Lisa the Greek

By Gabriel, 09 Mar 20, 7

My Recollection.

 

Cin-Cincinnati-cin-Cincinnati-nat-Cincinnati-i. This is where she prints her weekly feminist newsletter. Thank you, Ralph, very graphic.

“Okay, no spitting”

The thing about rules is that they exist in blocks. Obeying one suggests you obey others and breaking one throws others into doubt, but only to a degree. That you’ve disobeyed a teacher and kept talking doesn’t mean you’ll disobey a teacher, smear your face in shit, and run screaming from the room. Both are rules but they exist in different blocks.

In the depths of multi-generational illiteracy, more blocks find themselves up for debate and none more so than bodily fluids. I never quite nailed down a single explanation, though it’s likely that’s because it’s a destination with multiple paths. Perhaps a lack of proper hygiene education? Maybe a lack of impulse control? The fact that their toilet walls are finger streaked in shit, possibly? Who knows, the point is, a lot of fights in Goodna would start with an agreement not to spit.

Like a lot of contracts between enemies, this was usually immediately broken if not entered into entirely as a feint. Often, it acted as the impetus for a fight or meter building taunt. If you think that last bit’s ridiculous, I once saw a kid create a tiny little spit bubble on his tongue and blow it on a playful, looping arc to pop gently on another kid’s face. It was so deliberate and dazzling we all walked away because the fight was won, with even the victim trailing off a half-hearted denial.

One wasn’t even safe mid-fight, with hocked gobs forming the bulk of Goodna’s projectile game. You may wonder about the efficacy of such a technique, but I’ve seen a gob big enough to qualify as shellfish go up a nose, which didn’t create an opening so much as it caused a total battlefield withdrawal.

I’d seen a lot of this, so I thought I’d seen everything. I mean, there was pee, but that was reserved for the Naval combat common to the pool changing rooms. Then there was the Redbank Plains Kmart.

An ass is the culmination of a few things. There’s cheek and there’s butthole. There’s butthole and there’s the actual butthole hole. An Ass Town is no different. Goodna was a butthole; Redbank Plains was a gaping void and not just because of the frequent sinkholes. I was in the Toyworld there once and watched a mother rip a nappy overflowing with shit from her still defecating child and just drop it in the aisle. It hit the ground like a pinata filled with curry while she power-waddled away. She looked like if you crossed the bulldog Pokémon, Snubbull, with a conehead which was not unusual for the genetic runoff that coagulated at the Redbank Plains Dirt Mall.

The standard conflict between brothers is exacerbated by the haphazard feeding schedules of the average derelict parent. This turns every trivial squabble for meaningless domination into a legitimate expression of the primal need for food security over even those closest to you. This means bourgeois luxuries like rules aren’t just out the window, they were never in the house to begin with. Feral kids live in a state of Total War and they will fight like it, even when they’re in the Redbank Plains K-Mart.

The pair had been audibly battling across Australia’s number one discount retail chain for a while, but in the kind of guerrilla style necessitated by a constantly moving capture point. Every now and again, between bouts of mum shoving a shirt against me to test for size, we’d hear a series of squeals and then a stifling she-bellow. This went on as mum collected shirt shoves and decided it was time for me to try a bunch of horrible clothes I’d not the taste to resist. I was in the middle of wriggling out of the horrible clothes I was wearing when I heard the Battle Mum throw the living fight into the only other change room, the one next to mine.

I can kind of see the logic in throwing them in there together, get them both done at once and be out of there quicker, but it’s one of those ideas that, like redrawing Middle Eastern borders, really only works on paper. What had started as sporadic flareups had, in the confines of the changing cubicle, escalated into a full tilt war. They weren’t the same size, so, after some thumping and banging, a series of slapping sounds and some higher pitch screaming meant that a winner had emerged.

This is probably familiar to a lot of you. Squabbles with siblings while being dragged around a shop by a parent are common stories. The fight would be won, maybe the littler brother would run shrieking from the stall, something like that. Redbank Plains, and the perpetual animal stress of living on the edge, are nothing like that.

