Original airdate: May 10, 2020
The premise: Lisa is excited for a sleepover at her new friend Addy’s house, but quickly finds herself the subject of ridicule of her snobby rich friends. With nowhere else to turn, Lisa enlists Bart’s help to rescue her and enact her own revenge.
The reaction: It’s pretty impressive that despite coming off an incredibly empty two-parter where it felt like nothing was happening, this episode felt like the most boring show I’ve seen in a while. We open with the Simpsons finally checking their mailbox after it’s stuffed almost to bursting, and Lisa discovers an invitation to a sleepover. At first I thought she would be bummed that she had already missed it since no one’s checked the mail in weeks, but I guess that opening bit didn’t matter, because next thing we know she’s packing her bags for the big night. Said sleepover is at Addy’s house, a girl she met at the library, who lives in a palatial estate with horses. There, Lisa meets Addy’s three other friends, girls who act like what the 50-year-old writer Joel H. Cohen assumes stuck up young girls nowadays act like, or rather what he and the other writers have seen on current teen shows like 13 Reasons Why and Riverdale (the girls are voiced by the actresses from that show). These little bitches immediately target Lisa to mock her, and Addy joins in on the bullying. Lisa repeatedly tries to call her parents to come get her, but they’re busy rocking out on a booze cruise so they’re of no help. This repeats like two or three times until she eventually calls Bart, who arrives via Lyft to help out. This being a Matt Selman produced show, the episode attempts to actually have two emotional pay-offs by the end: the episode began with Bart and Lisa having a scuffle, with Lisa announcing she’s severing their sibling ties, and by the end, they’re back in each other’s corners. Bart helps Lisa prank the girls who ragged on her, and Lisa helps Bart get over his fear of horses (she helpfully narrates, “You didn’t let me quit when I was scared!”) They escape on horseback, but are quickly cornered by the four girls. Lisa convinces Addy to be herself and not put up with the other girls’ having power over her, so she incapacitates them (she tells Lisa before she leaves, “You were my best gift!”) This is all well and good, but it’s incredibly basic storytelling we’ve seen a billion times before, and all done with characters and situations that I couldn’t care less about. Lisa is trapped in a house with a bunch of insipid stereotypes, but really, who cares? And all we know about Lisa and Addy’s relationship is they both like books, and reading books is totally not cool according to the three cool girls. Again, who gives a shit? This episode is seriously just so boring, it’s all just regurgitation of stuff they’re already done, or things I’ve seen done on a hundred other shows. This season can’t be over fast enough…
Three items of note:
– As this series enters its fourth decade on the air, its portrayal of cool kids changes with each passing generation. Bella Ella, Sloan and Tessa Rose are flat pastiches of privileged children the writers have either seen on TV or kids of rich celebrities they know, yammering on about kombucha, bronzer, and making videos go viral on InstaSnap. They represent nothing that means anything to Lisa other than they’re just TV bullies who happen to be bitchy rich girls the common audience should automatically hate. We’ve seen a couple episodes over the course of the series featuring Lisa being thrust into whatever the current popular flock of girls is at that particular cultural moment, but the episode I was thinking about during this was “Lard of the Dance,” with Lisa feeling out of sorts fitting in with a more “modern” kid like Alex Whitney. And while it still featured then-relevant pop culture references to Calvin Klein and Titanic, most of them were pretty off-hand, and moreover, the episode was actually about something: the pressure for young girls to grow up faster, and Lisa feeling uncomfortable with that, and as a result, feeling left behind. Alex was a bit of a stereotypical character, but she served a story function that thematically played into the episode, and actually had a bit of nuance, portraying her as snobby, but always congenial to Lisa, despite her reservations. Meanwhile, this is an episode about nothing, featuring stock characters going through a predictable story that I don’t care about.
– Homer and Marge are out on a booze cruise in what I don’t know if I can even call a B-plot. Homer ends up fighting with the band and knocking the bar off the ship, the other passengers get mad, and Homer placates them with a speech and oh my God who cares. Also we initially see the Michael Rappaport character from the beginning of the season get onto the boat and I was terrified that he was going to have a reappearance. Thank God he was just an extra.
