Friday, September 2, 2011

Worst of the worst: Lisa the Drama Queen-Introduction

So, we've finally reached this day. A day I wished would not have to come. I will finally bury the demons that haunt me of this putrid, vile, God awful, retched piece of shit that The Simpsons call an episode. But before I can even talk about this vapid waste of atoms, let's take a look at the smaller details leading up to this episode.

A little bit about the writer, I already bitched and complained about how basically every episode for The Simpsons he's ever written (THoH segment not withstanding) is terrible and seems to have rather misogynistic undertones whether that's intentional or not. But really, none of this is provable, in fact finding information on this guy ranks up there with finding the Holy Grail. His Wikipedia page is a waste of data with no true evidence that he even exists (No birthday, no hometown, no family, nothing) and his IMDB page may be even more useless (Mistaken identity on the articles). I'm under the assumption that "Brian Kelley" is just a pseudonym that the writers use when they're ashamed of an episode they're submitting.
A preview of the utter insanity we are about to venture into

Now, onto the source material. This episode references quite a few different movies, mostly fantasy, however, the main story is more or less Heavenly Creatures. Heavenly Creatures, for those of you unaware of it, is a Peter Jackson fantasy movie based on true events about two girls becoming close friends; however, instead of being a "coming of age" story, it tells the tale of a friendship gone horribly wrong. Let me summarize the movie as best as possible:
  • The main character Pauline attends an all female school in New Zealand. There, a transfer student named Juliet (Remember that name) soon befriends Pauline and they begin to do almost everything together. Pauline and Juliet decide to work on a fantasy novel about a world they created and they begin to make clay figures to help manifest their fantasy into reality. After Juliet's parent leave her for London (Juliet's parents promised never to leave her after she suffered from a severe case of Tuberculosis) Juliet and Pauline begin to imagine their world and that they exist in it. Later, Juliet comes down with a bad case of TB and Pauline decides to write to Juliet to keep up her morale. While Juliet is recovering, Pauline falls in love with a boy named (Mark) and here begins the first signs of Juliet's jealousy towards Pauline. After Pauline breaks up with (Mark) and Juliet gets better, the girls spend a lot of time together talking about their fantasy world. However, Pauline's parents do not feel comfortable with Pauline's relationship with Juliet as they take them both to a doctor. There, the doctor informs Pauline's parents that they are most likely in a lesbian relationship. Pauline's parents forbid her from seeing Juliet anymore which causes Pauline and Juliet to plan the murder of Pauline's mother before Juliet goes back to England. The girls go on a picnic with Pauline's mother where they kill her with a brick. The girls are both arrested, convicted of murder and released at separate times with the condition that they never meet again.
Now, why do I hate this episode so much? Allow me to confess something to you: of all the episodes I've ever watched, this was the only one that ever made me physically ill. I'm not even joking; the first time I watched it, I got nauseous and fell to the floor by the end of it. I had no idea what the episode was based off of when I first watched it. After I watched Heavenly Creatures, I hated it even more, if that's even possible. There has never been an episode that made me angrier towards any show or idea than this episode (And that includes That 90's Show and GI D'oh!). To date (9/2/11) it holds the second lowest score on TV.com with a 6.2/10 (228 votes), to put that in perspective, the lowest score belongs to All Singing All Dancing with a 6.1/10 (172 votes) and That 90's Show holds a 7.6/10 (298 votes). Just think about that for a minute. According to the TV.com community, they think that this is only better than a musical clip show.

Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

Now I'll admit I don't put too much stock into those scores (Usually padded out by fans who will 10 star everything) but in comparison, it's simply amazing how low the score is. For as much crap as the modern fans will take, they flat out hate this episode as well.

...if you haven't guessed yet, yeah, this is padding to put off the review for another week. I need more time, I just need a little more time....

7 comments:

  1. Wow, that makes this episode 100X more dumber than I thought

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  2. I'll assume you're talking about knowing the source material. Heavenly Creatures is a great movie IMO, but the biggest problem with the transition is that the movie was portrayed having teenagers with minds of kids. Here it's kids with the minds of kids, it loses that element that the movie could work with. I'll explain it a bit better in the next two weeks.

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  3. Huh, never knew of Heavenly Creatures. And I love the fact that the writers kept the name Juliet .

    But yeah, as a guy who loves modern Simpsons, aside from 2 or 3 jokes which I liked, I find this episode HORRIBLE

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  4. From what I can tell, Heavenly Creatures was a New Zealand flick that really isn't obscure outside of NZ as much as it is uncommon. It's rather good and I highly recommend it even if you aren't a fan of fantasy movies.

    Truth be told, I could somewhat enjoy Modern Simpsons (Watch an episode but question a few jokes or storylines, etc) but this one for me is where I felt that I abandoned the show completely. I questioned how such a great show could allow for something so awful to get through and I could never really view Modern Simpsons the same way.

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  5. It's just that I didn't know that this "episode" was basted on a good movie. I thought that the Juliet character was based on Calvin from the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. Her last name (the Simpsons character)seemed to hint at that.

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  6. You hate it because it focuses on just Lisa. Not cool Homer and Bart. Oh and maybe fairytales aren't really a thing for the Simpsons as fairytales are a little kid thing.

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  7. If you hate Lisa so much why don't you tweet to ask for making Lisa better. If you are sick of her being a vegetarian for an example.

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