Recap / The Simpsons S8 E25 "The Secret War of Lisa Simpson"

"My killing teacher says I'm a natural."

Original air date: 5/18/1997

Production code: 4F21

Bart is shipped off to military school after a particularly destructive prank (lining up 15 police bullhorns and unleashing a soundwave that shatters all the glass in town) — and Lisa tags along (despite that the military school is boys-only and the other cadets don't take kindly to change) after finding public school education has become a grind.

Tropes of this episode:

• Ambiguously Gay: Franklyn, the "girliest cadet" before Lisa joins.
• Artistic License – Explosives: One scene has Bart fire a grenade launcher over the horizon, resulting in Principal Skinner's car being blown up with him next to it and giving him Ash Face. If Skinner was that close to his car actually exploding, it's highly unlikely he'd be alive.
• Artistic License – Gun Safety:
  • Ignore a wildly firing automatic weapon until it runs out of ammo.
  • Give a full-sized assault rifle to an eight-year-old.
  • Only Rule of Funny justifies the military school having a Grenade Launcher (military academies and ROTC only have rifles, at the most).
• Artistic License – Physics: It takes about 100 megaphones working in tandem to break a hollow glass structure; 15 megaphones don't even cause a crack.
• Badass Bookworm/Little Miss Badass: Despite the other cadets hating her because she's not a boy, Lisa loves the military school because it has rigid structure and teachings.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • Homer and Marge manage to trick their kids into coming with them to places they don't want to go (military school and the dentist) by saying that they are going to go to Disneyland. They even snicker that they fell for it twice at the end.
  • After Lisa makes it through the Eliminator, the rest of the cadets swear to make what remains of her time at school a living hell ... and then they say that they all must get ready for graduation, which is in three hours.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Lisa comes to the school looking for a challenge but nearly gives up when confronted with The Eliminator. Bart lampshades this: "I thought you wanted a challenge".
• Big Brother Instinct: When Lisa is in danger of falling off the Eliminator, Bart steps forward and shouts encouragement to Lisa, which inspires her to carry on. Another cadet tries to cover Bart's mouth, but Bart's encouragement is what causes Lisa to finish The Eliminator.
• Big "YES!": Lisa does one when, thanks to Bart's encouragement, she manages to complete The Eliminator.
• But Not Too Challenging: By Lisa’s own admission when she sees the Eliminator, in perfect Hypocritical Humor, she wanted a school that would challenge her more than Springfield Elementary, but with a challenge that she could actually do.
• Condescending Compassion: After Lisa showcases herself to be unable to handle a firearm, the instructor just gives her a whistle and tells her in a condescendingly sweet fashion to blow it if a war breaks out. Lisa obviously isn't thrilled.
• Couch Gag: The living room is upside-down, and the family (also upside-down) come in and sit on the couch, but end up falling on the ceiling/floor.
• Deadly Graduation: On the third act, the Commandant mentions that the academy used to have its students fight to the death to see who would graduate. The way he phrases it makes him sound like that is what Lisa is going to face, which makes her nervous, but it turns out to be a Bait-and-Switch, though — the Supreme Court ordered the academy to stop doing that, so the final test tradition was changed to having students trying to climb the Eliminator.
• Death Course: The Military School used to have a Deadly Graduation (students fighting each other to the death) and now has The Eliminator (an incredibly grueling and potentially life-threatening physical course) as final tests. Both were ordered to be removed by the Supreme Court, being blatant acts of child cruelty.
• Destination Ruse: Homer and Marge trick Bart and Lisa into going to military school (and later, to their dental appointments) by telling them that they are going to Disneyland.
• Determinator: Lisa didn’t let the other students, all male, get the best of her. They tried to get rid of Lisa on account of her sex and she proved that she can be just as tough as they are.
• Did Not Think This Through:
  • Bart didn't consider the fact that his Megaphone Gag prank, mostly because he used fifteen different megaphones instead of just three or four, would be playing with fire on a massive scale.^note In universe, at least.
  • Lisa joins military school solely after seeing their strict schooling. It did apparently not occur to her that there would be serious tests of physical ability as well, which she's notoriously terrible at.
  • At the end, Homer and Marge realize that, thanks to the school's curriculum, Bart has now been trained in both firearms and several forms of unarmed combat, making him much more dangerous than before.
• Eats Babies: At the "Museum of Crime", Chief Wiggum shows the kids a display of a hippie couple getting stoned, with the woman about to take a bite of the "California Cheeseburger", which is a sandwich with a baby in the middle.
