Original airdate: October 20, 2024
The premise: On a weekend getaway to Capital City with her aunts, Lisa is enchanted by Patty’s offbeat artist friends, and sneaks out to have an after-hours adventure with the like-minded artistic weirdos.
The reaction: Lisa has always been an artful soul, but as time went on, her affinities seemed to shift from an intellectual interest in high art to pretentious alternative snobbery. Less about artistic merit than the smug satisfaction of “getting” a work of art that many others will not. There have been many episodes in the past where Lisa is presented an escape from the uncultured swamp that is Springfield to a new life of unrestricted creativity and opportunity, shepherded by a bunch of weirdo artists who are easy fodder for the writers to do jokes about how nonsensical their art is and how they’re a bunch of entitled moochers still supported by their parents working on bullshit for a “living.” The first half of this episode was quite boring to me, since it felt like I’ve seen all this before. Lisa has found “her people,” a cadre of Capital City artists who take a liking to her, to the point of wanting to back her for a scholarship at a prestigious art academy in the city via an eccentric benefactor contact of theirs. At the midway point, these characters felt so surface level and undeveloped, it almost felt like a parody of how the show would have portrayed these archetypes. And right as I had that thought, we get the twist: the artists have been swindled their “benefactor,” a doddering old woman, out of money for years, with Lisa being the latest naive kid used in their scheme. On top of this, deceptive footage of Lisa helping carry artwork to a gallery brands her an “art thief,” with the entirety of Capital City’s art world out to get her, sending Lisa out into the big city way past her bedtime. The episode barely had much of a story behind it, but at this point, it became completely rudderless. What exactly am I following here? Lisa is endlessly running from this mob all night, who intend to what, kill her? Run her out of town? The main group of artists are after her for their check, but after Lisa defiantly tears it up, they still want to get her. Then the one female artist lets her escape on a giant float balloon because she feels bad for her, I guess. But the balloon floats high over the city, Lisa is as good as dead when that thing pops, yeah? Except she hallucinates the balloon of Joan Didion (???) talking to her for some reason, and then it conveniently pops on the Springfield Elementary flagpole and she just walks into school and the episode is just over. The scene under the credits shows her in class voluntarily reading along with the rudimentary second-grade-level story time, so what lesson am I to take from all this? Lisa learns to stay in her lane? It’s been a while since I’ve seen an episode this bereft of anything, no real story line, no moral, no apparent purpose by the end of twenty-one minutes.
Three items of note:
– It’s weird in an episode about Lisa excited for a future at art school that her saxophone never comes up once. She’s never really been portrayed as a visual artist, and we’ve seen her write sometimes I guess, but her main medium of artistic expression is music. We see a weirdo playing a keyboard in a big group shot, but everyone else is either a painter or a sculptor.
– The episode begins with the Simpsons at the train station to bid Lisa farewell, where we see her and Marge are in the middle of an argument that they need to table for now. By the time we get a callback to this deep into act three with Lisa pulling out the juice box her mother gave her, I’d completely forgotten about the opening and what they were even disagreeing about. Rewatching the opening to investigate, it turns out Lisa was bitching about how much she hates how lame Springfield is. We learn this through Homer mimicking the two’s previous argument, so I don’t know how to interpret this. What does Lisa expect her family to do, move? Is Marge upset because of town pride? Because of her selfish daughter? They’re incredibly mad at each other at the start. But it doesn’t even matter, this barely counts as a plot thread.
– Patty and Selma might as well not be in this episode. The writers needed Lisa to have some sort of adult supervision to get into the city, as well as have these artist characters have some sort of vague connection to them so the story isn’t about an eight-year-old spending all night with a group of complete strangers. During their stay, Patty and Selma are most interested in dining at the restaurant of their dreams: Laramie Cigarettes Smokehouse Grill, where they chow down on “cigs in a blanket” and “phlegm brûlée.” It’s as disgusting as it sounds. And what a boring usage of Patty and Selma. What do we know about them? They love smoking and they’re gross. They were once much richer characters than this, but now they’re just a disposable utility for Lisa to ditch and not be seen again after act one.
Me Blog Write Good 
I’m surprised u didn’t mention the weird subplot with Superintendent Chalmers having a weird affair with Lunchlady Dora and Miss Hoover. I thought it was gonna be a gag at first, but then they kept revisiting it….it feels like he’s become the new Skinner since Harry Shearer’s supporting characters have really felt lackluster as of late.
Another plot thread I can barely even call a plot thread. Made me feel sad for everyone involved. All three of them could do better.
Or it seems like they’re trying to flesh out his character after how ever many years of being entirely one-note. Can’t speak for this specific example, but all the other attempts have never really worked.
Up until a few days ago I wasn’t even sure whether I was gonna watch this or not, but ultimately decided not to when the preview images came out showing it to be another Marge & Lisa conflict episode which in the current Faux- Full House era I was in no mood for after seeing how pretentious and full of itself Lisa’s Belly was.
However, it seems like that’s only a sampling of what the main overall problem with this episode seems to be, feeling like a first draft full of plot points that go nowhere filled with the third other big thing that plagues Selman’s episodes when it’s not being a poor man’s Full House or going off the rails in a way that makes most of the Scully era look tame in comparison: Lame hipster culture crap.
Yep, there’s a lot that bugs me about this episode and its plot.
