Original air date: 3/8/1998 (produced in 1997) note
Production code: 4F24
After failing to immediately figure out a picture puzzle, forgetting her locker combination, and turning in a piss-poor school project, Lisa fears she's losing her brainpower, and things get worse when Grampa Simpson tells Lisa that she may have the Simpson Gene, which has already made Homer, Bart, and Grampa himself dumber with age. Meanwhile, Jasper Beardley uses the Kwik-E-Mart freezers to cryogenically preserve himself, and Apu deals with the situation the only way he knows how — by making a profit off it.
Last holdover from Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein's tenure.
This episode contains examples of:
- Big Brother Instinct: Bart is worried Lisa is delivering her message on TV because she's dying.
- Bittersweet Ending: Lisa will never get dumber with age due to being a female, but Bart is doomed to that fate. He just shrugs it off. Though the "Simpson gene" thing was later retconned.
- Borrowed Catchphrase: Lisa worries that her genetics will lead to her becoming as dumb as Homer. When she learns that it's only male Simpsons who carry the dumb gene, and subsequently solves the puzzle she's been stuck on all episode, she lets out a Homeresque "Woo-hoo!" before catching herself.
- Call-Back:
- The music when Apu introduces the "Freak-E-Mart" is also the music from Homer's clown-related Imagine Spots in "Homie the Clown" and the music that played during the Couch Gag to "The Old Man and the Lisa" (where the living room is a Whack-A-Mole game and Homer gets hit).
- Lisa has an Imagine Spot where she sees herself becoming morbidly obese and speaking with a Southern accent, just like Bart during "King-Size Homer". However, Lisa's imagine spot is nightmarish, whereas Bart's is optimistic.
- Cerebus Retcon: The episode puts a Black Comedy spin on the Women Are Wiser dynamic we've seen in the Simpson family up to this point with the family coming to believe it's written into the DNA, as evidenced by Homer and Bart starting off intelligent and gradually beginning to lose their smarts at around age 8, which Abe claims happened to him as well. It's worth noting that this is never confirmed beyond the point of speculation based on the evidence, and other episodes would offer alternative explanations for why Homer and Bart are the way they are.
- Couch Gag: A vine grows in the middle of the living room and sprouts fruit and vegetable versions of the Simpsons.
- Curse Cut Short: Both visibly and audibly, when the Flanders visit Apu's freak show, one exhibit displays an "Offensive Baseball Cap" reading "Show me your tits". The camera shows a POV of Rod and Todd reading the cap out loud only for Ned to cover their eyes before they finish. Ned tells them it's "Show me your tie."
- Didn't Think This Through: Homer gathers together all the relatives he can find to try to prove to Lisa that Grandpa's "Simpson gene" theory is absurd. Unfortunately, his plan only proves the opposite, because all the male family members are bigger losers than he is. (As Bart tells him, "You probably should have researched this first, eh Dad?") Fortunately, he inadvertently does manage to get Lisa her confidence back, as the female family members are very successful and intelligent; as one of them explains to Lisa, the Simpson gene is in the Y chromosome.
- "Flowers for Algernon" Syndrome: All of the drama is Lisa's belief that she's doomed to suffer this, and may already be starting to.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: Bart never actually solves the brain teaser. He just picks up Milhouse's answer and asks Martin if it's correct again. Martin doesn't notice.
- Frivolous Lawsuit: One of the dozen or so of Homer's relatives that he gathers claims he makes a living by insurance-fraud lawsuits.
- Funny Background Event: As Grampa walks Lisa past the table where he got his haircut, Maggie can be seen in her high chair, reaching toward the scissors.
- Future Loser: Lisa fears she will become one from eating a candy bar: it causes her to have an Imagine Spot where she ends up having a bunch of children, married to Ralph, becoming well over 300 pounds, and speaking with a Southern accent.
- Harmless Freezing: Jasper is frozen solid by the Kwik-E-Mart's freezer, and when he thaws out, he's completely unharmed, with absolutely no problems with hypothermia, frostbite, or shock.
- Horny Vikings: Jasper is fitted with a typical Viking helmet and shield when repurposed as "Frostillicus."
- Human Popsicle: Jasper tries this in the freezer, becoming "Frostillicus" in the process. He technically does defrost in the future, but it's only a couple of days or so rather than several years when robot wives are "cheap and efficient".
- In-Universe Factoid Failure: After giving an oversimplification of what DNA is, Troy McClure freezes up when asked what DNA actually stands for.
- It Runs in the Family: The Simpson Gene is explained to be an hereditary gene that gradually turns a Simpson member into a dumb moron as they age. Lisa finds out through the female side of the family that the gene only affects the males, proven by how the females all have successful careers in medicine and being realtors for growing companies.
- Last-Minute Project: Lisa forgot about a school agriculture project, so she makes a pig by sticking some pushpins into an eraser.
- Odd Reaction Out: All of Homer's relatives explain what they do for a living, whether they be legitimate forms of income (i.e. owner of a failed shrimp factory, a jug band manager) or not (i.e. stepping in front of cars so they can sue the drivers, and begging celebrities for money). The last guy just complains "My legs hurt".
