“This is what love costs a month?” – Homer Simpson
“These are standard stable fees, Mr. Simpson. Plus I’m teaching your daughter riding, grooming, and, at no extra charge, pronunciation.” – Lady at The Grateful Gelding Stables
“Father! You’ve made me the happiest girl who ever lived!” – Lisa Simpson
NOTE: Sorry for no Reading Digest yesterday. I realize it’s not graduation season, but my advice to seniors in both high school and college is: never get a job. Bart was right, working is for chumps.
I’m a big fan of the gleeful nihilism of Rick and Morty, the relentless contrarianism of South Park, the sarcastic hopelessness of Futurama, and plenty of other two word praiseworthy comedies. But there has never been anything like The Simpsons, and this morning I’m going to cite “Lisa’s Pony” as an example of why.
The first thing to note is the near mathematical precision of the writing. A line like “The young man you replaced is rolling over in his grave” is eleven words long and contains (depending on how you want to count) something like four or five jokes. Not only was a young man (who certainly didn’t care about his job enough to roll in his grave about it) killed before he had a chance to really live, but Apu blithely replaced him with a father of three because he considers routinely fatal gunshots an occupational hazard. But this is Season 3, and lines that evilly good are too numerous to count.
What puts the show above everything else is the way that lines like are justified by characters and situations. At the end of the first act, Homer says:
“Maybe I should just cut my losses, give up on Lisa, and make a fresh start with Maggie.”
That’s among the most awful things a parent can say about their child. In its way, the apathy it implies is even worse than outright abuse. This is Homer seriously contemplating quitting on an eight-year-old. And it’s not like he’s clever enough to say this for pity from Marge. He means it. Plus, it’s set up perfectly by a very short montage that has happy music over an escalating series of his parenting catastrophes.
As horrific as that is, it’s funny because we the audience never doubt Homer. We know he loves Lisa. He loves her deeper and more powerfully than he can even begin to understand; the only reason he’s thinking of quitting on her is because he can’t see any way she would ever love him again.
That’s what compels him to get the pony, to sign the usurious loan from Mr. Burns, to take the high profile yet demanding midnight-to-8am job at the Kwik-E-Mart. Every crazy and hilarious thing that happens comes from one central idea: Homer loves Lisa.
It’s beautiful, compelling, and wonderful, and building the episode on it makes and justifies every joke, no matter how bleak, cynical or hopeless. Jebus, this show is good.
