Lisa the Drama Queen
"Lisa the Drama Queen"
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Episode Information
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Lisa the Drama Queen is the ninth episode of the Simpsons Season 20. It received negative reviews from critics and was the lowest watched Simpsons episode of all time.
Plot
When Homer forces the kids to take classes at the rec. center, Lisa befriends an intelligent and imaginative girl named Juliet, who is, like her, a fan of Josh Groban. The two create a fantasy world named "Equalia", and grow ever more subsumed in it, becoming distracted from reality.[1] Juliet in particular seems to be using "Equalia" to escape from her troubled relationship with her father, who neglects her interests in favour of his academic specialty of John Grisham. After meeting Juliet's family, and learning of Lisa's increasingly distracted performance in school, Marge becomes concerned about Lisa's friendship with Juliet, and forbids Lisa from seeing her. In response, Lisa and Juliet run away to a derelict restaurant (designed like a castle) to live out their world of "Equalia". Unfortunately, Jimbo, Dolph, and Kearney are also using the restaurant as a hideout, and imprison the girls. Juliet and Lisa manage to escape by entrancing Kearney with their tales of "Equalia" (causing him to turn on Jimbo and Dolph when they try to burn the "Equalia" manuscript), but when Lisa tells Juliet that she has to live in the real world, Juliet abandons the friendship (causing Lisa to conclude that Juliet is crazy).
Two months later, Lisa receives a publisher's rejection letter after attempting to get her "Equalia" book published, but she inspires Homer to create his own fantasy world (which goes no further than him re-imagining the family in forms more pleasing to him--Bart is a hot dog, Lisa is a starfish, Marge is a bottle of Duff Beer, and Maggie is a monster truck).
Cultural References
Elements of the plot loosely resemble the Peter Jackson film Heavenly Creatures, in particular the scenes where the girls imagine themselves in their fantasy world and how Marge bans Lisa from seeing her friend Juliet, who is loosely based on Juliet Hulme.[2] Also, the girls obsession with Josh Groban mirrors the obsession of the girls in Heavenly Creatures with opera singer Mario Lanza.
The song "Wipeout" was played while their visit to the Folk Art Museum (although the wipeout at the beginning was replaced by folk art).
References
- ↑ Gallery photos. FoxFlash. Retrieved on 2009-01-09.
- ↑ http://www.jossip.com/was-this-weeks-simpson-reference-a-littlesapphic-20090126/
