YMMV / The Simpsons S 7 E 25 Summer Of 4 Ft 2

• Accidental Aesop: There's an aesop about being humble, as Lisa never showed any of her Soapbox Sadie or Insufferable Genius aspects that put off the kids in Springfield. The fact that Lisa impresses Erin and her friends with her knowledge of the hermit crab proves her intelligence isn't the issue, but being arrogant in her knowledge.
• Alternate Aesop Interpretation:
  • In his review, TheRealJims suggests that the actual Aesop isn't Be Yourself, but "Be confident in yourself." The same review also suggests that you can be true to your own self while still being open minded and taking new steps to socialise.
  • Sometimes being a little fake at first instead of going straight for your own interests is a good way to make friends. The beach kids might not have embraced Lisa's nerdy self right out of the gate, since they wouldn't have seen her as having anything in common with them. Lisa's mistake was in believing that hiding everything about who she was was the only way to keep her new friends when, in fact, they'd already gotten to know the real her by spending time with her, and they liked that person.
  • To fit in, you do have to change certain things about yourself.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • The other kids do look suspicious whenever Lisa lets her old personality slip through, and she has to quickly cover up with "like, you know, whatever". Maybe they weren't put off by Lisa displaying nerd-like qualities themselves, but because she was suddenly acting so different from what they thought was how she was normally. Or they could sense she was hiding something and were concerned.
  • Does Lisa suffer loneliness because of Kids Are Cruel? Has she alienated others by being an Insufferable Genius? Or maybe a bit of both?
• Franchise Original Sin: Although this is not the first episode focused on Lisa making new friends (that would be Lisa's Rival), this is the first episode that focus on Lisa's difficulty in making friends, a plot that would be used a few times later much to the displeasure of fans because of how repetitive these episodes became in later seasons
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Lou and Eddie bring Milhouse back to school after he runs out, telling Mrs. Krabapple that they had a tip on the inside, with the other students giving Martin dirty looks. In Lisa the Boy Scout, one of the rejected idea segments involves Martin actually being an adult working undercover as an elementary school student.
• Memetic Mutation: The odd grin that slowly creeps onto Homer's face when he, Marge, Milhouse, and Bart are playing Mystery Date and Bart gets "the dud."
• Unintentional Period Piece: The "hip" kids Lisa makes friends with embody the "indie" atmosphere of the late nineties. Further cementing the nineties feel Lisa claims she learned the word 'crustacean' while watching Baywatch.
• Values Dissonance:
  • A depressed Lisa sighs that her only friends are writers like Gore Vidal, "and even he's kissed more boys than I ever will." Marge quickly corrects her that boys kiss girls. When the episode first aired in 1996, it was common to portray a character uncomfortable with mentioning homosexuality as just slightly behind the times or clueless (or both - part of the joke is that Marge obviously has no idea who Vidal is). To a modern viewer, however, it is quite startling to hear such a homophobic comment from as likeable character as Marge at all, still less to have it go unchallenged.
  • Lisa trying to hide her intelligence and love of reading is firmly grounded in the 90s and 2000s attitudes that Dumb Is Good (acting dumb would become something of a fashion in the early 2000s). This died off towards the end of the decade, with nerd culture becoming mainstream as well as Harry Potter making reading a popular thing for kids.
• Woolseyism: Instead of Baywatch, in the Italian dub Lisa states that she learnt the word "crustacean" from the first Ace Ventura movie.

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