Lisa’s new best friend turns out to not only be a Republican, but her opponent in their second-grade class election.
Eva Longoria will guest start tonight as Isabelle, who is Lisa’s classmate/friend/opponent. Isabelle is also the first name of the character Longoria played on The Young And The Restless. Not that I or anyone else cares; I just don’t have anything else to say about this plot line. Anderson Cooper also stars as himself, so if you didn’t have a reason not to watch before, there you go.
charliesweatpants.com
(The crotch really does wear out too fast.)
So it’s “Lisa’s Rival Redux”?
Wow, that promo image is garish.
That’s not enough! We demand MORE asbestos!
Here’s what Youtube thinks of your quote: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF1mcBGb4B0
Thanks for reminding me why I don’t have to watch this show btw.
“Lisa’s new best friend turns out to not only be a Republican, but her opponent in their second-grade class election.”
I wonder why people don’t bother with the new episodes anymore, that plot sounds riveting.
I saw the preview clip online to see how mediocre it could be. (Yes, I watched a scene of ZS willingly. Shut up.) As Isabelle was giving her speech, the animation was a wide shot: no focus on her face. It seemed like she was not talking at all.
This gives me a few hunches:
– The video was busted;
– FOX is so cheap that they won’t even “upgrade” the animation software they use to animate ZS;
– The writers don’t know anything about camera angles and refuse to do their homework;
– The writers think we have the IQ of a day old tuna sandwich (OK, that seems to be the closest to the truth), and/or;
– Even the animators (those not replaced by the computer) have realised that they are not working on the real deal, gave up, and are trying to ram this show into the ground faster by cutting down on the animation quality. Small things like that can hurt a show, especially if the writing is meh.
As for the ratings, my money is on this being in the top 3 worst of all time. My hunch is that, once the ratings hit 3.6 Million (give or take 100,000), FOX will begin actively looking for the long-ignored “kill switch” for the show.
Ummm not quite sure what you just wrote, but… why 3.6? For a company that didn’t stop the show before its ratings got utterly ridiculous, starting to scratch their butts now seems kinda moronic. There must be another reason they keep this shit up, moneywise that I agree.
Well, it looks like the video was fixed: the animation is not broken like the first time I saw the clip. Here’s the link:
It would show simply a wide shot of the debate between 0:13 and 0:20. The clip, though, is fixed, and now looks good (by ZS standards).
As for the ratings, there was a reason I put it that low. FOX will do anything to save the remains of The Simpsons. Why? That was one of the two shows that propelled FOX up in the ratings, and has been it’s flagship show for 20-odd years. FOX ain’t letting go of OFF easily. The day they announce the cancellation will probably be the hardest day in the network’s history, and they want to keep that off as long as possible.
Duh, I understand that, but still don’t get why it should be so hard to cancel something so sucky. Did all of them grow up with The Simpsons or what? It was really good in the 1990s, but that alone isn’t enough ‘by my standards’ to keep pulling the strings. A person close to me once said “We have to learn to let go”, so unless they are shameless rich texans milking for profit, they have to cancel The Simpsons before it actually starts damaging their ratings.
It’s FOX. They will milk the cow until it can’t be milked anymore.
I do believe that the show’s ratings are reaching a threshold where season 26 will be the first season to not turn a profit from advertising. The merchandise will continue to sell well enough, but the advertising is crumbling.
Wow, well said.
Her name is Isabelle on the sop opera, and in this episode? Well that makes me feel smart enough that the writers trust me to get their references.
Anderson Cooper is gay….I wonder if this episode will have him kiss another man.
So many myths and urban legends about gay people, The Simpsons have always made fun of gays in a good, fun, humorous way though but post 2000 it’s just really sad esp. with “3 Gays and a Condo”.
Given how much people hate the way Lisa has been Flanderized over the years (remember when she was an intelligent, moral, slightly depressed eight year old girl rather than a voice for the writers to tell us about their politics?), you’d think they’d want to stay away from plot lines like this. I’m assuming this will be one of their worst episodes of all time- which is really saying something given how the last decade has been.
“Simp-uh-son”? Really!? Arrrrrgh!!!!
Well, this episode was almost exactly what I expected it to be; mediocre plotline and mediocre jokes. Cracked a few chuckles, smiled a bit, but overall, what we’ve come to expect. Nothing too bad, but overall, a watchable waste of tine.
I will admit, though, the opening of the episode was pretty well-animated and relatively creative.
Whoa that was some weaksauce political satire. Gives “Politically Inept With Homer Simpson” a run as one of the worst bottom-barrel ZS episodes. It comes to absolutely no surprise that Lisa in this episode is defined as being a card-carrying liberal and essentially nothing else. Lisa’s political message might have actually carried some weight if we saw she actually cared about her fellow students, but in the end, she’s just on one side of a completely rote and by-the-numbers political campaign. Yawn.
