Thrifty Ways to Thieve Your Mother
|
|||||||||
|
|
|
"Thrifty Ways to Thieve Your Mother"
| ||||||||||||||||
Episode Information
|
"Thrifty Ways to Thieve Your Mother" is the first episode of broadcast season 37 of The Simpsons and the seven hundred ninety-first episode overall. It originally aired on September 28, 2025. The episode was written by Jessica Conrad and directed by Gabriel DeFrancesco. It guest stars Paul Brittain as Shawn Garrett Evanson and Keagan, Cole Escola as Devin, David Herman as John Clinch, and Stephanie Hsu as Vidalia.
"Thrifty Ways to Thieve Your Mother" was dedicated in memory of composer Alf Clausen, who died on May 29.
Synopsis
- "When Lisa starts wearing Marge's "vintage" clothes from the 90's, she's welcomed into the school's super-elite fashion club. But as they run out of retro looks, the funky fashionistas become obsessed with getting more...by hook or by crook."
Plot
The Simpson family is driving toward Aztec Theater when Bart points out the movie they were going to watch was going to be free on streaming in three days, so they head back. But when they switch on the tv to watch the movie, weird ads keep playing, showing skin care products with words not suitable for tv in them. While the others laugh it off, Marge disconnects the TV and bring out DVDs.
While Marge and Lisa watch Keagan's Pond, a teenager series, Homer and Bart start watching Clincher, a more manly show. When season 1 of the show was over, Marge and Lisa go to the attic to retrieve season 2, when Marge spots the dress she had at Lisa's age and suggest she tried weaering it at school the next day, saying noone would look, which is the opposite of what happens. At the bus every one was looking at her and then at school she was going to be judged by the most fashion kids, Devin and Vidalia. Marge soon arrived at the school, just to witness the scene of her being cheered on as the fashion kids agreed on her dress.
Marge gave her more and she is invited by Devin and Vidalia to the Fashion Club and thrifting with them, mneanwhile at work, Homer shows everyone Clincher and everyone gather around him, ignoring safety. Marge invites Lisa to the Nostalgi-Con the same day she was going thrift shopping, but Marge went to the Springfield Convention Center for Keagan's Pond, meeting Keagan, but she gets stood up by Lisa, who took the kids at her house to see Marge's clothes. When Marge gets home she gets angry at her, with the others cutting off her clothes, and prohibits the kids from using them.
At school, they don't reject her for what Marge did, and invite her at the Wiggum house, where they play with Ralph but then start disappearing from the room and then tell her it was time to go. Outside she discovers that they stole Sarah's old clothes from the attic. After some persuasion from the other fashion kids she agrees that the plan is good, to get the clothes out of the greed of Big Thrift, and when Skinner announced the mother-son dance, they see the perfect opportunity to steal all clothes at once.
To disctract the dads, she also thinks of using Clincher. When Marge forces Bart to go to the dance, the plan starts, but when Bart excapes her grasp, Marge discovers their plan on a whiteboard. At the Prince house, things don't go to plan as they don't have a tv, and Gareth Prince sounds the alarm, alerting the police. The other kids go out safe on the ladder but Lisa delays to get a replacement shirt for the one she broke for Marge, and she gets trapped in the attic, but gets saved by Marge on a dinghy.
They reconcile and Marge tells her that she tracked her down with the A Mother Always Knows app that she installed on their phone and that Bart is still at the dance, dancing with Luann. Homer took care of the cops, Clincher style, but it's revealed he just showed them the show instead of acting like Clinch. In the end, Marge makes them return all clothes back, except the shirt Lisa grabbed for her, while Vidalia compliments Lisa's classic dress, and Devin shuts down the idea of watching Keagan's Pond together.
Production
Episode writer Jessica Conrad got the idea from her own experiences as a teenager. In an interview with Cartoon Brew, Conrad said that she "used to wear my mom's clothes all the time, and it felt so cool when they came back in style" and that the "episode gave me the chance to bring that to Lisa in a way that also comments on how the show constantly fudges its timeline of what counts as 'retro.'" Conrad worked with the animators to design the retro outfits that Lisa and the school's fashion club wore, using references from old Delia's catalogs and teen dramas like Dawson's Creek to make outfits that "[captured] that late '90s, early 2000s feel while also making it resonate with what kids are wearing now."[1]
Director Gabriel DeFrancesco said that the "sheer number of wardrobe swaps was the big challenge" of the episode. DeFrancesco also joked that he was living through the episode's storyline himself when his mother-in-law "kept sending boxes of her old clothes to my kids."[1]
Gallery
References
Promo videos
|
Wikisimpsons has a collection of images related to "Thrifty Ways to Thieve Your Mother". |