– The episode ends with Weezer performing the Simpsons theme song, which I just fast-forwarded through. It reminded me of the opening of The Simpsons Movie where Green Day performed the theme, and then again during the end credits, but their appearance actually introduced the environmental theme of the film, and also ended in their quick demise (a shockingly mean joke at a celebrity’s expense in the show’s modern era that I appreciated.) Here, it’s just a random coda at the end of the episode of them performing on the booze cruise to rapturous cheering. Who is this for? How big of an eternally apologetic super fan must you be to be entertained about a minute segment of a band performing the theme song before the end credits? Pointless filler bullshit.
Me Blog Write Good 
OK…
1. How Many Lisa’ episodes do we had on this season? Are they seriously still trying to make her more interesting despite the character being a bitch? Half of episodes in season 27 were Lisa focused episodes, it feels almost the same here.
2. Bart… Feared of Horses?… DID THESE FUCKERS FORGOT HE EVEN OWNED A HORSE? sure that episode was garbage, but he always liked the horse, other where he need to make two Horses to fuck each other and as a cowboy, now suddenly he fears horses? Plz stop!
Oh dear God, Weezer the Cover Band – I called it during the last episode with “what aged 90s guest stars are they gonna pull out next?” and I was right.
Also, why are we trying to make Clone Lisa interesting when all she is is an absolute tool with the disguise of Lisa Simpson? Please, writers, take your own advice from The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show and stop trying to shove her into more episodes.
Worst episode of the season right here, guys. Man, this might overtake “There Will Be Buds” as the most sitcom-y episode in the entire show’s history. Also, those girls in the screencap look nothing like eight-year-olds. It disturbs me.
Re: Lisa finding the letter: Homer even asked, “Who wants an endpiece?” It would have made more sense if she did pick it directly off the end, because then it would have been current. How lazy that they couldn’t even take advantage of their own setup.
But there’s something I’m surprised you didn’t cover. In the dancing episode last year, you pointed out the characters using modern technology and getting it wrong. As I said then, I can forgive Homer changing from not-Stranger Things to not-BoJack Horseman with a click of a button, because I thought they implied that it was all in his head anyway. Here, there’s something I can’t quite forgive.
So Skinner drives rideshare and was passing by Addy’s house when Bart called for the ride. Bart mentioned the ride was confirmed. But Skinner drives off towards the airport…. in a real rideshare, Skinner would have had to pick up Bart and Lisa, since they were closer and requested first, then later picked up the airport customer, or not even gotten the airport request because he was still fulfilling Bart’s. Boy, I sure hope someone got fired for that blunder.
Fuck this show.
I didn’t actually totally hate this episode. There were a couple of moments I did laugh at it. I liked some of the stuff that revolved around Homer and Marge on the cruise, Bart’s reaction when Lisa told him the girls were more evil than he was, Bart turning Lisa’s sax into a magnet, and a few other one off comments here or there.
I can’t complain about the girls being unlikable as that was the entire point, you weren’t supposed to like them at all. I don’t think Lisa did enough to get revenge though.
The ending was awful, however, as once again, it felt more like the episode just stopped rather than concluded. While I did think Lisa telling Addison to come with her because she has no reason to stay with Addison’s, “This is my house, all of my stuff is here,” response, I felt the outcome of the story was executed poorly. Addison’s sudden flip over was just that, too sudden.
Nevertheless, compared to what I have watched over the last month, I’ll take a subpar episode that got a few chuckles out of me over the boring dregs that has encompassed this season.
My favorite line in the episode was Marge assuming that Homer had planned to have her help look for his six-year-old missing sunglasses. It was just so out of nowhere I couldn’t help but laugh.
This episode was total anus.
I didn’t think the thing with Green Day was particularly memorable, but it kinda worked because (1) part of the joke was the simplicity of the song – like, who the fuck cares who’s covering it; (2) the speed at which the crowd turned on them; and (3) a series of quick-fire jokes at the band’s expense (the singer needing the lyrics, the band’s death, etc.).
This? Garbage, as usual.