"Lisa the Boy Scout" is an episode of The Simpsons that first aired on October 9, 2022. Directed by Timothy Bailey. Written by Dan Greaney. Episode Code Number UABF19.
The Boy Explorers have begun accepting girl members, and Lisa promptly joins the group. After showing off she's already got three patches, it seems as if it's going to be another Sibling Rivalry story...
Then the broadcast gets hijacked by a pair of masked hackers (Anna Faris and Hank Azaria). Having hacked into the Disney database, these hackers demand a large ransom to be paid in Bitcoin, and until it's paid, they will broadcast unaired shark-jumping scenes from the series with the intent on tanking the reputation of The Simpsons, and by extension, Disney. However, as the broadcast goes on, these masked hackers slowly lose their anonymity and swiftly fall in love with each other.
Tropes
- Adventures in Comaland: One of these clips is of Homer waking up in a hospital bed after the events of "Bart the Daredevil", having dreamed every episode that came after.
- Aroused by Their Voice: Once the voice modifier breaks down, the female hacker loves the male hacker's British accent, and especially the way he says "schedule", as does the female cop trying to bust them.
- Ascended Meme: Several of the clips "confirm" two of the fandom's Stock Epileptic Trees: Officer Eddie being Ralph Wiggum's real father and the events of most of the series being Homer's coma dream. (The more frequently-seen theory regarding the latter, specifically debunked by Al Jean
, is that Homer never woke up from the coma he fell into in Season 4's "So It's Come to This: A Simpsons Clip Show," explaining the show's turn for Denser and Wackier territory from Season 5 on; this episode's take has the coma result from falling into Springfield Gorge in "Bart the Daredevil," which would make the show All Just a Dream starting at Season 2). - Aspect Ratio Switch: The clips that are meant to imitate Season 1 and 2 episodes are animated in 4:3.
- Back to the Early Installment: One clip features an adult Bart going back in time to the ending of the very first episode to give predictions of the future to the past version of the family.
- Bait-and-Switch: The whole "Lisa joining the Boy Explorers" plot only shows up for the first and last scenes of the episode.
- Canon Discontinuity: Because of the meta nature of this episode and the huge number of big reveals from these deleted clips, absolutely nothing from this episode is canon.
- Continuity Nod: There's a montage of scrapped episodes with only a title set to "Hopin' for a Dream" from "Covercraft".
- Couch Gag: Instead of the family couch, a Scrabble tile holder holds tiles with the letters A, C, C, G, G, H, O, U trying to sort themselves to spell "COUCH GAG".
- Cyber Green: When the broadcast is first being hacked, before the hackers' livestream camera turns on, the screen is an old-fashioned black-and-bright-green DOS prompt screen.
- Decoy Protagonist: The first few minutes set up a typical Lisa and Bart-themed episode.
- Family Relationship Switcheroo: The episode has four scenes with this trope, "revealing" Ralph Wiggum is Eddie's son, Selma is Marge's mother (and a joke implying Disco Stu is her father), Milhouse isn't the son of either of his parents, and Willie isn't his rake's father, nor is he Scottish, but Welsh.
- Formula-Breaking Episode: This episode is essentially a Clip Show of unreleased scenes.
- Here We Go Again!: A smaller-scale example only applying to one scene. After realizing Lenny is only a figment of his imagination, Carl then starts talking to "Steven", who suddenly showed up, sitting on Lenny's stool. Moe promptly pours two beers, ready to entertain the illusion again.
- Hero of Another Story: Thanks to the hijack, we only see fragments of Lisa and Bart's story. All we know is that it somehow ended with them being lost in the woods, and in that the interim Homer and Marge were on the brink of divorce over something insignificant.
- His Name Is...: After Selma reveals she's actually Marge's mother, Marge asks who her father is. Selma could only get out the word "Disco..."Marge: Disco who? Disco WHO?!
- Imaginary Friend: The very first clip shown is of Carl being told that Lenny doesn't exist and is just a figment of his imagination, to cover up the trauma of finding out his previous best friend was also a figment of his imagination.
- Keep It Foreign: In the French version, the segment "Lisa learns French" switch languages: Lisa learns English instead and keeps speaking this idiom on the phone, to the French-speaking operator.