I hear a sound I can’t place. I know it, I just know it from somewhere so outside my current context that I have to walk a long way to make the connection. The smell bridges the gap for me. Before I can say the words to myself, words that would concretise the sensation of dread into a cursed reality, the older brother sounds an alarm that makes me a powerless passenger in this grim ride.

“MUUUUUUUUUUM! MUM! POOIES! MUM, HE’S DOING POOIES!”

Nobody says, “Okay, no shitting” because nobody, not even most ferals, would expect someone to bend over and act like your ass just saw Dennis Nedry trying to escape. China is the authoritarian nuthouse it is today in part because historical experiences have led to a modern culture that, more than anything else, fears losing. The more extreme the fear, the more extreme the reaction. When your life is a winding maze of powers who only stop crushing you to ignore you completely, extreme is the starting line. Backed into corner after corner, and finally into a cubicle, the younger brother chose pooies over yet another defeat.

It’s that word that sticks with me. Pooies. It wasn’t “he’s pooing on me” or “he’s shitting on me” or anything else. This wasn’t a childish verb, the act had its own noun, and this can only be because pooies wasn’t a one-time thing. The same way we call it an echidna and not an ouch-rat because you’ve seen them enough that they earn their own title.

I was frozen in that way particular to children and genetically unfortunate goats. The smell was bad, but had peaked at maggot-ridden play-do, so I was coping behind a gas mask made from shirts that looked like Nickelodeon title cards. The Mum stalked toward the changing rooms with a post-anger severity that terrified any child within earshot. These were not the steps of idle threats; these were the steps of consequence. The door opened, the kids were Scorpioned out of the cubicle, the door shut. The smell remained.

 

The Episode.

Much like a Tinder profile picture, there are ways to work around the innate structural flaws of a genre. The Simpsons, as a now retro style sitcom, has a few that this episode can’t help but walk into. Irregular, frequently non-existent character development for one, and character stupidity that threatens to break the narrative’s rubber band for the other.

Homer is being a negligent father to his daughter again, a mere 5 episodes after a story devoted entirely to that idea, and the need for jokes pushes mere negligence into abusiveness as he verbally prods his daughter as far away from her as possible. This isn’t understandable ignorance, the selfishness of people too stupid to recognise others, it’s goddamn cruel, and we just went through this. Lisa isn’t quite as bad but is still remarkably accepting of her father’s illegal gambling considering her actual fire and brimstone reaction to stealing cable.

But these are the realities of a quasi-serialised program, a reality which itself was a result of, for the time, immutable rules of mainstream commercial television. It’s part of the show, it’s listed on the ingredients, if you hate it, then, at this point, the show is not for you.

But an understandable flaw is still a flaw. We all have arseholes but bending over and running at someone with your cheeks ripped apart still makes you the weirdo. To help prevent this, humanity invented pants. Narratives have similar options.

Strip all the “laughing at” out of Homer and Lisa’s relationship and you have I am Sam, the depressing film about the grim realities of a retarded parent. Lines like Lisa’s, “Well, we used to have burping contests, but I outgrew it” is practically a summary of the film, it’s just The Simpsons is played for comedy. Shows like Monkey Dust explored how much horrific bleakness you could cover with this principle (the divorced dad and Timmy spring to mind) and while this is an extreme example, it illustrates that a pair of undies with COMEDY written on them can cover a lot of arsehole.

But undies wear out, they develop holes, the get skidmarks. Even without these problems, sometimes the undies are not enough to mask the fact that there’s sad, depressing arsehole a mere millimetre of fabric away.

Part of the problems going into this episode are problems from a build-up related to prior episodes (something I covered in the comparison between Lisa’s Pony and Saturdays of Thunder). It’s not this episode’s fault, exactly, that I’m annoyed with Homer for something another episode’s Homer did, because I know Homer’s character can’t really change. This kind of thing is the skid-hole in the undies and would be a frustrating element of Lisa the Greek had they continued down that path, fortunately they don’t.

Lisa’s Pony wasn’t about Lisa getting a pony, it was about Homer and how the ways he failed his daughter hurt him emotionally, financially, and physically. Lisa was a function to prompt Homer’s single-episode development. Lisa the Greek isn’t about adding gambling to a list of Homer’s flaws; it’s about how Lisa adapts to an emotionally retarded father.

