Original air date: 5/12/2002
Production code: DABF-15
Lisa poses as a college student after befriending college girls who can pass for elementary school students because of their height. Meanwhile, a Chinese mosquito infects Bart and Bart must live in a plastic bubble.
Tropes:
- Abusive Parents: Homer is in true form here, filling up Bart's bubble with water, then throwing him down the hallways and congratulating himself for his good parenting.
- Art Shift: Several shots during the first act have shading shadow effects in them, which stand out compared to the rest of the episode being colored with its then usual non-shaded look. May also count as an Animation Bump.
- Artsy Beret: Lisa poses as a college student to hang with her fellow gymnasts. Given that she is 10 years younger than the average student, she takes to wearing a black beret with hopes of fitting in with the intellectuals.
- As Himself: Robert Pinsky, famous poet. He makes a guest appearance at a coffee shop (which Lisa and her college friends visit) to perform some poetry.
- Audible Sharpness: Done with the female gym coach's pen when she prevents Skinner from letting Lisa pass in PE even though she doesn't deserve it since she's the only reason the school is still in operation.
- Broken Pedestal: Lisa after the college kids, Springfield Elementary kids and her parents find out for entering a college. It's eventually mended with the Springfield Elementary kids after Lisa uses Bart's bubble. Though the relationships with the other parties remain unresolved at the end.
- Bubble Boy: Bart temporarily becomes one after being infected with a Chinese virus which must be prevented from spreading in the United States.
- Butt-Monkey: Even before Skinner’s suit was ruined by Lisa’s prank, the car park dedicated to him included a date of death (2010), despite that being 8 years off at the time the episode aired.
- Call-Back: Two of them:
- A virus is once again transported from Asia to Springfield, resulting in at least one person being quarantined.
- Lisa is failing gym again.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Lisa trying to pose as a college student causes her to get shamed by the entire town.
- Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: Parodied In-Universe in the "Passive Analysis of Visual Iconography" class, when students are shown an Itchy and Scratchy short where Itchy makes butter out of Scratchy. When the class is asked what the cartoon means, one student comes to the conclusion that it's a metaphor for how "the depletion of our natural resources has pitted our small farmers against each other."
- Humiliation Conga: After being exposed as a kid in college, Lisa is scolded by her parents and taunted by the kids and even Groundskeeper Willie in Springfield Elementary.
- Idea Bulb: One episode of Itchy and Scratchy features the titular characters as Amish. Itchy has an idea and a lit candle appears.
- Incest Subtext: When asked if any of the guys in her house are cute, Lisa starts "Well, Bart is kinda..." before forcibly stopping herself.
- Implausible Deniability: Lisa enters Bart's bubble only to discover that he farted in it. He offers a "Wasn't me" in his defence.
- Jerkass:
- Lugash yells at a little girl, calling her a "failure child" and telling her to do a running jump out of the window back to her parents when she fails to stick the landing, which she does. He also "rewards" Lisa's progress by returning Snowball II to her which he had taken hostage offscreen. He also does the same with the college students and, when one of them says she had a dog, Lugash just tells her she now has a cat.
- To a lesser extent, Lisa's friends count as this since, when they discover she's not a college student, don't want anything to do with her for being an 8-year-old even if they connected so well with her. This goes double with her actual schoolmates and teachers, who also belittle her until she steals Bart's bubble to regain their trust.
- Jerkass Ball: Milhouse carried the ball when he followed Lisa and ruined her happiness simply because he was being a nosy brat. Then, even when Lisa did want to rejoin her old friends, he was one of the kids who turned her down even though her current situation was mostly his fault.
- Kick the Dog: At first, Willie comforts Lisa but then goes into Jerkass mode by calling her "college girl".
- Kids' Meal Toy: At Krusty Burger, Bart gets a plastic Krustysaurus from his meal and Grampa's "Nostalgia Meal" contains ration stamps, a bullet shell full of butter and an action figure of Liberace.Liberace: Party tonight at Roddy McDowall’s.
- Older Than They Look: The college girls who believed Lisa to be one of them. They look only slightly older than her.
- Opinion-Changing Dream: Lisa is just about ready to give up on gymnastics when she gets visited by the ghost of JFK himself, causing her to wake up with a proud cry of “Ich bin ein gymnast.”Homer: Aw, she must’ve been dreaming about Hitler again.
- Pet the Dog: Bart helping Lisa with a prank that'll get her in good with the kids.
- Potty Failure: Ralph wets his pants after questioning why everyone runs from him.
- Seamless Spontaneous Lie: As Lisa starts becoming friends with Tina and Carrie, they ask her what dorm she lives in. Lisa tells them she lives off-campus. So, they take her home, where they find Homer singing (or, trying to sing) "Tubthumping" and hurling a keg out a window.
- Shot in the Ass: After Marge tells Homer that his pellet gun was in the tree, Homer then shakes it until the gun fell to the ground and shot him. Homer then goes inside so he could try to relieve the pain.
- Something Something Leonard Bernstein: Homer tries to sing "Tubthumping" by Chumbawamba.Homer: (singing) I get knocked down, I get knocked down again! You're never gonna knock me down!Homer: (singing) I take a whiskey drink, I take a chocolate drink, and when I have to pee, I use the kitchen sink! I sing the song that reminds me I'm a urinating guy!
- Tempting Fate: Principal Skinner wears his spotless white polyester suit next to a giant chocolate cake, confident that he's safe from being pranked by Bart. In a twist, it's Lisa who takes him down a peg.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The foreign virus Bart is infected with isn't referenced at all after he's placed in the bubble. He stops exhibiting symptoms and even lets Lisa into the bubble near the end, which seems like a bad idea even assuming his quarantine period was up by that point.