- Life Imitates Art: For the second time this season, this show's track record for this trope is alluded to In-Universe, with the predictions being explained by a grown-up Bart Simpson time traveling to the first episode and telling his past family everything that will happen that they predicted.
- Living a Double Life: One scene depicts Martin Prince as doing this, being a short grown-up named Reggie with a wife and two kids with a third along the way, disguising himself as a nerdy kid and going to school only as a part of a deep-cover investigation.
- Merit Badges for Everything: Lisa says she's earned badges in badge-receiving and Sibling Rivalry.
- Meta Twist: The show has already done plenty of "Lisa tries a hobby/institution that is dominated by boys" stories, so "Lisa joins the boy scouts despite Bart's frustrations" feels like a perfectly standard jumping off point for a generic Simpsons episode, which makes the Bait-and-Switch of the hacker intrusion a bit more shocking.
- My Beloved Smother: Agnes berates Seymour for chewing "too loud" and tells him to chew 2 times before swallowing a piece of food leading to the latter to skip dinner.
- Mythology Gag: The coma dreams Homer is upset about not actually happening involve having a pet lobster, going to space, and all of the Halloweens.
- Never Trust a Title: The title references a common Exactly What It Says on the Tin episode-naming formula used many times throughout the series (ex. "Lisa the Beauty Queen," "Homer the Heretic") to make the viewer expect a typical Simpsons episode about a character (Lisa) taking on a role (boy scout). We only see a few minutes of this story.
- New Job as the Plot Demands: Raphael's (the sarcastic guy) reasoning for this trope is that there's an army of clones of him for each job he's had.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Well, less "Celebrity" and more "Fandom VIP". The female hacker bears a strong resemblance to the Simpsons-sona of Lydia Hicks, owner of the YouTube channel "The Simpsons Theory" and co-author of the book "The Simpsons Secret: A Cromulent Guide To How The Simpsons Predicted Everything!" Lydia's persona and the female hacker share a similar winged eyeliner, wavy red hair, lipstick and nose shape. The biggest difference between Lydia and female hacker is that Lydia has a British accent while the female hacker doesn't, but the male hacker (who bears a resemblance to Lydia's husband James, the book's other co-author) does. Lydia has asked Matt Selman about this, and based on his reply and his then-recently liked tweets, it's most likely not a coincidence.
- Noodle Incident: The entire middle portion of the "boy scout" story, of which we only see the beginning (Lisa announcing she's joined the Boy Explorers right before an annual jamboree that Bart has been looking forward to, stoking up the Sibling Rivalry) and the ending (Bart and Lisa, who were somehow lost by their guides, emerging traumatized from the woods and reuniting with the relieved Homer and Marge); Marge also indicates that while they were gone, she and Homer nearly got divorced over a minor incident before Homer won her back with an apology.
- No-Tell Motel: After having enough beratement from his mother for the night, Skinner departs for the Sleep-Eazy Motel, dons a disguise, and meets with a more loving mother figure and acts out a more healthy mother-son relationship. After leaving, this other mother turns out to be Agnes in disguise.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Moe says this when Carl makes a new imaginary friend.
- The officers react the same way when the hackers reveal they've hacked all of Disney.
- One-Word Vocabulary: "Yar, They Blow" features the Sea Captain and Groundskeeper Willie, speaking only in "Yarr" and "Aye" respectively.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: "Spider Fan: Turn Off the Snark" has Comic Book Guy in an unusually good mood, giving everything he comes across rave reviews. This is due to an overdose of sour cream cutting off oxygen flow to his brain, which ends up killing him.
- Parental Substitute: Seymour unknowingly finds one in his actual mother.
- Recycled Script: The episode supposedly cut off by the hackers' broadcast is an In-Universe example, with the friction caused by Lisa following Bart into a more traditionally male domain having been explored in episodes like "Lisa on Ice" and "The Secret War of Lisa Simpson" (besides other episodes such as "Jazzy and the Pussycats" generally dealing with the theme of one sibling muscling in on another's perceived area of talent) and the conclusion indicating that they were lost in the woods together as in "Bart vs. Lisa vs. the Third Grade," to say nothing of an implied B-plot about Homer and Marge having their umpteenth speedily-resolved marriage crisis.
