Simpsons: Lisa the Drama Queen

After 20 years inhabiting a prominent place in popular American culture, The Simpsons is a franchise that has become more than just a television show. These days, it's best to look at it like a proper storytelling tradition. Without sounding too pretentious, The Simpsons is to the Computer Age what Commedia dell'Arte was to the Renaissance. Basically, it's reliable entertainment aimed at the middle class, full of familiar characters and stock plots, with a sprinkling of modern commentary. It's an all-too-popular sentiment these days to complain about how The Simpsons has gone downhill since its heyday in the mid-90's. But after so long, judging The Simpsons by the same metric as pretty much any other show on television has become an apples-to-oranges situation. 

So, it's with a renewed perspective that I go into this week's episode of The Simpsons, the first since the holiday season break. Our stock plot for this evening was the rare but frequently good "Lisa social exploit" story. As it usually goes, Lisa makes a new friend, has a euphoric early period, starts to see the cracks, then ends up alone again at the end. The friend this time around was Juliet, a cultured Brit voiced by guest star Emily Blunt. The two girls meet in a creativity-smothering art class at Springfield's requisite recreation center where they bond over their mutual appreciation for Josh Groban. This was one of the few Simpsons episodes that didn't have a B-plot. To be honest, I think it would have balanced things out a bit more. The rest of the family provided some nice throwaway gags, but I wouldn't have minded some Bart-Milhouse mischief or a minor excursion with Homer. To its credit, "Lisa the Drama Queen" did an impressive amount with what little there was. While the main story revolved around Lisa and Juliet's co-written fantasy novel, there were a few scattered one-off bits that lasted just long enough to be fun. According to a quick flashback, Groundskeeper Willy used to be a well-dressed doctor before the folks at Ellis Island branded him a janitor for life. As the plot runs its course, Lisa finds that she can no longer be friends with Juliet because of the latter's insistence on escaping into fantasy instead of living in the real world. The whole thing ends pretty abruptly and its seems to just roll right off of Lisa. The strangest part is how the friendship was structured. The writers seemed to be riffing on romantic cliches more than anything. Then again, Lisa makes friends so rarely that it might as well be a plot about falling in love.

Best Moment: The rather stunning animation of Lisa and Juliet's fantasy world, Equalia, coming to life.

Biggest Laugh: Martin at the Model UN: "As far as you can trust any Belgian!"

Episode Rating: 3/5- Stock plots are comforting, but never spectacular. There were enough laughs and clever moments to make this an above-average episode of The Simpsons, but it spent just a little too much time in one place. Lisa is the family foil, not so much a character who can stand on her own.