Review: The Simpsons “Lisa With an ‘S'”

Spoilers Below

Homer loses 5 large to Broadway star Laney Fontaine at the poker table. Marge freaks out, so Homer decides to invite Laney over for dinner as a way to smooth things over on the loss which has yet to be paid out. Fortunately, when Laney finds out that the Simpsons have a musician in the family in the form of Lisa, the Broadway star offers to take Lisa for two months in exchange for the payment. Lisa actually wants to take part in an opportunity of a lifetime due to the fact that the 5 grand was originally supposed to go to Lisa for band camp. Lisa heads on the road, and already Marge gets all worried and realizes that she’s made a huge mistake.

The Simpsons family decide to go on the road after their kid, but they get a flat and have to deal with the Amish for a bit. After some help, Springfield’s fab four heads to the theater in which Laney and Lisa are playing, they decide to hold up and watch Lisa perform and bring the house down. Unfortunately, Lisa brings the house down SO much, that Laney no longer wants to perform with her, but that doesn’t matter neither because the show is closed for good due to copyright issues. Lisa opts to go home and Laney spends the night in the city with Moe.

Our Take

This week’s episode of The Simpsons is the type that I’d like to refer to as “assembly line”. That being an episode that is void of guest stars, void of a BIG event like a 500th episode or a holiday, so we get something like this. An episode that really feels like a left over.

Usually when The Simpsons give us an episode like so, we get a good start, but really we didn’t get anything that was all that great. The only bit I really liked was the shout out to when Howard Stern met Fred Norris, but other than that there was nothing to hold on to. As a matter of fact, we got was really came out to be strands. Like, Homer’s gambling problem which is completely glossed over, or the stop off with the Amish of which Family Guy has already done before and was MUCH funnier. Yea, we got a lot of good ideas, but nothing really fleshes out and “Lisa with an S” doesn’t even start to find itself by the time the next show comes on.