The Secret War of Lisa Simpson

Plot

Bart's class visits the Springfield Police Department, where he uses multiple megaphones to create a sonic shock wave that shatters all glass in Springfield. Chief Wiggum suggests sending Bart to military school. Lisa, after a day of mind-numbing videos, worries her education is not challenging enough. The Simpsons drive Bart to Rommelwood Military School under the pretense of going to Disneyland.

While visiting a poetry class, Lisa decides to enroll for the challenge. Homer and Marge reluctantly agree and leave, ignoring Bart's pleas to go home. As the school's first female cadet, Lisa is given a separate barracks, angering the other cadets. After hazing, Bart is accepted and distances himself from Lisa.

Lonely, Lisa considers leaving but decides to finish. The final test, the Eliminator, is a hand-over-hand crawl across a rope above thorn bushes. Bart helps Lisa train in secret. On test day, Lisa loses her grip and is jeered, but Bart cheers her on and she completes the task.

The cadets cannot retaliate because graduation is three hours away. The Commandant gives Lisa a medal for satisfactory completion of the second grade. Homer and Marge drive them to the dentist, again pretending it is Disneyland.

Production

Richard Appel wrote the episode, but the idea of Bart and Lisa attending a military academy had been pitched and discussed since 1991. The writers had not used it earlier because they were uncomfortable sending the characters to a strange place early in the series.

Yeardley Smith returned to the series for the first time since In Marge We Trust after recovering from the flu, though she had brief lines recorded at home and was credited in previous episodes. A brief shot of Lisa blinking was animated, painted, and shot on May 16, 1997, due to an error in the final print. The spiky blond-haired boy running toward the Eliminator is a caricature of director Mike B. Anderson.

Reception

The episode aired as the season finale alongside a rerun of The Springfield Files. Some viewers mistakenly anticipated it would involve Lisa launching a legal battle to enroll. It finished 47th in ratings for the week of May 12–18, 1997, with a Nielsen rating of 8.3, equivalent to about 8.1 million viewing households. It was the second highest-rated show on Fox that week after The X-Files.

Gary Russell and Gareth Roberts, authors of a Simpsons guide, disliked the episode, calling it very dull and saying Dafoe was not used well. However, show runner Josh Weinstein considered Dafoe one of his favorite guest stars. Ian Johnson described Dafoe's casting as rare and somewhat offbeat. Journalist Raju Mudhar wrote that the episode laid out our eventual future, referencing the rise of robots and a quote about wars fought by small robots.

Sam Scott of Looper called Marge's recording of You Are My Sunshine one of the most powerful moments of melancholy beauty in the series.

Did You Know?

• The episode was one of four released on a VHS in 1999 called Bart Wars, later re-released on DVD in 2005, focusing on crossovers between The Simpsons and Star Wars.
• One critic noted that the Star Wars connection in the DVD set is tangential at best for this episode, Marge Be Not Proud, and Dog of Death.