• Everyone Has Standards: After Homer throws rocks at the cadets and expresses his disappointment that they're 'not so disciplined' because they recoiled in pain, the horrified Commandant points out to him that they're only just children, not experienced soldiers.
• Exactly What I Aimed At: Bart hits the first four targets with the grenade launcher at the firing range, and the fifth shot spirals over the horizon out of sight. The instructor points out that Bart missed his last target, but Bart smiles and says, "Did I?" Cut to Principal Skinner back in Springfield standing next to the smoking crater where his car used to be. Made all the funnier by a "Ha-ha!" from Nelson in the background.
• False Reassurance: The Commander makes two regarding the graduation exercise: that they won't have to fight each other to the death (they will have to pass the Eliminator instead) and that the Supreme Court has ordered the academy to get rid of the Eliminator (so they will be the last class to face it).
• Glass-Shattering Sound: Bart creates a shockwave of this that breaks almost all of the glass in Springfield by using 15 megaphones at once.
• Gone Horribly Right: Homer and Marge wonder at the end whether or not it's a good thing that Bart now has much more confidence and is trained in several forms of unarmed combat.
• Go to Your Room!: Inverted. Bart anticipates this from Homer and Marge when they're punishing him, but because Bart's room is full of toys, Homer sends him to the garage instead. Bart is almost instantly seen escaping on a ride-on lawnmower, proving what little good this did.
• Grandfather Clause: Bart, Lisa, and their classmates get this to their discredit, having to pass the Eliminator because they enrolled/enlisted before it was ordered decommissioned.
• The Hedge of Thorns: The Eliminator. It consists in a rope with a high blistering factor suspended several feet over a thick bush of thorn-filled brambles, and all cadets must go through it as a final test.
• Hope Spot: When the class is ready to tackle the Eliminator:
  Commandant: Gentlemen, I regret to inform you that the state supreme court has determined that forcing cadets to cross the Eliminator is a barbaric and malicious practice.
  Lisa: Yes!
  Commandant: Hence, you will be the last class to be subjected to it.
• Hypocritical Humor: Following Be Careful What You Wish For above.
  Bart: I thought you wanted a challenge?
  Lisa: Duh! A challenge I could do.
• I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: Showcase of bully cruelty by ignoring Lisa or not, cadets that don't think of ducking for cover when they notice a fellow cadet is shooting an assault rifle full-auto and is unable to control the gun is just potential Darwin Awards material. Good thing Lisa doesn't hit them.
• I'm a Humanitarian: A mannequin of a woman preparing to eat a baby is shown at the police station:
  Wiggum: That's right: She's got the "munchies" for a California cheeseburger!
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Bart manages to hit Skinner's car with a grenade launcher from a distance implied to be several dozen (if not hundred) miles.
• Instantly Proven Wrong: One of the reasons Lisa decides to stay is because of the academy having poetry class...
  Cadet: [Talking to instructor while the Simpsons are watching] Truth is beauty; beauty, truth, sir!
  Lisa: [Swooning at this discovery] They're discussing poetry! Oh, we never do that at my school.
  Teacher: [Talking to the cadet] But the truth can be harsh and disturbing! How can that be considered "beautiful"?
  Marge: Oh, he sure sucked the fun out of that poem.
• Jackie Robinson Story: Attempted by Lisa but ultimately subverted. She gets through the semester but the cadets don't change their opinion of her and she doesn't prove better than them at any of the subjects.
• Jerkass: The cadets act like this towards Lisa on account of her being a girl. They also do this to Bart at first. The worst part is when Lisa nearly falls off the Eliminator and they chant "Drop! Drop! Drop!", as if they want her to fall to her death.
• Kids Are Cruel: The cadets' treatment of Lisa and initially Bart falls into this territory.
• Megaphone Gag: Played for Drama. Bart sets up fifteen police bullhorns end to end and shouts "Testing!" through them, creating a devastating soundwave that shatters glass all over town. This initiates the main story of him being sent to military school as punishment.
• Morton's Fork: As Bart and Lisa are forced to do pushups, Lisa is asked "Don't girls like doing pushups in the mud?" Lisa, in turn, asks "Is there any answer I can give that won't result in more push-ups?", to which, after much deliberation by the other cadets, is "No."
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Just when the other cadets are about to beat up Bart for cheering on Lisa, they realize they have to go dress up for graduation.
• Noodle Incident: It's never said what were the circumstances for setting up a field trip to the police station.
• Only One Finds It Fun: During the showings of the "Sand" documentary and "The Moon of Earth" in Miss Hoover's class, Ralph Wiggum is the only one that actually appears to be interested, while everyone else (including Miss Hoover) is visibly bored.
