". Gray also writes that "The Simpsons" "illustrates how the ad as genre has itself already invaded many, if not all, genres. Ads and marketing do not limit themselves to the space between programs; rather, they are themselves textual invaders, and part of "The Simpsons" parodic attack on ads involves revealing their hiding places in other texts." "The Itchy & Scratchy Show" is a show within a show that appears occasionally in episodes of "The Simpsons". They typically appear in the form of 15-60 second