Lisa the Simpson
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| The Simpsons episode | |
| "Lisa the Simpson" | |
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| Episode no. | 195 |
| Prod. code | 4F24 |
| Orig. Airdate | March 8, 1998 |
| Show Runner(s) | Bill Oakley & Josh Weinstein |
| Written by | Ned Goldreyer |
| Directed by | Susie Dietter |
| Couch gag | In the middle of the room, a vine grows. The whole family is either a fruit or a vegetable. |
| Guest star | Phil Hartman as Troy McClure |
| DVD commentary by | Bill Oakley Josh Weinstein Ned Goldreyer Susie Dietter |
| SNPP capsule | |
| Season 9 September 21, 1997 – May 17, 1998 |
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| List of all Simpsons episodes... | |
"Lisa the Simpson" is the seventeenth episode of The Simpsons' ninth season. The episode first aired on March 8, 1998.
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[edit] Synopsis
Lisa tries to solve a brain teaser, and she fails. She also forgets to do an agriculture project, and does a last minute job of an "eraser pig", and loses her saxophone technique. These things point to evidence that Lisa fears she is losing her gift of intelligence. When she tells about this to Grampa, he tells her that all the members of the Simpson family—including himself, Homer, and Bart—started smart at first, but later became dumber, as part of the Simpson genes. Eventually, Lisa becomes dumb like the rest of the family, but she rejects her newfound idiocy.
She appears on Smartline and demands that the citizens of Springfield treasure their brains. As she does this, Homer brings all the Simpson family relatives to come to the house as an indication that the whole family is not a bunch of idiots. When all the Simpsons visit, Homer goes and asks all the men what their jobs are. These include shooting birds at the airport, running an unsuccessful shrimp company, dressing up like a millionaire and going to parties, and jumping in front of cars and suing the drivers. Lisa is even sadder, and Homer sends all of them away. But then Marge says that Homer should ask the women. He finds one in a white lab coat, reads her name tag, and asks her career, "Dr.... Simpson." "I'm the chief of complicated surgeries at the invasive care unit." Lisa finds out that all the women have great careers and that the defective gene is on the Y chromosome. She regains her confidence in being smart, and solves the brain teaser that she could not solve before (which was simply numbers laterally inverted)
Meanwhile, Jasper visits the Kwik-E-Mart because he wants to freeze himself in the walk-in cooler so he can survive to see the future. Apu sees a money-making opportunity and advertising the frozen Jasper as "Frostilicus" renames the Kwik-E-Mart the Freak-E-Mart, which becomes a tourist trap. The Freak-E-Mart lasts briefly until the freezer fails, and Jasper thaws and emerges alive and well. Fearing he will lose his customers, Apu makes the Kwik-E-Mart into the Nude-E-Mart, a combination of a convenience store and a strip club.
[edit] Trivia
- Final episode with Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein as show-runners. An easter egg on the Season 9 DVD for this episode includes a farewell message from Bill and Josh.
- This episode was originally planned to air on October 5, 1997, but as the American League Division Series between the New York Yankees and the Cleveland Indians intervened, Fox delayed the episode for 22 weeks. This is why the episode reads "Copyright 1997", even though it originally aired in 1998.
[edit] Cultural references
- When Lisa is figuring out the puzzle, one of the clues she rules out is that it's not one of Prince's names, a reference to the period between 1993 and 2000 that Prince changed his name to a symbol (
) and was known as "The Artist Formerly Known As Prince" (or simply "The Artist"). - Lisa's story is similar to the book, Flowers For Algernon, where a man writes in a journal about his slide into mental retardation (the season 12 episode "HOMR" would follow a similar plot that Flowers For Algernon does)
- Jasper's subplot calls to mind the Frozen Dead Guy Days festival, held annually in Nederland, Colorado. The events of this festival are in homage to Grandpa Bredo, a cryogenically-frozen corpse who, since 1989, has remained in stasis inside a Tuff Shed and inspired two documentaries. It is unknown whether this festival inspired the scenario.
- In the show "When Buildings Collapse", the last building to fall is the House of Usher, a reference to an Edgar Allan Poe book of the same name.
[edit] External links
