she would miss and accidentally punch Principal Skinner instead, resulting in her being sent to juvenile hall where she would make illegal jeans. According to The Simpsons show runner Mike Scully, when the staff members worked on the episode they decided to include a lot of observations they had made about how it is like to be the new student in school. Scully has said that the episode shows how in real life the "poor new kid always has kind of two strikes against them just for being the new kid, and the other students are usually looking for anything that they perceive as different or weird about that kid." The subplot of Homer entering the childproofing business was inspired by an instance when a salesman visited Payne and his pregnant wife to see if their home was safe for children. In an interview with Star-News, Payne commented: "You hire this person to come into your home to look for changes you can make. They make you feel like the most horrible person in the world and that your house is the temple of doom." "Bye Bye Nerdie" features a scene based specifically on this instance in which a saleswoman (voiced by cast member Tress MacNeille) selling childproofing items visits Homer and Marge and exaggerates the dangers in their home. NRBQ's song "Always Safety First" is played during a montage in the episode in which Homer is seen improving the safety of the infants of Springfield. Release The episode originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on March 11, 2001. During this broadcast, it was watched in approximately 8.8 million households. It received an 8.7 Nielsen rating, ranking twenty-sixth in the ratings for the week of March 5–11, 2001. The episode was seen by a fourteen percent share of the television audience during the broadcast. On August 18, 2009, "Bye Bye Nerdie" was released on DVD as part of the box set The Simpsons – The Complete Twelfth Season. Staff members Mike Scully, Don Payne, Lauren MacMullan, Tim Long, Ian Maxtone-Graham, Matt Selman, Tom Gammill, Yeardley Smith, and Steven Dean Moore participated in the DVD audio commentary for the episode. Deleted scenes from the episode were also featured on the box set. Critics have given "Bye Bye Nerdie" generally positive reviews. DVD Movie Guide's Colin Jacobson commented that "While this isn’t saying much, 'Nerdie' provides one of