Homer Defiled

Hello there. Could you take a look at this video featuring two clips from The Simpsons episode "Homer Defined", please?

According to legend, that is the originally broadcast version of the episode, although the clip comes from a syndicated airing. When the episode was repeated on Fox, the lines had changed so Burns now planned to "kiss his sorry ass" goodbye, but Bart now said "Bad influence, my butt!" (in response to complaints received over the original version). The changed version used for the repeats is also the one found on the DVD.

Or is it?

In showrunner Mike Reiss' memoir, Springfield Confidential, he has this to say on this matter on page 77:

Fox Broadcast Standards (there's an oxymoron!) had one other restriction: we could use only one "ass" per episode. [...] We could only use one - but which? This was our writers' Sophie's Choice moment. In the end, we put it to a vote, and Mr. Burns won. However, in the first rerun of the episode, Bart was the one who got to say "ass".

So Reiss' version of events is vice-versa to the most frequently recited one: that Burns saying "ass" and Bart saying "butt" was what was originally broadcast, and the repeats flipped them over, meaning the DVD actually has the originally broadcast version, and the clip above is from the repeat. Since Springfield Confidential is the only official source for what happened with the line-switching, Burns-"ass"/Bart-"butt" being the originally broadcast and intended version has since been reported as correct by other sources, including the excellent Simpsons trivia account @dailysimpsons and the episode's Wikipedia article.

As against that, however, the episode's capsule on The Simpsons Archive - which would have been built from copies of the episode as originally broadcast on Fox - says it was Burns-"butt"/Bart-"ass" on the original broadcast. And the animation always very clearly shows Bart saying "ass" - not to mention that Bart saying "butt", not to put too fine a point on it, completely ruins the joke of Bart denying he's a bad influence whilst using bad language. And the DVD having Burns-"ass"/Bart-"butt" further indicates that that is the repeat version, as the DVDs tend to use revised versions if the episode changed between network broadcasts for any reason. (I suspect this is the result of whoever was putting the DVDs together simply using the first network copy of the episode at hand, which would presumably be the revised version as the most recent one, and making no effort to look into possible changes. The only time the "correct" version is used seems to be on the rare occasion where the producers remember the edit and request their preferred version is used... and sometimes not even then.) The fact that the clip of B-B/B-A at the head of this article is taken from a syndicated version is even stronger evidence for that being the originally broadcast version, as if there are two different versions US syndication, in contrast to the DVDs, uses the original.

So, on the basis of the evidence before me, the most likely conclusion I draw is that Mike Reiss was suffering from false memories some 27 years after the fact when he wrote his (otherwise excellent) book, and "sorry butt"/"my ass" is indeed the originally broadcast version. Or, just as another theory, perhaps he remembered the lines had been switched but couldn't remember which way round, checked the DVD (or FXX or whatever) and presumed the version on the DVD must be the originally broadcast version, and hence the producers' original intent?

If you happen to have any of Fox's original airings to hand, though, that would be a welcome way of sorting this out once and for all...