Lisa is the main character of this story. Whereas Lisa’s Pony began with Homer’s decisions and followed his regrets, Lisa the Greek’s core plot begins when the audience follows Lisa into the kitchen to hear the girl’s feelings. Lisa’s Pony hinged on Homer’s actions, failure and atonement, whereas the narrative drive for this story’s events comes from a decision Lisa made to push into her father’s space. Lisa’s Pony required decisions by Homer and earned forgiveness from Lisa for resolution. Lisa the Greek hinges Lisa’s love on something entirely outside of Homer’s control. The Superbowl winner doesn’t create a situation, it reveals one, and this keeps all the power and perspective with Lisa.

Conflicts between Bart and Homer benefit from them both being idiots. Idiots are conflict machines, add cartoon reality to that and you can have them squabble and reunite in all sorts of funny ways without it becoming a problem. But this won’t work with Lisa, she’s not the kind of moron who won’t remember what happened last week. Nothing carrying over becomes noticeable and frustrating. By shifting the perspective and agency to Lisa, they create a solution, and in doing so, create modern Lisa.

Later episodes will develop her into the character who experiences meaningful change, she is the character with the most canonical growth of the family, but this use of her perspective and the establishment of her emotional maturity creates a sense that even the unspoken things persist for Lisa. Her maturity isn’t the result of flanderisation, but of pent-up emotional frustrations and scars that linger with her long after the tagline. Homer may forget, but Lisa doesn’t.

The sad reality of the relationship between Lisa and Homer is that Homer will never really understand his daughter and so each attempt is a series of massive efforts. It’s not simply that he doesn’t share any interests with her, being with her makes him feel stupid. What does Homer know about self-published feminist literature? For Homer, just hearing that sentence is like grabbing his hands and playing “stop hitting yourself”.

This episode directly addresses the structural problem of how Homer’s conflicts with his daughter rub against the series format. Homer just adds the pain he feels as a man frightened of spending time with his daughter to the large dark mass he simply avoids thinking about. Lisa is now the smarter party, and so the onus is on her to navigate her father. The audience is moved away from a structural weakness and to a character who is now one of the strongest pillars of the series.

The active shift canonises this reality. Homer’s terrible parenting does have a serialised effect, as manifest in Lisa, so his problems move from a fault in sitcom construction to a fault in his character. Lisa’s conflicts go places and result in things, even if that result is simply adding to a visible emotional burden, so now she can function as a kind of resolution ark for other characters.

Lisa the Greek is not a memorable episode. I regularly forget it exists and I’m yet to see it pop up in any top ten lists regarding the series. Some of this is unfortunate luck to exist around the tail end of season three, which places is in a transitional period between the very identifiable early and classic periods, but some of it is that it lacks the immediate identifier of say, Lisa the Vegetarian. But the episode is an important one. Prior Lisa stories had presented her as mature and smart for her age, but this one explicitly focuses on her perspective as a notch above Homer in a realistic fashion. In doing so, it covers a structural flaw and builds a support beam, extending the quality life of the series no small degree.

Yours in hoping you don’t realise this is costing you money, Gabriel.

 

Jokes, Lines, and Stray Thoughts.

The football promo reminds me of similar things from League presentations in Australia. For those wondering, League is like Rugby except without being a shitfully boring, pulsating dude pile for most of the game. I highly recommend it.

I reiterate my contempt for the American game. It’s a LARP of a tabletop version of an actual sport.

The canned whip sound effect for Homer’s belt is just a tad cartoony for this period. Later episodes would exploit the stable reality to use very cartoony moments as absurdities. Here, it’s so close to the earliest season work that it comes close to clashing.

The heart attack moment is almost laying the groundwork for Homer’s Triple Bypass. Actually, fuck it, we get the zoom in, the theme jingle, and everything. I, GABRIEL MORTON, SIMPSONS UNDERSTANDER, HEREBY DECLARE THIS SCENE TO BE SETUP FOR HOMER’S TRIPLE BYPASS!

Good use of sound on the heart, the loose drain effect as the blockage moves through is fluidy but grimily inorganic.

