The episode starts off with Lisa and Bart's Itchy and Scratchy cartoon getting interrupted by news report about an oil spill along the coast. When Lisa sees the many marine animals being affected by the spill, it makes her want to go down there and help clean them. Lisa begs Marge to take her and she reluctantly agrees. Marge also decides to take Maggie along, which leaves Bart and Homer with the house to themselves all weekend. With no Marge around to scold and pick up after them, the house eventually becomes covered in garbage. Homer and Bart do some silly things with it, like make "garbage angels," but neither of them try to clean it up, but instead they both take a nap in it. After napping, Bart asks Homer if he can go out and play with his friends, which he allows.
Meanwhile, Marge, Lisa, and Maggie, arrive at the oil spill site and find out that the wildlife cleaning had already been reserved by Hollywood celebrities. The three are instead assigned to clean the rocks along the shore, but cleaning them turns out to be a losing battle as the waves are constantly washing more oil ashore. They ultimately abandon the job and go home.
Meanwhile, Bart is out with his friends playing with a toy airplane. After Nelson gets a hold of the control he sends the plane flying after Ralph and Martin Prince, who are out on a paddle boat. As they are running from it, the plane ends up nearly coming at Mr. Burns and Smithers, who are out having a picnic, but Smithers manages to deflect the plane with his head and it ends up on the roof of a creepy old gated house. When the boys try to contact the owner of the house through a gate intercom, the creepy voice of woman in the house tells the kids that they are not allowed there and to go away. Undeterred, Bart climbs over the gate anyway and up a tree to the roof of the house and retrieves the plane. After snatching the plane up, Bart ends up falling down the roof and knocks off a stone gargoyle along the way breaking it. Bart is left dangling from the side of the roof by his hands and then along comes a rolly-polly, which crawls over his hands tickling him and causes him to fall into the bushes below. The old woman of the house emerges and scares Bart's friends away and takes Bart by the ear all the way home to tell his father what he had done. Homer doesn't agree with the old woman's suggestion to punish Bart at first, but ultimately agrees when she threatens to come back and talk to Marge. Homer decides as a punishment for Bart to takes him to the woman's house to work off the damages.
Bart initially goes into the old woman's house thinking he would be spending the weekend cleaning up some dump for some creepy old witch, but then learns the house actually operates as a secret burlesque house in Springfield. Bart suddenly changes his attitude and becomes very happy to be helping out there with all of the strippers. Bart is given various jobs at the house, which includes scrubbing the bathrooms, being a door greeter, and even filling in for an emcee.
While working the door one day, Bart's grandpa comes in and walks right back out after seeing Bart there. Grandpa asks Bart if Homer knew that he was working there. When Bart tells him that it was actually Homer's idea, Grandpa orders a drink from Bart and goes in for the show.
Next we see Principal Skinner come in. When Skinner sees Bart at the door he first tries to come up with some excuse that he was actually looking for the air and space museum.
In the next scene, we see Skinner, Reverend Lovejoy, his wife, and Ned and Maude Flanders come to the Simpsons home to talk to Homer about Bart working at the burlesque house. During the conversation, Marge comes home and hears about it. Furious, Marge goes over to the burlesque house and tries to convince the proprietress Belle to close shop and get out of Springfield, but Belle refuses, saying her business was just part of the town like the Quik-E-Mart and the school. Marge then goes to the city council meeting to warn the whole town about the secret house.
While at the meeting, Marge shows the town slides of of Springfield residents caught coming out of the burlesque house, including Mayor Quimby, Chief Wiggum, and Marge's own sister Patty. Marge convinces the townsfolk to form an angry mob and go tear down the burlesque house. When the mob arrives at the house and starts to destroy it, Homer interrupts and engages them in a musical song and dance with Belle, and the burlesque dancers, with the whole town eventually chiming in. They become convinced by the song's message that the burlesque house is really just a part of Springfield like the Kwik-E- Mart and Moe's. They all agree that they love the house, but Marge, who had gone to retrieve a bulldozer during the song, ends up accidentally letting it loose on the house destroying a part of it. Belle is mad, but Bart convinces Marge that she can make up the damage to Belle by working it off like he did. Marge is given a comedy act at the house with a dummy. During Marge's act, Homer, who is sitting in the audience, hilariously yells out at Marge to "take it off" prompting Bart to have to escort him out.
This is one of my favorite episodes of The Simpsons. I would say, it is probably #4 on my top ten Simpsons episodes list. I give it a 10 out of 10 score.
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