Original airdate: December 6, 2020
The premise: When Miss Hoover gives Lisa a B-minus on her report, Lisa calls her a hack, landing her in detention. Miss Hoover proceeds to continue giving her detention unless she apologizes, but Lisa won’t budge.
The reaction: Of all the side characters I’d be interested in seeing a whole episode about, Miss Hoover would probably be towards the bottom of my list. Unlike Mrs. Krabappel, Miss Hoover functions perfectly as the perfect foil to Lisa. What cruel misfortune that a gifted and impassioned young student would get stuck with a teacher who couldn’t care less about her job. Could a Miss Hoover episode be interesting? Sure, I guess so. But unlike “The Road to Cincinnati,” this isn’t even that, it’s another boring as hell Lisa storyline. Lisa creates an elaborate model for her report, dreaming that it’ll be the lynch pin that gets her into Yale, but she is aghast that Miss Hoover gives the entire class B-minuses across the board because it’s easier. She also has a back injury so she’s laid up on a mat in the classroom, a detail that doesn’t really matter at all to the episode. Enraged, Lisa lays into her (“I come here every day eager to learn, and you just put me down!”) This presents an issue to me, as Miss Hoover has always been consistently shown as incredibly apathetic toward all of her students, but this episode paints her as weirdly antagonistic, goading Lisa into her apology lest she get more detention and her Yale dreams go up in smoke. She’s an adult woman who presumably knows how silly it is that a second grader thinks any of her individual grades matter to any colleges, so maybe she’s just messing with her? But anyway, the idea could be that getting called a hack cuts deep into Miss Hoover and this is her lashing out, but like I said, this episode isn’t about Miss Hoover or her story. The best we get is when Lisa follows her home to her shitty apartment where she lies on the floor with her cat who hates her (“I’m so alone,” she narrates, in case you didn’t pick up on that.) Real exciting stuff. Lisa believes she shouldn’t have to apologize, but after seeing how awful Miss Hoover’s life is, she decides to make amends by spending her Yale piggy bank money on a down payment for a vibrating chair for Miss Hoover’s bad back. Upon getting the chair, Hoover still doesn’t accept Lisa’s apology, still upset about the “hack” comment. But why does she give a shit? Miss Hoover is a non-character, and we’ve learned nothing about her this episode, so why is she still holding this over Lisa? Just to be a cruel bitch? I guess so. But everything’s cool when she finds the massage function on the chair and ups Lisa’s grade to a B-plus. Nothing was learned, nothing was felt, what an absolutely pointless exercise.
Three items of note:
– This episode was written by Nell Scovell, who has written for a bunch of different series, but most notably wrote the season 2 episode “One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish.” Surely this must be the longest break in TV history, thirty years between scripts. Wikipedia also reports she’s a strong advocate for gender equality in the TV workplace, writing of her experiences of the toxic environment at Late Night with David Letterman. I guess this explains the bit in this episode where Lisa goes on a rant about how women are expected to say sorry all the time “because men make us feel like we have to apologize for existing,” a point that feels weird in context since she’s refusing to apologize to Miss Hoover, a woman. Anyway, as usual, this episode by-and-large feels no different than anything else this season, which just makes me wonder if there’s anything that can shake up this series at all at this point. Bringing back the classic writers yields nothing different, be it David X. Cohen recently with “Podcast News,” or the great Jeff Martin, returning to write absolutely awful episodes like “Moho House” and “I’m Just a Girl Who Can’t Say D’oh.” I thought bringing in young blood would give the series a shot in the arm, but as we saw with “Undercover Burns” and “Three Dreams Deferred,” that didn’t seem to do the trick either. I say it over and over, but I just don’t know what happens in that writer’s room when they’re ripping these scripts apart that just sucks the life out of them
– Lisa’s super awesome presentation is on Gladys West, a mathematician whose work on satellite models of the Earth were incorporated into the development of GPS systems. She creates a little model Earth with satellites, then she hits a button that activates a recorded rap about Gladys West set to the theme of “Wild Wild West.” It’s Kevin Michael Richardson singing, but who recorded this song in-universe? Is this a real song? Or did Lisa get a random adult musician to perform a song she wrote? And the class is dancing and going apeshit about it for some reason. What is this? Lisa is normally the one who values studying and hard academic work over flashy gimmicks. It would make more sense if she got upset at her thoroughly researched and informed oral report got her a lower grade, not some dumb rap song. Same with her thinking this project will actually matter to the Yale admissions board. Does she think they’re gonna be movin’ and groovin’ to her cool rap song? I just don’t get it.
– The episode is told in media res by Lisa sitting on the roof as she’s joined by the rest of the family in the end. In a tag at the end of the episode, Homer’s lying on the roof a la Snoopy on his doghouse, where he dreams of being a World War I flying ace, just like Snoopy used to do in the comics and TV specials. I’ll admit, it was kind of cute seeing the dream sequence where Homer is sitting on a doghouse-sized Simpson house. But do people still get this reference? I don’t know how many people 20 and under have seen the Peanuts specials, and I’m sure a lot have, but if you didn’t know the reference, I don’t know what the hell you’d make of this. Then the sequence ends with him crash landing near two British soldier, referencing a major scene from 1917. As usual, too late with a movie that’s exited public consciousness, even more so with this fucking year. Jesus, I saw that movie in January, this year, it feels like an eternity ago. But none of that is the show’s fault, to be fair.