• Parental Favoritism: Marge and Homer send Lisa a cassette intended to comfort her yet they don't send Bart anything, not even considering his feelings about how he is at the school. Though this is justified by the fact that Lisa is there by choice, while Bart is there as punishment for causing large amounts of property damage and sending him there is to straighten him out.
• Police Are Useless: Before leading the Springfield Elementary student tour around the station, Wiggum checks the police station's answering machine. He sees that there are seventy-five recorded messages and deletes them all with an annoyed "Doesn't anybody take the law into their own hands in this town?"
• Recoiled Across the Room: When Lisa manages to point her stuck-on-autofire gun at the ground it launches her into the air.◊
• Ripped from the Headlines: The episode was based on the events around Shannon Faulkner, the first girl to attend The Citadel in 1995. Due to harassment, she dropped out after a week, but she paved the way for other girls to enroll.
• Shout-Out: The firing range scene, with Bart's quip "Did I?" in response to being told he missed, is a reference to a scene in Moonraker.
• Smarter Than You Look: Thanks to his years with a slingshot (and the assumption that because he's a public school student, he knows how to handle guns and other weapons), Bart knows how to use a grenade launcher. In fact, Bart is such a master, he gets Skinner's car from a far distance away.
• Special Guest: Willem Dafoe as the military school's commandant.
• Stay in the Kitchen: The commandant is initially perplexed by the idea of Lisa wanting to enroll and become Rommelwood's first female student.
• Stealth Pun:
  • The shock wave from Bart's reckless usage of the megaphones causes him to briefly get sent flying backwards into a load of boxes, eventually leading to the first girl attending a military academy. One could say that he was opening Pandora's^note according to Greek mythology, Pandora was the first woman ever created Box.
  • The Eliminator is a precarious tightrope that has thorny bushes below, with the objective being to get across safely, all in accordance with the initial objectives of an uber-conservative reform school. All in all, you'd better try to avoid getting bushwhacked.
• Stock Shoujo Bullying Tactics: A rare Western example has Lisa's classmates pretending not to hear her when she asks for help with an out-of-control firearm.
• Straw Misogynist: The cadets bullying Lisa. They harass her and want to see her fail specifically because she’s the only female cadet - though Lisa’s enrollment inconveniencing the boys by forcing them to vacate an entire dormitory to accommodate her certainly didn't help matters.
• Threw My Bike on the Roof: Downplayed with Bart, who destroys an assload of private property not out of any actual malice, but rather a very unwise attempt at it amusing him.
• Ultimate Final Exam: The final test before graduation is "The Eliminator", a 150-ft horizontal rope climb suspended over a field of thorn bushes. The Supreme Court eventually rules that getting students to complete it is a barbaric and malicious practice, and it gets scrapped shortly after Bart and Lisa graduate.
• Unishment:
  • Double Subverted. Bart expects to be told to go to his room, but Homer realizes that's not a punishment and sends him to the garage instead. But then Bart uses this opportunity to steal a riding mower.
  • While Lisa suffers quite a lot in the harsh environment of the Military School, Bart thrives. When he gets to return home, Homer and Marge are even visibly nervous about the fact that Bart now knows how to use weapons and unarmed combat.
• Verbal Backspace: The Commandant gives the academy class a rousing speech about how they are now potential future soldiers before backspacing that the wars of the future will probably be done with robots (in space, or maybe a very tall mountain) and that the children's jobs will be to take care of those robots.
• Wants a Prize for Basic Decency: Begging his parents not to leave him at military school, Bart offers to "be good sometimes".
• Wham Line: "And so am I!"
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • The cadets qualify when they encourage an eight-year-old girl to fall off "The Eliminator" when she loses her grip and is about to slip off from the rope and fall onto a land of bushes filled with thorns and not onto a safety net, which would have likely badly injured or outright killed her had she fallen, all because their designated cabin was moved to a different location to make a private cabin for the lone female participant, even though the decision was made by their superior and not by Lisa.
  • The Military School turns out to have final tests that involve children getting hurt (possibly fatally). Unfortunately, this ended up leading to lawsuits that resulted in the Supreme Court ordering the school to get rid of said tests.
• Zeerust: The cheesy and outdated short black and white movie on the Moon that Lisa's classroom watches at the start of the episode wouldn't feel out of place in a Fallout game.

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