- Lies to Children: One of the mundane items Apu puts on display as an attraction is "The Offensive Baseball Cap," which is on a spinning pedestal. The Flanders kids read as far as "SHOW ME YOUR T" before Ned covers their eyes and yanks them away.Ned: It says "Show me your tie." It's cute. Come on, let's go!
- Mundane Object Amazement: After Jasper freezes himself in the Kwik-E-Mart freezer, Apu turns the whole store into a tourist trap called the "Freak-E-Mart" with him as the feature attraction, padding it out entirely with displays that evoke this in his customers (a novelty baseball cap with a rude slogan, a Frito that was found in a bag of Doritos, an unlabeled tin can). Jasper himself evinces this when he wakes up in the freezer and wanders into the store, believing he's in the future.Jasper: "Moon Pie." What a time to be alive.
- Naked People Are Funny:
- Jasper defrosts and leaves the freezer, spoiling Apu's chance to sell him to the Rich Texan (or at least his head). Following this is a gag where the Kwik-E-Mart is remade into a strip joint called the Nud-E-Mart, complete with Apu and Sanjay naked behind a podium and a bike post outside the entrance.
- Kent Brockman's news report about towel snappings features a bare, yellow butt.
- No Doubt the Years Have Changed Me: Reversed and parodied when Jasper attempts to freeze himself in the Kwik-E-Mart freezer, in a bit to behold the wonders of the future. He defrosts and reanimates within a few days of his hibernation, and, assuming that he had indeed been frozen for many years, gazes in amazement around him. Upon encountering Apu, Jasper laments to him that "time has ravaged [Apu's] once youthful looks".
- Noodle Incident: What happened between Grampa and Louie the barber? Obviously an argument of some sort, but over what?Grampa: The George Raft look is dead! I want an Audie Murphy!
Marge: If you would just apologize to Louie, you could get your hair cut the way you want!
Grampa: No apology! Not until he admits he's a jerk! - Oh, Crap!: Lisa when she realizes she forgot all about the agriculture project, which is due in for that day.
- Only the Leads Get a Happy Ending: The revelation that, while Simpson men hold to the trend, Simpson women tend to retain their intelligence into adulthood and find professional success comes as a huge relief...to Lisa.Bart: So wait a minute. This means I'm gonna be a failure?Homer: Yes, son. A spectacular failure.
- Opening Shout-Out: When Springfield Elementary School is shown letting out for the day, Bart rides his skateboard out the front door, just as he does in the full-length opening sequence, though this time he rides alongside a bunch of kids gleefully running out of the school.
- Overly Narrow Superlative: Lisa calls Yertle the Turtle possibly the greatest book ever written on the subject of turtle-stacking.
- Riddle for the Ages: What was in the unlabelled can? Otto suggests it's something nobody was supposed to know.
- Selective Enforcement: Homer immediately stopped caring about the Simpson Gene when it's discovered that it only affects Bart.
- Shout-Out:
- During her speech to encourage people to use their minds, Lisa describes the works To Kill a Mockingbird, Harriet the Spy and Yertle the Turtle as great literature.
- Homer, Bart and Lisa watch a show (on nonstop Fox) featuring a montage of buildings exploding and imploding. One of the buildings is a Gothic manor with a gate reading "The House of Usher."
- The eraser pig made with springs and pushpins is a reference to a similar prop in Matt Groening's Life in Hell comics.
- Lisa's imagination spot where she becomes obese and uneducated spoofs What's Eating Gilbert Grape.
- Skewed Priorities: Dr. Nick is called in to advise when Jasper freezes himself alive inside the Kwik-E-Mart's freezer."Well, we better leave him in there. Moving him now could kill him. And tire us out."
- Stock Lateral Thinking Puzzle: The brain teaser that sets off the episode is comparable to one as Lisa tries to figure out what the last symbol in a series of six would be. She even notes that the symbols don't appear to be anything like Egyptian hieroglyphics or any characters of the like. At the end, she finds that the symbols are made of the numbers 1-6 fused together with a mirrored image of each number.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: Lisa gets able to make a heartfelt entreaty about the importance of valuing intelligence by claiming she wants to speak about her (feigned) opposition to Proposition 305, giving discount bus fares to war widows. Later that evening when she's being broadcast...Lisa: I'm supposed to talk to you about Proposition 305...
Homer: Mooching war widows! - Strong Family Resemblance: The Simpsons' extended family, all the men look like Homer, while the women look like Bart and Lisa.
- These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: Apu briefly converts the Kwik-E-Mart into a freakshow exhibit, and one of the items on display is a can where the label has fallen off, rendering it's contents a total mystery. Otto says a line almost exactly the same as the trope title when he comes across it.
- Women Are Wiser: Literally encoded in the genetics of the Simpson family (or so Grandpa says, and thus convinces Lisa of): family males are doomed to become Epic Fail deadbeat imbeciles and women are all fated to be incredibly awesome brainiacs.
