of the neighborhood kids. The episode ends with the family eating from the craft services table because the union workers never came to retrieve it. Production "Children of a Lesser Clod" was written by Al Jean and directed by Mike Frank Polcino. Jean initially had multiple different storylines including Homer getting hurt, before he eventually pitched them all into this episode. During production, the staff members looked for an actual NBA player to appear with a shotgun during the first act, but no player accepted the role. The line when Milhouse says he knows Bart's dad better than Bart knows him is a reference to based on a real-life experience of producer Mike Reiss. During production the animators needed Ralph to get off screen for a two shot so they decided that Ralph followed a butterfly. This episode was advertised as featuring Ron Howard, in what would have been his third appearance on The Simpsons (his first two appearances can be found in Season Ten's "When You Dish Upon a Star", and Season Eleven's "Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder"). Originally, the third act involved Homer getting all the kids in Howard's latest film, a Gladiator–like picture, hence the original title of the episode being "The Kids Stay In The Picture" (a play on the title of producer Robert Evans' The Kid Stays in the Picture). However, Howard did not appear in this episode (in fact, no guest voices were used at all in this episode). The third act was about Homer winning the Good Guy Award, for caring for the neighbourhood kids. However, this was all until his own children show him as an unfit father. When Homer puts his daycare permit in the picture frame Bart and Lisa gave him was based on a real-life experience of former writer Dana Gould in which he gave his parents a newspaper article about him winning a Boston comedy competition and later found out that it was replaced by Larry Bird dunking butterfingers. The third act did not initially include a police car chase and it was placed in after the table read. The scratches in Homer's day-care video were added to the animation in post-production. Cultural references The title is a spoof of the play Children of a Lesser God and the 1986 film based upon it. The episode features the original basket for basketball. Professor Frink's use of "Flubber" alludes to