She of Little Faith

Plot

After a 1950s sci-fi movie sparks a commercial for a model rocket kit, Bart uses Homer’s credit card to order one. Homer helps Bart and Milhouse assemble it, but the rocket explodes before it can launch. Jealous of Ned Flanders’ better rocket, Homer calls on his old nerdy college roommates—Gary, Doug, and Benjamin—to build a new one piloted by the hamster Nibbles. The rocket launches successfully but runs into trouble, forcing Nibbles to eject.

Homer tries to shoot it down with a 12-gauge shotgun, but it crashes into the church. The church council meets to figure out how to pay for repairs, and with no other options, they accept help from Mr. Burns and Lindsay Naegle, who want to run the church like a business. They turn it into a commercial eyesore, adding advertising signs, a currency exchange, a Lard Lad statue, a photo booth where parishioners can stick their faces into a cutout of Jesus from The Last Supper, and a Jumbotron called “Godcam.”

Lisa is horrified, and after Lovejoy lets The Noid deliver a sermon “on the sanctity of deliciousness,” she leaves the church, feeling it has lost its soul. That night, Lisa prays to God, saying she hasn’t abandoned Him but will seek a new path to “Him” (or “Her”). Walking through town past many sacrilegious signs, she discovers Springfield’s Buddhist temple. Inside, Lenny and Carl are meditating, and actor Richard Gere explains Buddhism’s core ideas to her.

Intrigued, Lisa takes a pamphlet, studies it at home, and declares from her window that she has become a Buddhist. She plants a bodhi tree in the backyard and begins meditating, but Marge grows worried about Lisa’s soul and tries to persuade her to return to Christianity.

Production and themes

The sole Simpsons episode penned by Bill Freiberger, "She of Little Faith," was helmed by director Steven Dean Moore and aired on Fox in the U.S. on December 16, 2001. Freiberger's path to this script began during his work on the series Teen Angel alongside Al Jean and Mike Reiss. While there, Freiberger told Jean that if he ever took over The Simpsons, he should bring Freiberger on as a writer. When Jean became show runner for the thirteenth season, he assigned Freiberger the episode.

Freiberger wrote the initial draft as a freelance script at his parents' barn in Pennsylvania. Upon returning to the writing staff for revisions, he received so many notes that the script ballooned to 106 pages, forcing him to spend more time trimming it down than writing it. The central storyline—Lisa converting to Buddhism—was Jean's idea, aimed at deepening her character. The writing staff worried the concept lacked originality, noting the show had tackled religion before, but Jean insisted the focus would be on Lisa herself, not the faith.

Unlike many one-off character changes in the series, Lisa has remained a Buddhist ever since, similar to her lasting vegetarianism from "Lisa the Vegetarian."

Release

In 2002, "She of Little Faith" was up for a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program (under an hour), but lost to the Futurama episode "Roswell That Ends Well." Series creator Matt Groening, who also made Futurama, joked that the nomination let him "be bitter either way." The episode came out on DVD and Blu-ray on August 24, 2010, as part of The Simpsons: The Complete Thirteenth Season set. Critics mostly liked it after that release.

Dominic von Reidermann from Suite101.com called it a "comedy gem," and Casey Burchby of DVD Talk said it "offers its fair share of laughs." Stuart O'Conner at Screen Jabber praised it as "first-rate." Adam Rayner from Obsessed With Film found Richard Gere's performance "bland and dreary" but thought it couldn't spoil the "great" episode, especially liking Flanders' line "My Satan sense is tingling." Jennifer Malkowski gave it a B− and said the best part was Milhouse mourning his "beautiful eyebrows" after Bart and Homer's model rocket burned them off.

In 2007, Simon Crerar of The Times ranked Gere's cameo among the thirty-three funniest in the show's history. Ron Martin from 411Mania, who usually skips Lisa-focused episodes, called it "one of the worst ‘Lisa episodes’" ever. Colin Jacobsson of DVD Movie Guide found it "little more than a retread," borrowing from "Lisa the Vegetarian," "Lisa's Pony," and "Grift of the Magi," and said it "fails to deliver more than a chuckle or two."