“But if you’re one of the comPULsive types who just has to bet…” This is a nice line that works into the “Homer too stupid to realise his problems when they’re spoken at him” set.

His idiot joy is the heartbreaking happiness of damned morons.

Walleyes are funnier than crossed eyes and they show up a bit when characters drink. Homer and now Wiggum. Speaking of, he’s got black hair in this episode, again, and I have to keep an eye out for when the stable change moves it to blue.

Solid “Wiggum is dumb” throwaway, but they sorta consigned him to police environments fairly quickly.

To be fair to Homer, he is in the middle of doing something, though one could argue that he always is when it comes to Lisa.

Maggie being washed in the sink, which is what happened to a lot of babies and may still do. It’s a good piece of Marge business to fill the scene a bit and leads into an okay joke with Bart dumping a bowl in there with his sister. Scenes like this, that integrate a lot of plot, character, and comedy elements in organic ways, should be kept in mind by anyone constructing a narrative.

What do you suppose is the thing Marge does in bed that Homer likes but she doesn’t? I’m guessing it’s sucking it over butt stuff because it’s probably easier to tune out 2 minutes of anal than it is to burrow into several layers of flab like a baby marsupial to suck on a mouldy crinkle of micropenis.

Again, to be fair to Homer, some of Lisa’s interruptions come at terrible times. It softens the cruelty but only a little, and not enough to cover build-up from prior stories. I mean, if you can trick your daughter into thinking that sitting beside you while you watch sport counts as spending time together, that’s a win.

The B story in this episode is a weird one because it only lasts the length of the first act. Not sure if it was cut to give the plot more room in the latter two thirds, or if it was added to fill out the first. Either way, while not bad, it stands out as odd. Better integration or ditching it for more character work related to the main plot would have tidied things a bit. At the moment, it stands out like a single shoe.

I do like that Bart’s raggedy clothes can be seen early in the scene. This is something that happens in Atlanta a lot, there’s a lot of near cartoony surprises that happen that are actually visible if you look.

We didn’t really get much of this betting stuff in Aus, at least not on the primary sports shows, and certainly no giant physical metaphors.

“They both make a good case”

Frink popping up as both a Springfield citizen and a TV personality from time to time is a nice way to give the local world a bit of cohesion. The community TV appearance of a lot of these early segments is what keeps it from jarring, as Krusty’s local status does with his TV legend status.

Coach’s Hotline is a great joke and Cincinnati is such a funny word to choose. Could have gone with one of the other, longer American place names, but the repetition of the “cin” phoneme, along with Homer’s repetition of the full word, really leans into the obvious cruelty of the hotline.

There’s a shot here of Lisa blinking at her father’s stupidity which is a moment of importance in how she perceives her father.

Lisa’s first winner is a raw guess, which could have been a better factor in the episode but isn’t. Ideally, she’d have analysed some element of the players or game, to reinforce the idea that she’s actually good at this, it could have turned out that her skill was luck all along, or the element of luck could have been highlighted as what brought them together. As it stands, it’s just there.

Moe being town bookie is a nice start to his placement as entry point to Springfield’s scummier criminal activity.

“Wee Monsieur” is a good store name for a place full of clothes that will get you called a faggot.

I hated shopping as a child and still hate it today. I plan exactly what I’m getting and am in and out before anyone realises I was there. Online delivery is great but paying a little bit more bothers me enough to leave the house.

Most of these shirts have passed through irony and into hipster fashion these days.

“Anyone who beats you up for wearing a shirt isn’t your friend” is a line that took some arguing to get in, according to the commentary. God knows why, it’s a beautiful piece of mum ignorance that borders on detached from reality.

We never see these shirts again. Modern shows would almost make a point of having them pop up, even years later, and the world is better for it. Bojack is an exemplar of this kind of background serialisation.

“Don’t make that face at me” is a nice piece of mum wisdom that contrasts the earlier stupidity.

Lisa has an adult emotional intelligence, but it’s weighed down by a child’s naivety. To her, the rules are supposed to work and watching the cynicism slowly seep in is great development.

The animation repeat on “crumbled up cookie things” highlights the growing artificiality of the affectation as a bit for the show.

