The Simpson family visits an indoor water park, where Lisa gives CPR to a raccoon and is then inspired to become a veterinarian. Marge meanwhile makes a living cleaning up crime scenes.
Tropes:
- Break the Haughty: Lisa becomes arrogant over the course of the episode while treating other people's animals, and gets hit with this pretty hard towards the end when Bart calls her out for her behavior and reveals her neglectful treatment of Nibbles, which Dr. Budgie then discovers, and also calls Lisa out.
- Call-Back: The hamster's funeral has scenes from "Skinner's Sense of Snow" and "She of Little Faith".
- Hair Reboot: In a rare aversion, following a brief gag in which Homer uses the ceiling fan to give Bart a shorter haircut, Bart wears his red cap for the rest of the episode.
- Hypocritical Humor:
- When Kent Brockman reports Lisa giving CPR to the raccoon, he says all images are from non-professionals because the professionals were wasting time with gas prices. After finishing the report, he's told he has eight minutes left and decides to use them to talk about these prices.
- Lisa berates Mr. Burns for not properly caring about his dog but her negligence causes the school hamster's death.
- It's All My Fault: Lisa feels this way towards the death of Nibbles, as she neglected him to such an extent that she accidentally killed him. Upon his death, she breaks down in tears.
- Jerkass Has a Point: It's Bart of all people who calls Lisa out for becoming arrogant towards others and in turn forgetting who she really is, and that said arrogance has caused her to neglect Nibbles. Oops.
- The problem comes in that in order to play this trope straight, that means Bart intentionally let Nibbles die just to be able to call out Lisa on her hypocrisy. Assuming he didn't just discover Nibbles in his state of neglect.
- Lisa herself is this. Because while she may have been arrogant and rude in her attitude towards others, she wasn't wrong when she was pointing out the health of the animals or the people's treatment of their pets.
- Karma Houdini: Aside from being called out by Bart and Dr. Budgie, Lisa doesn't suffer any repercussions for neglecting Nibbles and causing his death.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: On the resolution of the Two Lines, No Waiting plot.Homer: Well, I'll be. Lisa's learning about death helped Marge feel again!Dr. Budgie: Yes, a perfect dovetail.Drederick Tatum: Thank you for curing Walter Pigeon here.
- Lost Pet Grievance: The episode applies Negative Continuity to Lisa's prior experiences of pet loss and treats the loss of Nibbles the hamster as her first real brush with death.
- Megaphone Gag: After encountering a long line for the "Upstream Extreme" ride, Bart sneaks into the control room and uses the park's PA system to deliver a fake emergency announcement warning that the water is infested with "those tiny fish that swim up your wiener
". This causes everyone else to run out in a panic, letting him enjoy the ride with no waiting. - No OSHA Compliance: The indoor water park has several glaring safety issues, but one that stands out is the high dive, which is too close to the ceiling. The kids end up hitting their heads and bleeding after springing into it from the diving board.
- Putting the Pee in Pool: The water park's control room has a gauge labeled "Urine Concentration".
- Say My Name: Lisa is horrified and screams Nibbles's name when she sees how badly she has neglected him.
- Ship Tease: Nelson expresses jealously that Lisa has "a boyfriend" (the raccoon) and later further expresses an attraction to her before she's given Nibbles by Ms. Hoover.
- Shout-Out: Ralph calls himself "Finding Nemo" in the water park.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Bart of all people calls out Lisa for her arrogance and neglecting Nibbles as a result.