When Bob said that this was a “Lisa’s Rival Redux” he wasn’t kidding. outside of the whole political aspect, this was a dead on ripoff of “Lisa’s Rival” with zero of the wit and an extremely hollow emotional core. Lisa finding a best friend, the anagrams, the new friend being a passive rival, hiring Bart to sabotage her efforts and him going to far, etc. Expect there’s no payoff, irony, just warmed over political cliches.
Remember when Lisa’s Rival added further complexity to Lisa’s character by by showing her own insecurities of no longer being the smartest kid in class and Lisa at least attempting to keep up with Allison? No, all Lisa cares about is pushing her political beliefs onto the student body. Same with Isabelle who is hardly given a fraction of the characterization Allison got. She’s Latina and an outspoken conservative. Yet we don’t get any insight on her outside of the phoned in stereotypical conservative dialogue. She’s a plot device and nothing more memorable than that.
And, what a surprise, more frail pathetic Burns who is so desperate he needs to fix a 2nd grade election, sneak into an elementary school and is crippled by party balloons. Sadly, this whole pointless plotline only leads up that that balloon gag, instead of attempting some satire on the easily corrupted democratic system like showing the school faculty gladly accepting the money and forging an alliance with Burns. The faculty not giving a shit about the political debate outside of their monetary rewards could have been a highlight if it had been bothered to be explored. Instead there is some throwaway line from Lisa about not accepting big money, and it’s never brought up again.
In the end, we all know why this was really make–a hollow attempt to fuel their pathetic “rivalry” with Fox News. It’s pretty obvious right now that we won’t be seeing any conservatives on The Simpsons that aren’t the cackling evil businessmen, brainless hillbilly, or religious fanatic types. Sad that the show doesn’t even attempt to skewer both sides of the political fence anymore
Also, for those that don’t know, the couch gag (if you can call it that) was based off of Disney’s 1935 short “Music Land” which funny enough comes across as more or a satire of music taste (for it’s day at least) than the meandering Simpsons parody. However, it had some interesting designs and was kinda fun. A usual, the highlight, but I’m really getting the impression that more of the writers’ creative juices go into these mega-couch gag parodies than in the actual show itself.
I wouldn’t call it the bottom of the barrel, myself, in terms of political satire. “Politically Inept” was FAR, far worse. It’s not “Sideshow Bob Roberts” by any stretch of the imagination, though. I think what the episode was going at (and not doing it too well) was Lisa being a “limousine-liberal” type (given that the Simpsons have shifted up a few classes because MyPad jokes, I think that term applies to her), talking the talk but not walking the walk. The episode also tried to be quite the satire on campaigning… too bad “SBR” did it better.
Or maybe it was just the writers telling instead of showing.
Still, you have a point. The development between Isabelle and Lisa is not well defined other then “they’re the same but different political parties, hurr”. This episode had a problem with explaining the jokes (Isabelle revealing her true colours during the FDR project could’ve worked, but they had to directly state to the audience that she was a republican). Characterisation was also off the mark (Burns getting crushed by balloons, Homer strangling Bart unconscious- even for Jerkass Homer standards, that was creepy).
Again, the episode did have a few jokes that made me chuckle. And, as a bit of a political scientist myself, this episode did have a bit of appeal to me… even though it was ZS.
Two more things: this episode was still better than “Family Guy” tonight (god, that was awful), and this episode is certainly going into a “Compare/Contrast” with “Sideshow Bob Roberts” by week’s end.
Wasn’t there an ep with Burns running for mayor even before SBR? Three-eyed fish in every soup or something? Anyway, I suck at being a hardcore fan in anything because of my ADD, but I guess both you and the person above are right about Lisa not being herself anymore.
Unlike ZS, I actually watched the FG ep yesternight and I can’t say it was total garbage. The prob I have with it is that as soon as they need to kill off a characters, they just off and do it. How many times did Brian “die” in the show, only to return to status quo in the end? How many times his death was just part of some stupid cutaways, like Kenny’s from SP? Here we just get shot in the face with Brian’s death, and for some reason they assume that getting a new character will make more people watch it. Meh…
Yes. “Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish”. That’s pretty darn close to “SBR” for my favourite political satire in the show.
I remember when Lisa used to be open-minded,,,if she is so smart she should realize not everyone on Earth shares HER views.
I also remember when they had political satire on the show it was actually smart and funny. A fat joke about Chris Christie? The show would never have even mentioned him in the classic years.
About the Chris Christie joke, they used that joke last year (or the year before) in “Politically Inept”. Christ, now they are reusing jokes from ZOMBIE Simpsons. Have they no shame?
I know there’ll be a BUF for this episode eventually, but what ep is charlie gonna hold this one up to for C&C? ‘Lisa’s Rival’ seems most likely, but the Mr. Burns/Sideshow Bob eps previously mentioned in this thread are also relevant.