- Retraux: Several clips are animated in 4:3 aspect and in a style similar to the Mike Scully/early Al Jean years.
- Running Gag: The third act contains four clips that begin with someone declaring "The lies stop now!" before throwing a glass of water at a wall (or at Homer in Selma's case) before a reveal about the familial relations of that someone.
- Scout-Out: Even with how little we see of the Boy Explorers, it's obvious that the organization is a fictional equivalent to the Boy Scouts of America.
- Secret Identity Vocal Shift: The hackers were using an app that did this, only for it to suddenly turn off due to the free trial expiring.
- Self-Deprecation:
- Among the clips the hackers save for the worst of the worst, there are some infamous real scenes from aired episodes among them, including the jockey song from "Saddlesore Galactica", Mr. Burns playing cup-and-ball with his distended eyeballs from "The Scorpion's Tale", and Homer cooking himself from Treehouse of Horror XXVIII's "Mmm... Homer".
- The FBI couldn't care less about the threat to ruin The Simpsons' IP because no one's paying any attention to the Long Runner anymore, and only act when the hackers threaten the rest of Disney's properties.Lead Agent: Go ahead. You've already released all the Simpsons files. No one cared. The only people still watching that show are football fans who passed out with the TV on.
- The ending of the episode suggests that Homer and Marge's nonexistent subplot from the unseen, nonexistent "real" episode was uninspired and derivative of episodes where Marge threatens to divorce Homer. Homer specifically says it was over something dumb and inconsequential and Marge indicates that he was able to easily get her to forgive him and drop it.
- Shout-Out: Homer's apology video to Finland is a parody of John Cena's apology video to China.
- Significant Name Overlap: Having escaped from the police, the hackers reveal their names to each other, and they're both named Ashley.
- Skewed Priorities: One clip pushes Lisa's typical Go-Getter Girl tendencies far into Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist territory when a building full of people is on fire and she calls an emergency number, but refuses to speak English because she doesn't want to compromise her grade in an immersive French course.
- So Proud of You: The "episode" interrupted by the hackers ends with a typical Spoof Aesop where Homer expresses pride in Bart and Lisa, who, following their adventure in the wilderness, have decided that they want to plant themselves in front of the TV and never go outside ever again.
- Spinoff Babies: The hackers threaten to also release footage of The World According to Baby Jeff Goldblum.
- Spit Take: Homer gives a big one in "the dog scene", after Santa's Little Helper tells him "Good morning, Homer!" Not in reaction to the dog talking, but because "It's morning?!".
- Stylistic Suck: The bulk of the episode is made up of clips from hypothetical Simpsons episodes deemed too bad to air. The little we see of the "episode" interrupted by the fictional broadcast likewise spoofs the show's most predictable tropes.
- Take That, Audience!: The writers have described this episode as a shot at fans who cite specific moments from the show as being 'show ruining', even in cases where the example may be a decade-plus old, and thus not really a representative example of what 'Modern Simpsons' actually is.
- Trailers Always Spoil: Promo pictures gave away a lot of the episode's twist scenes, such as a shot of the hackers, Bart time traveling to the first episode, and a shot of Frink on Mars.
- Two-Person Love Triangle: A segment involving the Skinners plays a Does This Remind You of Anything? version of this, as Seymour and Agnes, seeking respite from their relationship in an alternate mother and an alternate son respectively, are unknowingly two-timing each other with each other thanks to the power of the Paper-Thin Disguise.
- Voodoo Shark: What trauma could have possibly been great enough to make Carl invent Lenny as his best friend and fully believe in his existence? Simple: the trauma of realizing that his previous best friend was imaginary.
- Whole-Plot Reference: Several of these clips are from theoretical episodes that run with this.
- "Field Goal of Dreams" is Homer's take on Field of Dreams wherein Homer mows down a cornfield to make a football stadium, but accidentally makes one that's Canadian regulation instead, attracting the ghosts of less-than-competent Canadian football stars (as well as Doug Flutie).
- "John Frink of Mars" is a take on The Martian wherein Professor Frink is abandoned on Mars, and uses his science skills to swiftly ensure his survival.
- Year Inside, Hour Outside: In the clip revealing the events of over thirty seasons to be Homer's Adventures in Comaland after surviving his fall into Springfield Gorge, he's only been in the coma for two days.
