The Lisa episode of The Simpsons Season 36 was a huge risk that paid off brilliantly

Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Simpsons Season 36, Episode 3, “Desperately Seeking Lisa”

Although The Simpsons Season 36, Episode 3 wasn’t perfect, the outing took a big risk that paid off handsomely for the show’s creators. While The SimpsonsThe renewal of season 37 has not been announced yet, it seems like a pretty sure thing. After over 35 years on the air and over 760 episodes, it’s hard to imagine The Simpsons Facing cancellation. This hasn’t necessarily been good for the show’s reputation, as the series has become such a pop culture mainstay that it’s hard to watch The Simpsons As a powerful, provocative show in its current incarnation.

The Simpsons Reasonably could be accused of coasting into its fourth decade, but it’s not quite fair. Although seasons 30-33 were notably weak, the writing of seasons 34 and 35 took some impressive risks that elevated the show’s critical standing. The Simpsons The Season 36 premiere continued that approach with a weirdly ambitious meta episode that purported to be an in-universe “Series finale.” This episode showed that the series still has fresh ideas, even if the next episode of The Simpsons Season 36 broke the show’s promising trend of killing off irrelevant recurring characters to keep viewers on their toes.

The Simpsons Season 36 Episode 3 focused entirely on Lisa

Marge Bart Homer and Maggie barely appear in “Desperately Looking for Lisa”

The Simpsons The show’s hot streak of experimental episodes continued with season 36, episode 3, “Desperately Seeking Lisa.” “Desperately Searching for Lisa” barely featured members of the Simpson family other than LisaA daring approach that allows the tour to truly center Lisa’s unique perspective. It was a fun experiment, but “Desperately Looking for Lisa” wasn’t rooted in novelty. Ignoring the rest of the Simpson family was necessary to give Lisa’s character arc enough screen time, and dropping the rest of the Simpsons allowed Lisa to prove just how independent she could be when she ventured into Capitol City alone.

“Desperately Looking for Lisa” began with the Simpson family dropping Lisa off at the train station to spend the weekend in Capitol City with Patty and Selma. Lisa and Marge were involved in a fight, but it was less relevant to the story of the episode than it was. In a surprising twist, the Simpson family members didn’t appear again until two-thirds of the way through the episode. Even then, they only featured for a few seconds as Lisa tried to call home and no one noticed. The rest of the entire runtime of the episode was devoted to Lisa’s misadventure.

The Simpsons rarely centers just one family member

The Simpsons typically incorporates the rest of the family through a B-story

Almost every episode of The Simpsons Focuses on one family member over the rest of the clan, As evidenced by season 36’s premiere “Bart’s Birthday” focusing primarily on Bart’s internal journey. However, it is less common for The Simpsons To focus on one character so hard that the rest of the family barely appear in the episode. This happened on occasion, viz The Simpsons Has tried all manner of ambitious experiments during his decades on the air. For example, season 8, episode 9, “El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer (The Mysterious Voyage of Homer),” mainly centered on Homer.

Homer’s hallucinatory vision quest took up almost all of the acclaimed outing and, in a more recent example, season 34, episode 22, “Homer’s Adventures Through the Windshield Glass” saw Homer’s out-of-body experience during a car crash dominate the episode s action. However, the two outings have one thing in common. Both episodes focus on Homer, the show’s unofficial main character. It is less surprising for The Simpsons To dismiss Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie in favor of being the de facto protagonist as it is for the series to center on Lisa for an entire outing, but “Desperately Searching for Lisa” did just that.

“Desperately Searching for Lisa” proved that Lisa is central to The Simpsons

Lisa’s search for purpose is surprisingly compelling

Most of the episodes that could have been The Simpsons Series finales have the same thing in common. From season 23, episode 19, “A Totally Fun Thing Bart Will Never Do Again,” to season 19, episode 9, “Eternal Moonshine from The Simpsons View,” these outings typically prize the perspective of one family member over the rest . The Simpsons Excels when the show focuses on one characterSince this allows the series to delve deeper into their story and flesh out their motivations further than the show can usually manage in its twenty minute episode’s runtime. In the episodes, The Simpsons over his limitations.

“Desperately Seeking Lisa” achieves this with a warm parody of director Martin Scorsese’s black comedy Another hour This doubles as an insight into Lisa’s uncertain future. The Simpsons has previously given viewers contradictory glimpses into Lisa’s future, but her experience of hanging around with pretentious artists and finally feeling at home was a poignant reminder of her struggles with small-town Springfield. The revelation that the artists were using her for funding was a brutal twist, and Lisa’s skill at killing them was a brilliant reminder of her appeal. Despite her pretensions, Lisa has always been a daring iconoclast.

The Simpsons Season 36 keeps the show’s best recent trend alive

“Desperately Seeking Lisa” is the show’s latest oddball experiment

By rejecting the pleasures of the posers and returning home to Springfield, Lisa expressed her independence and her authenticity in “Desperately Looking for Lisa.” The episode was a perfect standalone showcase for the character proving that she was never the one-dimensional know-it-all the show’s lesser seasons sometimes portray her as. Furthermore, “Desperately Seeking Lisa” reaffirmed the show’s commitment to its new, inventive approach to storytelling. Season 34 of the series featured the first full-length Treehouse of Horror special, in which the show parodied Stephen King’s itAnd a whole episode of Meta”Unheard scenes” which mocks various fan theories about the show.

Meanwhile, season 35 turned its focus to Marge with two trippy outings, “A Mid-Childhood Night’s Dream” and “Clan of the Coffee Mom,” which realized her inner world in vivid terms. The same season killed off a recurring character for the first time in years, and season 35, episode 7, “It’s a Blunderful Life” jumped forward into the future to depict the deaths of Homer and Bart. The Simpsons The season 36 premiere kept this exciting trend alive, and now “Desperately Searching for Lisa” is further proof that The Simpsons Willing to rest on his laurels as the show continues into its thirty-sixth year.