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Y’know, compared to last season, nothing this season has really struck me as being aggressively terrible like a lot of the Season 31s were… until this episode. It just feels so cold and bitter turning Hoover from just an apathetic teacher, to a horrible HORRIBLE person. I was expecting this to be the Lisa equivalent of “Bart Gets a ‘Z'” but, guess not. Though I’d much rather be watching that episode than this one. And I would not “Bart Gets a ‘Z.'” Of course, none of it is the fault of the writers. The corporate overlords of Fox and Disney just like to turn everything the bright-eyed writers create into tasteless gak while Walt himself laughs evilly from beyond his icicle-covered grave.
Oh, and the episode title is so goddamn corny.
I honestly don’t think this is Disney’s fault, they’re most likely as hands off with the actual creative aspect of the show as Fox was.
The polar bear poster in that screenshot is kind of cute, I guess. I dunno. Fuck this show. It’s become the Family Circus of animated sitcoms, just puttering about without any cultural relevance or creative drive.
Shit, even Family Circus got SOME attention for inexplicably referencing Warhammer 40000. If this show tried something like that, it’d just be pathetic at this point.
This felt like a poor man’s Bart the Lover, and made me miss Mrs. Krabappel as a character. Even when the writing soured on the show, we at least got some great moments of development out of Edna that made me root for her. She seemed more burnt out from having to deal with Bart and an incompetent school system then actively hating her job.
They just made Ms. Hoover a vindictive shrew, and the one attempt of humanizing her just rang hollow compared to Edna’s arc.
Side note: apparently it’s been 7 years since we lost Marcia Wallace and Edna by extension. Where has the time gone?
Yay! More Lisa episodes , when she acts like a POS and is always right 😀
Why did Lisa need to go out and buy a new vibrating chair, when she could have taken Homer’s Spine Melter 3000 to school? Then again, it’s been almost 30 years since that episode, and even if the Simpsons still have it, Homer likely wouldn’t give it up. There’s also the matter of how Lisa would get it to school… On second thought, I’ve answered my own question here.
Why did this episode open with a Christmas intro? Isn’t the Christmas episode next week?
Then again, we recently had a Christmas-themed episode in the middle of spring (Way of the Dog) so whatever I guess.
“Mayored to the Mob” was technically their Christmas episode one year.
We need to have them just… ignore the holidays once in a while.
Next week’s episode is “A Springfield Summer Christmas for Christmas” (what kind of title is that, anyway?)
Kind of dumb considering they already did a Christmas episode recently (Way of the Dog) as I mentioned above.
It’s BS that Lisa ended up being the one to apologize, even going so far as to sacrifice her college savings. She was 100% right to call Ms. Hoover out. Ms. Hoover having a tough life doesn’t absolve her from being willfully incompetent at her job.
This is like Make Room For Lisa again, where Lisa is placed the burden of making amends and learning a lesson, despite being in the right and the other person being at fault.
Agreed. Lisa is 100% right here.
Why on God’s green Earth would they attempt to humanize Miss Hoover NOW?! Like, I’m pretty sure that boat left the harbor a decade ago, and doing it now leads to…uh…this mess along with yet ANOTHER annoying Lisa show.
I wrote an entry about this. You don’t need to humanize Miss Hoover, just prove why she’s so… indifferent.
But, since Lisa shares the same room with her, the writers have to make it all about Lisa. I swear, I hate Lisa specifically due to the writers endlessly gushing about her and their need to protect their little pet.
Agreed with you about Lisa. I hate how modern Simpsons made me disliked her when in the classic years her episodes were some of the best.
Unlike you, Mike, I think I would be interested in a Miss Hoover episode. I am aware not every character needs a deep and thought-invoking backstory, but that’s the thing about Hoover; you don’t need one for her. As opposed to the garbage “Sit Down, Shut Up” way back in the day where most of the humor was on the meta level (“Like, what if, get this… the science teacher DOESN’T believe in science! Heh heh!”), The Simpsons still has an opportunity to explore the occupation with a cynical touch without venturing into ham or the “cutesy-wutesy”, even though they have failed before. In Hoover’s case, the whole “wide-eyed idealist beaten down by society” trope has been overplayed a trillion times, so instead you could just do something more realistic; one in which Miss Hoover grew up as a middle-of-the-road student that wasn’t remarkable in any way in a society that had no real expectations for people like her, and got a job as a teacher just by meeting the bare minimum of requirements along with a willingness to put up with a lot of crap. As opposed to Mrs. Krabappel, whose story often involved what it was like to be stuck in a class with one of the worst students in the school, Miss Hoover was more of an indictment towards general disinterest towards your occupation. She is as “punch clock” as it gets.
