Review: The Simpsons “Desperately Seeking Lisa”

Overview

Lisa has a misadventure in the dark world of Capital City’s downtown art scene.

Our Take

Boy, if you wanted an actual documentary about downtown NYC’s douchey art scene, The Simpsons just nailed it. On the same weekend where cast, crew, and Matt Groening visited NYCC for the first time, the rest of the largely Hollywood-based writers give us a pretty glaring and very accurate take of what it’s like to deal with the art scene in the biggest city in the world.

To help tell the tale of Tim Long’s episode, the producers have hired a number of British actors and the fantastic Molly Shannon (Katya). Griffin Dunne is a cockroach whilst Richard Grant portrays a snoopy culturist in “Julian”. But, quite possibly the MVP of the entire episode is Tracy Letts doing a highly exaggerated take as himself producing a ridiculous play but being just as part of the dickhead Manhattan artworld as anyone else. For whatever reason, EVERY line Tracy muttered was comedy gold and had me chuckling like a madman.

Special considerations should be given to Matthew Nastuk who directed a brilliantly poignant and very beautiful episode from top to bottom probably even matching the technical brilliance of 20th Television Animation’s Futurama. Unlike the dingy take on the classic “The City of New York” episode, Matthew’s attention to detail in capturing the scale of Manhattan was really quite brilliant and, for my money, is worthy of Emmy consideration. I almost thought The Simpsons was going to deliver us a “glimpse” or “Lisa was sleeping this whole time” episode with how whimsical and fanciful a number of the scenes were produced, but was delighted to see we were just embracing the fact that this is an animated series, sometimes a feature that a lot of other shows, including this one, will forget from time to time.

Too much Lisa can sometimes see the writers throw in a bunch of whines that can sometimes make Yeardley Smith’s voice feel like nails on a chalkboard, but this week’s episode featured a decent balance of Springfield citizens mixed with the Capital City crowd that helped break up any monotony in Lisa’s dialogue. We don’t spend a ton of time with the rest of the Simpson family, but the quick hits we get made sure to throw in some laughs.

Overall, “Desperately Seeking Lisa” doesn’t feel desperate at all, and instead highlights some of the best features of modern-day episodes of The Simpsons.