I would say this needed some more passes, but honestly this feels like an episode that didn’t need to exist in the first place, just like last episode.
Sounds like a “Little Girl in the Big 10” clone.
Lisa’s deevolution has to be the greatest tragedy of The Simpsons’ original decline.
In the first four seasons especially, she felt like such a unique and personal creation, like some classic era writer took their own lifetime feelings of melancholy and isolation and channeled it into Lisa being this really tender character who had a ton of potential in a shitty world but experienced it as a curse rather than a blessing. She was aware of the world’s problems, and her own problems, in a way other kids and even adults blocked out, but it didn’t leave her a wise sage, just kind of hopeless and sad a lot of the time. But through all of that she was still a kid who often lived a kid’s life and had a kid’s priorities and often a kid’s way of thinking. She just knew about a lot of other stuff at the same time and it emotionally affected and ostracized her.
The thing is, trying to describe Lisa’s character, you can easily see how a lesser show would make her smug and unlikable. There’s always a risk that writing her comes off as telling the audience she’s better than everyone else, which would leave the audience rolling their eyes. I think it worked in the early seasons because we were almost never told these things about Lisa, we were shown them. Lisa didn’t talk about how enlightened she was, she just clearly knew a lot of things an eight year old normally wouldn’t and thought about stuff on a deeper intellectual level than you’d expect. But she barely seemed to notice of how special this made her, this was just how her mind normally worked. It also helped that Lisa had a lot of moments that felt very authentic to being young, like her black-and-white reasoning about stealing even two grapes or collaborating with Bart to go to Mt. Splashmore or Itchy & Scratchy Land because of how clearly awesome they were. These moments felt like they came from a writer’s real memories and they were skilled enough to make it feel authentically human in the show itself.
All the Simpsons once felt like people and suffered from becoming broader caricatures in the post-classic seasons, but they still kind of worked, mostly. A good post-classic episode can rebuild them into a semblance of their old selves, or even explore those selves in a new way, and have it feel close enough to land. But Lisa was such a delicate balance early on. Even the late classic era feels like a less personal approximation of her initial traits, and I think that’s the closest these modern episodes can come to a good portrayal of her.
But they often don’t remotely approach that. Like Ned Flanders becoming a zealot, Lisa has been used as the arrogant smart character who thinks they’re above everybody (and sometimes supposedly is) for so long, it feels like the writers can’t help but fall into those old habits. As they do with this week’s premise. It’s so antithetical to early classic Lisa. Early classic Lisa didn’t want to be superior to anyone. She just wanted to be happy.
What a snoozefest, the only thing that stuck with me is Lunch Lady Dora? Her name is Doris? No?
Ten or so years ago, they officially renamed Lunchlady Doris as Lunchlady Dora “out of respect” for Doris Grau. I honestly believe intentions were good, but it was weird considering they had retired the character for a good decade before bringing her back, now voiced by Tress MacNeille, and then many years after that we got the first name drop of her being called Dora. It genuinely felt like they forgot her name when they did that. I feel like they should have kept the character retired since it had been so long, or made up a new similar cafeteria worker to take her place.
Well, that “retirement” certainly hasn’t aged well.
After Russi Taylor passed away a few years ago, they decided fairly recently to recast her characters, instead of retiring them out of respect. That just doesn’t feel right. It reminds me of how Nickelodeon made SpongeBob spinoffs, disregarding Stephen Hillenburg’s wishes of forbidding any spin offs, and they decide to make them after his passing.
The key difference is that with The Simpsons, these decisions come from the Showrunners rather than the Network, but it’s still disgraceful nonetheless. I really can’t stand all these voice changes happening at once, especially when the original actor for the character is still around and still more then well capable of voicing them.
I can’t believe people are still clinging to this supposed Stephen Hillenberg story. He was quoted as saying he didn’t know if a SpongeBob spin-off could work, not being vehemently against it. Then later he was involved with development of the third movie “Sponge on the Run” and the Kamp Koral spin-off before he died, so he was onboard with all of it. This narrative of Nick pissing on Hillenberg’s grave people have been pushing for years just doesn’t make any sense. It’s not like Nick was showing any restraint about SpongeBob before he passed, it was still making them a bazillion dollars in his lifetime. Hillenberg dying didn’t change that trajectory at all.
I’m not all too familiar with it, its just based on what I’ve read and heard about, which is why I mentioned it.
Stephen was involved during the 3rd Movie’s development? That’s if it was already beginning to be written in 2018, which is when he passed. Obviously production takes a while, but I don’t recall hearing about production of it any earlier then 2019.
When the eventual spin off’s were even brain stormed, Stephen definitely has already long since passed by then I’m sure. Again, I could be wrong on all of this, but it just seems like a similar scenario as to what’s occurring on The Simpsons, with not respecting the legacy of the Voice Actors after they pass, by not retiring their character’s, or by them retiring a character, and then bringing them back years later and recasting them.
I kind of got a suspicion since the Show is owned by Disney now, being the savage beast it is, I don’t doubt Executives may have pressured the Showrunners to recast retired characters.
Any animated movie goes through at least a year or two of development before it goes into production. I can’t remember who it was, maybe Paul Tibbitt, who confirmed Stephen was directly involved in the early stages of Sponge on the Run and Kamp Koral.