Unfortunately, as Miss Hoover is Lisa’s teacher, this means the writers are more vulnerable to being drawn towards writing more about Lisa like moths to a flame. I know I complain a lot about Lisa, but if she’s their favorite subject to write about, then I do have the ability to gripe.
This episode decides to, instead of spending some time exploring Hoover’s apathy and lack of motivation in her career, makes her as rotten as possible by subjecting her to a stereotypical “evil teacher” role. I know Nell worked on the series before, but it just felt like Nell’s introduction to Hoover was probably that scene from “Lisa the Iconoclast” where Hoover bitches to Lisa about how politically correct feminists like her are ruining everything for the rest of womanhood, despite Hoover’s first introduction being in that same season as the one Nell wrote. And, why exactly? Just so Lisa can try and improve a grade in her hopes to get accepted to Yale? On a side note, why Yale specifically? Isn’t it established in The Simpsons (and other shows, to a similar reach) that Yale is the Ivy League school evil people go to, and I’m not saying that because virtually everyone who is an everyday member of the staff is a Harvard grad. Maybe I’m reading too deep into the subtext, considering I’m just a community college grad (therefore, my opinion is invalid).
As for what you’ve wondered about, Mike… it doesn’t matter if you have new blood, veteran writers, freelancers… the show has one constant; Al. Jean. Virtually all of these writers are writing a version of the show that they want to see, but in the writing room, those scripts all have to be adjusted and warped into Al Jean’s version of the show, which is a homogenized gruel that services as a bland, tepid entry. This isn’t some shocking new theory I cooked up ‘cuz if you think about almost all of the major changes the show did over the years between Mirkin and Scully, they have all but been erased. Barney is back to being an alcoholic. Luann and Kirk are back together. Manjula & the octuplets have all but been erased from the series. And the show finds any effort to shoehorn Maude Flanders despite her handicap of being dead. Even character development or new entries into the series during AL FREAKING JEAN’S time are instantly forgotten after one or two appearances. When was the last time we saw Ling? Or showcased that Comic Book Guy was married? Realistically, the show won’t be allowed to do things differently unless Al is removed from the variable entirely.
This made me wish they developed Miss Hoover a little more as a character during the classic years. I personally never cared about her, but I never disliked her either. I believe it would have been nice if we had the chance to see more about her life, how was her relationship with Edna outside the school, etc. I was really satisfied with the idea of Miss Hoover only being a bitter and apathetic teacher with zero interest about her job, not a borderline cartoon villain we see here.
Of course, if modern Simpsons mostly dedicates to ruin character arcs, why would we believe they would give her some depth?
Even +20 years after Maude’s death, the show just doesn’t seem to have interest to give more respect to any of Maggie Roswell’s characters IMO.
Man, I think my desire to watch new Simpsons has finally come to an end. Not only have I been ignoring most of your reviews right now (not because I don’t want to read them, but I find it weird to read them without having watched the episode at the moment), but I had Fox on the other night and this episode started. I walked away from the room for a minute and when I came back I muted it while my wife and I decided what we wanted to do. Like that has never happened before. Usually if I had Fox on I would have the episode playing and we would end up watching the whole thing before we did anything.
This is actually the first new episode I saw premiere in full since… 2013? 2014?
I really wanna like the story of this episode (a Hoover vs. Lisa episode is a very interesting concept, especially so late in the show’s run), it just felt like too much and too little at the same time somehow.
So Hoover personally threatens that she’ll block Lisa from college without apologizing, which feels a bit much: Hoover was never “nice” but she never seemed this openly hostile. But we’re also supposed to feel bad for her because of her back problems AND loneliness? It feels too tacked on because there’s too much in the episode of Li’l Lisa Simpson trying to outdo Hoover.
Aside from some occasional chuckles, this episode just didn’t do a lot for me and only reminded me why I stopped seeing new episodes in the first place. Sucks too because honestly I could see this premise working.
Also, Lisa’s presentation’s a rap? Seriously?
“Referencing a major scene from 1917… as usual, too late with a movie that’s exited public consciousness.”
Referencing Wild Wild West is surely even worse – that movie came out *twenty-one* years ago, *and* sucked horse balls (the song won a Razzie, too). Al Jean must like it a lot, though, because of course it was also referenced in “The Sweetest Apu” with Professor Frink’s giant mechanical spider during the Civil War re-enactment (and even then, this was three years after the movie’s release).
I firmly agree with Gindy about everything having to be adjusted and warped to fit Jean’s vision of the show.
If seasons 10 or 12 are any indication, should Ms. Hoover be fired for putting the school at risk? Didn’t “Little Girl in the Big Ten” reveal her as being the literal only student keeping that school accredited, and didn’t “Lisa Gets an A” suggest her grade was the only thing allowing the school to spend ANYTHING through that grant? Hell, didn’t they show Lisa could get fucking Michelle Obama and Lady Gaga to come to the city by basically performing a sad-puppy look? By that extent, Lisa should be at the school’s beck and call, all she has to do is clap her hands and Skinner, with as much as she’s contributed, should just kick her out of class himself.
I’m just saying, at least that would be interesting.
It just occurred to me that people born after Charles Schulz’s death are now adults. Wow.