One of the most iconic characteristics of the classical Simpsons is the degree of relativity we have to the Simpsons characters. Regardless of whether you acutally like the Simpsons on a personal level, at some point in your life you must have felt that no matter what you did, life always screws you over like how Homer Simpsons feels. Similarly, in this episode and like many of us must have felt at some point, Lisa simply feels unappreciated and unrecognized for her achievements and accomplishments. While on the surface, and through the first five episodes along with the Tracy Ulmann shorts that came before it, Lisa appears just to be a stereotypical smart kid with a high IQ, this episode is the very first true characterisation of Lisa as a girl who is much more complex and just in general unsatisfied of who she is and her environment.
The episode begins with some strong foreshadowing, with Lisa staring sadly into the mirror at herself. After that, we just see a normal day go by for the Simpsons, with a stress on how Lisa just seems to be saddened and unhappy about everything around her. Our first look at the root cause of Lisa's sadness is shown in the band practise, where Mr.Largo lashes out at Lisa for her creative improvisation outburst in class. Whereas other teachers may have promoted and even awarded such skilled sax playing, Mr.Largo merely crushed Lisa's spirits and descended her further into sadness.....
Lisa's sadness is discovered by the family when a note is sent home about Lisa refusing to play dodge ball. At home, family members attempt to help even though they have absolutely no idea what is bothering Lisa. Homer, being his oblivious self, comes up thinking that letting Lisa ride on his leg would apparently solve her problems. Marge's solution is to draw Lisa a long hot bath, and then Bart gets into an argument with Lisa about Maggie loving him more, resulting in Maggie declaring her love of TV over her siblings.
After a sad day with no comfort from family members, Lisa finally finds some comfort in the form of Bleeding Gums Murphy, a supposedly jazz man musician who is also lonely and shares Lisa's passion for music and is delighted to have someone to jazz with. Here, Lisa's improvisation and skilled sax playing is finally recognised, but she is then pulled away from the jazz man by Marge claiming Bleeding Gums is too dangerous.
At night, Marge, being worried about Lisa, dreams up a solution where her mother tells her to keep up a smile on her face to make her popular. Believing that this will solve the problem by making Lisa more likable and thus make her happier, Marge tells Lisa to do so on the second day. As a result as soon as she steps out of the car, Lisa is manipulated and used. Upon seeing this, Marge drives around and apologises to Lisa and tells her the first truly comforting words that Lisa needs, that the family will always be there for her no matter what, whether or not she is sad.
On the side of this, we get a B-plot involving Bart continuously beating Homer at video game boxing. After being repeatedly being beaten by Bart, Homer goes into a video arcade to learn the game from a "professional" kid boxer. On the night of the final battle, Homer almost beats Bart for the first time in 50 games, before Marge pulls the plug on the TV and announcing the whole family to go listen to Bleeding Gums Murphy's concert. At the concert, Lisa's improvisation piece is played and finally heard by all people.
If we look at the grand scheme of things, Lisa's life is truly sad. She is unappreciated even though she is special in many ways. As her song portrays, she's got a brother that bugs her everyday and a father that belongs in the zoo. Her mother, as future episodes will show and this episode showed to an extent, doesn't really understand her. At school, she doesn't have much friends and her intelligence along with her sax playing is not only undermined, but also discouraged. At home, family members don't understand her either and she is mostly overlooked as a middle child. Lisa's life is sad, and she knows she can't really do much about it.
Lisa's case can be said to be more tragic than Homer. While future episodes will show that some of Lisa's grieve is actually caused unintentionally by Homer, in the first six episodes we see that while Homer is usually dealt a bad hand in life, Lisa lives a bad life everyday. Her only outlet is through her sax and Bleeding Gums Murphy is really the only person Lisa can connect to at least on a musical level. However as Marge said, although Lisa may not really feel appreciated, her family does love her and will always be there for her. Lisa's sadness is never resolved in this episode since neither what Marge says or meeting Bleeding Gums Murphy can truly make Lisa be more appreciated at school or at home. Instead, Lisa has to take satisfactions from small opportunities like her song being played at the concert to make her feel happier and temporarily forget about her otherwise sad life.
Characterization: 5/5
Plot: 3/3
Subjective: 1.5/2
Overall: 9.5/10
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