S3E14: Lisa the Greek
Moe's Tavern...home of the Super Sunday Brunch Spectacular!
For a range of personal reasons, I’ve been struggling to write lately. While the range features getting six bottles stuck on my fingers doing a David Patrick Kelly impression (just kidding), my decline in productivity can be most accurately attributed to good old-fashioned writer’s block
Writing—in a general sense—I don’t struggle with: See? Look at me go! Another sentence! A phrase! He writes a clause! Truly unstoppable.
But writing specifically can be a challenge: specifically, what do I want to say about Lisa the Greek?
Writers writing about writer’s block is as cliché as cricketers bowling and hitting balls (guys get a new shtick). The only thing more cliché than writers writing about writer’s block is writers writing about writers. What’s that, Stephen? Your new one is about an author who goes crazy in an abandoned hotel as a metaphor for alcoholism? And that’s a different author to the one that got kidnapped and had to chop off his leg, as a metaphor for drug addiction? Also, you doing okay, Stephen?
I have a handful of remedies for writer’s block—and none of this ‘go for a walk’ nonsense.
First, I head over to Richard Herring’s blog. This first step is the most recent addition to my varied-step plan. Herring writes daily, which is impressive when you think about how rarely stuff happens.
If I’m especially stuck, I’ve been known to check out typelit.io—a site I would visit at the start of every one of my copywriting days. Retyping classics in the hope it would do for me what The Great Gatsby did for Hunter S. Thompson.
Lastly, and most relevantly in the case of The Simpsons, I usually read something—anything—and just end up writing about whatever superficial, arbitrary connection I can make between an episode and the latest issue of Mad Magazine to slide across my desk:
Homer and Ned’s dynamic is like two feuding spies of contrasting colour
This is a pretty efficient formula: it’s actually the formula for all creativity. Reading MacBeth? Uncreative. Restaging MacBeth in apartheid Africa? Creative. Eating potato chips? Uncreative. Chips on bread? Creative. A show about a family? Uncreative. A show about a family, but they are yellow? You get it.
And what an unwieldy way to mention that I've been reading Planet Simpson by Chris Turner.
It’s a great book and a disheartening experience.
Whereas my commentary of the episode where Lisa and Homer bond over a shared love of football gambling (well, Homer loves the gambling. Lisa just loves spending time with her father) would probably just be:
It's a Homer and Lisa episode! I like those! Wonder what Bart's up too?
Turner, given the chance, would probably talk about the transcendence of modernity, the legacy of writing duo Kogen and Wolodarsky, and quote radical feminist Bonnie Burstow:
Often father and daughter look down on mother (woman) together. They exchange meaningful glances when she misses a point. They agree that she is not bright as they are, cannot reason as they do. This collusion does not save the daughter from the mother’s fate
Basically, it’s annoying that his published, well-researched writing project is better than my…also writing project.
Turner is a Lisa. I am a Homer.
At the end of Lisa the Greek, Lisa teaches Homer a lesson. A daughter’s love is more important than money. Maybe at the end of this blog, I’ll have learned something from Chris.
Review: 5/5
Since last we spoke:
S3E11: Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk (2/5)
An entirely forgettable episode with one redeemable moment. When Burns sells the plant, he starts a new life that includes beekeeping, boxing and bocce ball. But for the employees left behind, the new German management means a new way of working. Or, for Homer, a new way of not working (he’s fired),
20 minutes pass, and Homer is rehired, and Burns buys the plant back.
Here’s the redeemable moment:
S3E12: I Married Marge (4/5)
An episode painfully close to deserving a write-up. And an episode painfully close to being a Homer/Maggie episode. Marge thinks she’s pregnant, and Barnacle Bill's Home Pregnancy Test can’t substitute a doctor’s visit. While Marge goes to the doctor, Homer tells the kids the story of how Bart came to join the Simpsons.
After a passionate night in the minigolf windmill, Marge falls pregnant. Homer can’t get a job at the nuclear power plant, and, following a brief montage, winds up as a fast-food trainee. He’s determined that he’s not good enough for Marge; Marge doesn’t feel the same way.
S3E13: Radio Bart (3/5)
A lot of memorable moments, but like Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk, largely forgettable.
When Bart gets a radio microphone for his birthday, he’s gifted the ability to broadcast his voice to radios. Following some relatively harmless pranks, he convinces Springfield that a boy named Timmy O’Toole has fallen down a well. The town rallies to rescue the non-existent boy, but when Bart actually falls down the well, the town’s somewhat less sympathetic.