was trying to make amends, making her finally forgive Bart before they hug each other. In her closing narration, Lisa states how much they are closer than ever, and that she has learned he has a conscience, whereupon Nelson arrives to make fun of Bart before informing everyone that his mother is dating a gaffer on the TV show, much to Lisa's shock and the gaffer's embarrassment. Meanwhile, after being forced by Marge to do something else other than leer at women volleyball players, Homer begins playing chess and finds out that he is of grandmaster strength, much to the shock of himself and everyone else. He even takes a chess hustler down for $22 by using the Budapest Gambit. As he begins playing the game more, he realizes he used to play the game with Abe as a way of bonding with him after his mother Mona left, but often lost to his father until he was given lessons in chess by a teacher living next door to them. After improving his game and finally beating Abe, his father angrily refused to play against him any more. Homer thus thinks his restored ability is an indication he secretly wants to kill Abe, so taking advice from chess champion Magnus Carlsen, Carl Carlson's Norwegian cousin, Homer encourages his father to play again with him, and allows him to win, in hopes of closing the wound from their past. Later, Homer attempts to contact Magnus in order to Skype with him, but is told he does not want to talk with him anymore. Reception Dennis Perkins of The A.V. Club gave the episode a C+ stating, "'The Cad And The Hat' is the first credited Simpsons script from Ron Zimmerman, and, while bringing in new blood to the Simpsons’ writers room can be energizing, this episode betrays the series’ tone and internal rules to a distracting degree. Which might be interesting if it were bolder, or a lot funnier. As it is, the episode is dispiriting in how disposably it treats its world, while reaching for a pair of emotional epiphanies that fall flat in the execution." "The Cad and the Hat" scored a 1.1 rating and was watched by 2.44 million people, making it Fox's highest-rated show of the night. Cultural References The title is a reference to the Dr. Seuss book The Cat in the Hat. The Robot Chicken