Welcome To Eltingville Series Plot: Down In The Dumps

This is the third post covering the unproduced episode plots from the Welcome to Eltingville series bible. "Down In The Dumps" sees the Club exploring the Eltingville Landfill in search of a lost toy accessory. The dump was based on the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island, which was the world's largest landfill at the time it was closed in 2001. It covered 2200 acres, which didn't include all the white trash spread around the forgotten borough. Ha ha. You can see the edge of the Eltingville Dump near Joe's Fantasy World in the pilot episode.

As with "The Big Spree", I ended up using "Down In The Dumps" for a Bart Simpson story years after the pilot failed. The 15-page story was published by Bongo Comics in The Simpsons Summer Shindig #2, in 2008, with art by John Delaney and Dan Davis, colors by Robert Stanley, and lettering by Karen Bates. It was a pretty simple job to adjust the Club to Bart, Milhous and Martin, with The Comic Book Guy standing in for Gary the Dirtbag (a character that wasn't in the Eltingville pilot but was in the bible).

Here's the plot from the Welcome to Eltingville bible. The revised plot for the Bart Simpson comic story follows after it.

DOWN IN THE DUMPS

When Bill's mother accidentally throws out a small accessory to one of his action figures, an enraged and obsessed Bill orders the Club to find it -- leading them after a sanitation truck and ultimately into Eltingville's world-famous landfill (the world's largest!) where they find a strange hidden society of scavengers, dwellers and mutated animals in the hidden recesses of the huge, expansive dump.

The boys learn a lot about garbage from the people they find, who have made cave-like dwellings in the dump, furnished with scavenged objects, and eat freshly thrown-out food (and some not-so-fresh.)

The Club meets a crazy old codger trash hermit who tells them all about the place and its history, and shows them how the trash isn't degrading as people had hoped -- showing them a Krakus Polish ham dating back to the seventies that appears as if it was store-bought fresh. But even more amazing is the tale the codger tells them about a fabled "mountain of garbage" in the landfill that has garbage dating back to the fifties in it. Hearing this, the Club immediately mounts a Treasure of the Sierra Madre-style expedition to hunt for collectibles and artifacts that may have survived in the landfill, and like Josh's ham, have been preserved in the massive muck.

There are many obstacles in the Club's way to collectible heaven, including the heat, dogs, guards, gonzo trash squatters, rolling monster dump trucks and the hazards of the trash piles and toxic hotspots they must cross. Not to mention shaking off Gary the Dirtbag, who it turns out has been a long-time tossed treasure-hunter who has also been hunting for the legendary artifact mountain of trash for years. Making matters worse, they completely underestimate the size of the dump, and find themselves lost with no food or water.

"Starvation" leads Josh to start chewing on the twenty year-old ham he'd secretly taken from the old codger.

Exhausted, sunburned and testy, the Club finds themselves getting rained on, as fat drops spatter them.

BILL: Oh, great! This is just great! It's not enough that we're tired, sunburnt, and starving -- but it's gotta rain on us too!

PETE: Yeah, but -- the sun's still out!

BILL: So, brainless? Didn't you ever heard of a sunshower?

BEAT. As others cover their heads, Jerry puts out a hand to the rain, which is rewarded with a thick, wet PLOP. jerry sniffs his hand, turns white and slowly, fearfully looks up to the sky

JERRY: Guys...this is no sunshower.

Revealing monstrous flock of seagulls overhead, all shitting down on the hapless idiots.

Josh vomits. They all run for cover. That's how they discover the mountain of "gold" -- a mad, crazed run, covered in bird shit. After much adventure, near-tragedy and terrific in-fighting (and Josh turning colors from his parasitic pork lunch), our Raiders of the Lost Dump accidentally discover the Mountain of Treasure! And there to their delight they unearth (unjunk?) an authentic, 1950's sparking, walking wind-up atomic robot, in reasonably good shape. And further digging reveals signs that within the massive mound of trash lies more of the same!

Unfortunately, their celebration leads Gary to them. He wants in on the dig, but they refuse. A bargain is worked out where he can work the dig if he'll give them some of his candy bars and water. But the alliance is brief, as the Club -- crazed from starvation, exhaustion and heat as well as their own stupidity and greed -- gets into an argument over the divvying up of whatever loot is found.

The ensuing brawl ends with a mad, festering Josh accidentally setting a small fire with the sparking robot that quickly sets the Mountain of Treasure ablaze. The treasure seekers watch in disbelief and horror as the Mountain crumbles, the flames throwing up burning debris that seem littered with ray guns, Steve Canyon helmets and assorted Disneyana. The burning Mountain of Treasure erupts like a volcano, setting a massive pile of old tires on fire and threatening to send the whole dump ablaze. Josh takes off with the atomic robot, and the rest of the gang follows suit, all running for their lives while fighting each other over possession of the atomic robot.

Ultimately the hard-won robot is destroyed, the boys (with nothing to show for themselves after all they've been through) are all arrested for trespassing and suspicion of arson, seventeen trash dwellers (including the angry old codger) lose their junk caves to the fire, and the smoke from the still-burning inferno blankets all of Eltingville, causing an EPA emergency as well as a fifty-three car pile-up on the thruway that involves Josh's dad's new car.

Mr. Levy's newest heart attack lands him in a hospital bed next to his purple, bilious, ham-sick son, so at least we might be able to end on a nice family moment.

Down in the Dumps (The Simpsons Summer Shindig Version)

Here is the plot breakdown (lightly edited to include some details) from https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/The_Simpsons_Summer_Shindig_2

Bart cannot find one of his toys (a Radioactive Man accessory). Marge complains that he made a mess after she'd just finished cleaning, so he surmises that she accidentally threw it out and runs after the garbage truck. He cannot catch it, so he, Milhouse, and Martin try to pool their money to buy a replacement but the stores are sold out, as is the Android's Dungeon, where The Comic Book Guy is willing to buy the toy from them.

Kent Brockman (via a TV report) then reveals that the reason the toys are rare these days is because there has been a recall on them due to lead paint. Bart then decides to get the original accessory back from the dump, much to the other boys' dread.

At the dump, Bart discovers his family's trash, but the toy is not there. Then, the boys meet a whole group of tattered people who live in the dump and eat dog-sized rats (which Bart previously thought were a myth). One of them reveals that they're malcontents living in the dump by choice. When Bart reveals that he and the others are looking for a toy, the man reveals that there is rumored to be a pile of various things such as toys, comic books, and furniture that goes back years at the dump.

The boys run off excitedly, but after several hours, do not find the things. Then, some seagulls poop on them, causing them to run off and make a "garbage landslide". The landslide uncovers a tunnel, which leads to the pile of treasures. However, when the boys reach it, they find that the Comic Book Guy has followed them there. They argue over who gets how much of the treasure, and then Martin accidentally burns it up by shooting a toy ray gun next to a methane vent.

Back at home, Bart explains what happened to Marge and the girls, then Homer enters and gives the toy back, revealing that he had accidentally pocketed it. Unfortunately for Bart, Marge reveals that she threw away the action figure that the accessory belonged to due to hearing about the recall, and Bart is too shaken by his experience with garbage to fish it out of the garbage.