My favorite Lisa Simpson moment occurs at the start of summer vacation.
Lisa considers her own lack of popularity. "I guess I'll spend my summer with the novels of Gore Vidal," she says. "Mr. Vidal has dated more boys than I'll ever even MEET...."
Marge looks perturbed. "GIRLS, Lisa," she says. "Mr. Vidal is a boy who dates GIRLS. Boys date GIRLS...."
And Lisa rolls her eyes.
Lisa seems less outrageous than other members of her family, but a functioning brain is not a death sentence. A smart person can be an interesting person. This is clearest in "Who Shot Mr. Burns?"
Disturbed by the incompetence of the local police, Lisa decides that she will take matters into her own hands. "After all, Nancy Drew says you need just a few things to solve a mystery: an inquisitive temperament, and two good friends." Lisa makes a chart of the identities and motives of various suspects (the police chief can't pronounce the word "motive"), and Lisa appears before various policemen, in a dream sequence. She holds a flaming card and says, "Burns's suit. Check the suit...."
When Burns's cotton menswear proves to be a kind of spider's web, having entrapped an eyelash, Lisa ups her game. The DNA of the eyelash points back to a Simpson. "We, any one of us, could be guilty," says Lisa. "Except you, Mom, since you're a Bouvier." (And Marge explains that, when she married Homer, she took possession of "all" aspects of his identity, "including his DNA profile.")
Undeterred, Lisa returns to the scene of the crime, where she silently interprets the positioning of Burns's arms; she becomes the first to crack the case. She has triumphed--just by means of her brainpower.
As far as I'm aware, this is the finest tale of heroism that you will encounter, in thirty-plus years of "The Simpsons."
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