I dacked the only other Gabriel I ever met in front of girls from his year 7 class and they pointed and laughed. Fuck it was funny.

See, Lisa not knowing gambling is bad or that it isn’t praised in the Bible is a good example of a mild form of highlighting a fault. This is a very small one, but it’s the kind of thing where the scene could have been written to evolve from that point or ignored entirely. Having Lisa question it highlights the problem.

Assuming Bart in his Faggy P Faggington outfit got beat up, but that’s the end of that THRILLING B STORY.

“Unpleasant aftertaste of church” is a goodun.

Lisa being overtucked is a nice bit of natural comedy. Forgetting you are strong is horrible when it’s you but funny for anyone watching.

Curious as to how one cheats in gridiron, but not curious enough to look it up.

Library jokes!

DID THE SIMPSONS PREDICT SEPTEMBER 11?

Eat these pills I call nootropics to find out!

Sports is the nerdiest shit and the closeted bum-punchers that make up the rabid fanbase will beat anyone for pointing that out. It’s all just stat rolls.

This is one of my favourite little freeze frames

Apocalypse Now reference with the smell joke.

The way the extra money becomes a plot point feels like it would have made a better B than the abandoned Bart shopping, or even played into it. The presence and threatened loss of the bonus money would probably have been a tad thick for a support story but the alternative is a very loose thread.

I’ve been waiting for the emergence of Tard Ralph and I feel like this is really it. Telling a story about parasites, Hoover’s line about it being graphic, next to no reaction from Ralph. This is the dumbass version emerging from his chrysalis.

More toys. Those talking things were all about before, you know, pocket supercomputers.

“I promise I WILL get mad” is great, and remarkably clever from Marge.

The money kind of threads into this conversation, but the story could have been much tighter with a little more planning.

The laugh after, “The only victim is Moe” is a favourite, such pure schadenfreude.

“You’re a very selfish man” is brutal, so Bart’s swear box cuts the pain.

The girl stampede is a good scene. The “ooh” as the girl steals the chinchilla coat is the ancestor of yoink.

Lisa, morality is fine when you’re eight. Your dad has to pay for things, so of course he cares about money. Greed is a slightly tough vice to pin on the poor.

That said, this is a good moment and a great way of working the finale. Lisa has already had her moment of realisation in regard to the Malibu Stacy accessories, and Homer is legitimately sorry, even if the money still matters, because he doesn’t bet any cash. Lisa’s explanation of how her subconscious may corrupt her pick is a great way to create a climax moment out of nothing and have it actually matter.

Hey, look, it’s Cesar and Ugolin! I’d forgotten about this meaningless cameo.

Moe’s Superbowl platter is hilariously on brand.

In order for Australia to get access to the big sitcoms like Full House, we had to absorb a bunch of crap like Empty Nest. Troy McClure’s dismal sitcom promo during the Superbowl is sadly familiar.

Weird how the halftime show attitude has changed over the years. “You hate dad is up by a touchdown” is a great line. Lisa’s sadness in response is great, her fear that she may have been right about hating her father indicates the kind of raw emotional honesty necessary to her lingering childishness. Shades of her father and how he adheres to wishbone prayers.

Gabriel

gabrielmeat

7 replies to Lisa the Greek


Magnumweight on 12 Mar 20 said:

This is another episode that feels much different now from my childhood, I suppose I just found it boring, because I was never into sports that weren't Wrestling. Nowadays, it's one of my sleeper hits.


Gabriel on 14 Mar 20 said:

There're a few in this period that are like that, not quite as wild as the season 4 or 5 classics and not as distinctly different as the season 1 and 2 stories.


SteelCladGamer on 10 Mar 20 said:

Does Gabriel legitimately not know that 911 is the US emergency line?


thingamajig on 19 Mar 20 said:

Oh, you poor summer child. I'm pretty sure Gabe just made a crack at Infowars-esque conspiracy theorists


SAUglaz on 10 Mar 20 said:

This comment is physically painful.


Christian Fenix on 12 Mar 20 said:

I really enjoy the stories from'Stralia, ever thought of an autobiography or memoirs?


Gabriel on 14 Mar 20 said:

Maybe when I'm old or the idea becomes staggeringly profitable.

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