S01EP06 Moaning Lisa

Moaning Lisa
Air Date: February 11, 1990
Production Episode: 7G06
Written by: Al Jean and Mike Reiss
Directed by: Wesley Archer

Here it is, Lisa's big episode. The character defining moment that started the second grade activist on her path to individuality and obsessively latching on to causes like... well, like an eight year old.

A lot of the criticisms of Lisa are about her grabbing a new ideology and beating people over the head with it, yet people tend to forget that Lisa is eight years old. Even though she acts older, she's still acting like a teenager. And this is what teenagers do. They find a new thing and they're all about that new thing until something else comes along. And Lisa almost always is brought back down to earth by the end of the episode. The vegetarian and Buddhism episodes in particular end with someone explaining to her that she can embrace an ideology while respecting other's choices.

But that's not really here nor there. This episode is all about the jazz. Which is funny, since the now canonical future episodes fifteen years later have Maggie being the artist, and Lisa being a vaguely corporate big shot.

The episode deals with Lisa being depressed over her life, feeling beaten down and unable to express herself. She hears another jazz artist outside one night, and goes off to find Bleeding Gums Murphy, voiced by Ron Taylor. Marge brings her home, and the next day gives her the world's worst pep talk. (more on that later) Marge immediately regrets this decision and demands that Lisa be sad, be herself, and never let anyone tell her different. She then takes the whole family to see Bleeding Gums at the Jazz Hole.

This is also the first episode to have a B-story. It's unfortunate that Lisa wasn't considered strong enough to carry an episode by herself, while Bart's first solo story in "Bart the Genius" didn't require one. The B-story involves Homer and Bart playing a videogame, with Homer losing every time. Not one of the stronger B-stories in the series.

We start off with Lisa in band class, with Mr. Largo's first appearance in the show itself. He scolds Lisa when she initiates a jazz solo during the class. We see a good number of the previously introduced classmates, including Martin. Ralph Wiggum has not yet appeared, though. Mr. Largo is based off an old music teacher Matt Groening had as a kid, who had a similar disdain for anything other than the classics. His version of the "classics" are public domain patriotism songs, which is explicitly stated in later seasons as a budgeting issue at Springfield Elementary. Here it's "My Country Tis of Thee". Later it's changed to "Stars and Stripes Forever" as the only song Mr. Largo ever plays.

We see Janey's first appearance as Lisa's sometimes friend in the cafeteria. Lisa's friend group is one of those weird things the series drops randomly in favor of Lisa not having friends plots. Over the course of the series, Lisa has made friends with dozens of her classmates, who all vanish once the writers need her to meet a new friend, even with the previous new friends still appearing in crowd scenes. Of course, we are talking about eight year olds. They are a fickle bunch.

At home, Lisa is yelled at for practicing her saxophone. When she stops, she hears a sound coming from outside. She follows it to the bridge, where she discovers Bleeding Gums Murphy. He mentors her on becoming a jazz musician, and our hearts grow a few sizes in the process. Back at home, Marge dreams about her childhood, with the first appearance of her mother, who retains this character model when she appears later. Here we see a recurring theme with Marge. She was told to repress her feelings and always smile. This is sometimes played for laughs, but often used to explain why she is who she is.

In a way, this is Marge's episode as well. We see her repressing her feelings (and later dreams) to give her children a better life than she had. Well, at least with Lisa. Marge realizes Lisa is gone and goes out to find her, telling her to stay away from Bleeding Gums. The next day, dropping Lisa off at band practice, she gives Lisa the same talk her mother gave her. To always smile and push your feelings down so people will like you. The immediate results of following this advice is a boy asking her to come over and do his homework for him. Mr. Largo comes out and tells her not to have any more interruptions today.

Marge grimaces at each of these, finally spinning the car around, grabbing Lisa, and telling her one of the greatest lines in the series:

"Lisa, I apologize to you, I was wrong, I take it all back. Always be yourself. If you want to be sad, honey, be sad. We'll ride it out with you. And when you get finished feeling sad, we'll still be there. From now on, let me do the smiling for both of us."

Here we see what makes Marge tick. She's resigned to her life, but she's not going to let Lisa make the same mistakes. Of course, one can argue this same "Let your children express themselves" is what makes Bart so wild, so there really should be a middle ground. That's one of the problems with the series running 25 years. At first Marge is making progress, but since Bart can't ever grow up or stop being a screwup, she basically has to ignore him and look like the world's worst parent.

Another issue is that at first it's simply "Marge put her life on hold until her children are older and then can go back to being whatever she was". (At this point a car hop. Seriously.) As the series progressed, and Marge picked up more hobbies and jobs, she went from being an artist that took some time off to someone who is constantly being pushed back down into the role of a housewife, even when those jobs would fit right alongside raising her children. Marge is an adult Lisa who has given up on her dreams. We see it later when she picks up the same activism trait that Lisa gets. We see it when she makes beautiful paintings and writes best selling novels. Yet due to the reset button and nobody ageing, she's doomed to never see her dreams come true.

So I don't know how an episode about Lisa expressing herself became such a tragic insight into Marge's character, but that's what makes the show such a classic. It isn't just five archetypes that happen to reside in the same house, it's a living, breathing family that shares experiences and grows together.