While I don't find the episode any worse than 3/5 on a repeat viewing, I found this alt.tv.simpsons review from when the episode originally aired that's amazing:
So, season thirteen's third and final chance to write an episode about Lisa
was in "Little Girl in the Big Ten" (DABF15). To my surprise, this episode is completely focused on her.
Seeing as she is a main character and all, it is nice that she got the
spotlight in at least one of the season's tw+---enty-two episodes.
Let me begin reviewing DABF15 with the bottom line. The bottom line is that
this episode was an olive branch extended to people like me by the
producers.
My problem is that this olive branch is made of table scraps. They are at
last willing to acknowledge that a considerable portion of their viewers
enjoy high-brow humor and character drama, even in the unlikely medium of an
animated cartoon show. Most of the people who appreciate this level of
maturity are also fans of Lisa. So, the producers reason, let us give them
what they want. Let's put Lisa into a dramatic plot.
Never mind that the entire remainder of the season is a monument to the mob;
I was thrilled that they took the trouble at all to acknowledge the
existence of chums like me. However, the way in which they executed this
peace offering leaves so much to be desired that I cannot say I enjoyed the
episode.
Mainly, I am disenchanted by the basic premise. Matt Groening once described
Lisa as his favorite character because she was the only one who would ever
escape Springfield. As a shooting range for piercing our cultural foibles,
Springfield is a hell of a town. But as a town where real people might live,
it is a curse. In a moment of lucid parenthood, Homer once said to her, "You
'll have lots of special people in your life. There's probably some place
where they all get together and the food is real good, and guys like me are
serving drinks."
In DABF15, she actually got to experience that. Had time flowed, she would
be nineteen years old now, and likely in college. For a few minutes, she got
to enjoy her version of paradise.
My problem with this is that it is a rather severe short-circuit. Our lives
are defined by the struggles we confront every day. To put a little girl
into college is blasphemy to the ten years left to her adolescence. I myself
looked forward to college since I was eleven, for many of the same reasons
she does. However, had I simply been placed in college when I was eleven, I
would have been spared the very struggles which now make my college
experience so rewarding. To give Lisa a ten-year shortcut and put her in
college now is blasphemy to the idea that she needs to earn her place in a
society where her intellect can be appreciated, blasphemy to the idea that
people need to work for their victories, since a victory dealt freely is not
a victory at all. To quote an overused aphorism, you cannot have your cake
and eat it too. We relate to Lisa because we sympathize with the challenges
that fill her life. Should she be given the easy out that no one in real
life ever enjoys, there would be an estrangement of kinship.
The episode contains many other deficiencies. For one thing, it is a good
example of how the writers tend to recycle jokes from previous episodes.
When it came to publicly humiliating Principal Skinner, I yawned, because it
has been done so many times. However, when Lisa rolled off Bart's bubble in
the elaborately illustrated climax, I suddenly wondered if Lisa would miss,
land flat on her face, and suffer yet another one of Life's crippling
defeats. I could see many rich paths leading from such a scenario, but
instead, and very predictably, she landed perfectly on the cake and Skinner
got splattered. Boring, boring, boring. Lame, dull, trite.
Milton once said that it is better to rule in hell than serve in heaven. At
episode's end Lisa chooses just that, by striving for the respect of people
who mean nothing to her and who in fact will be lambasting her braininess in
class later that day. For the sake of returning the show to point zero for
next week's episode, Lisa is forced to abandon her college affiliations.
After leaving the campus she never makes an effort to return. This is all
bad form on her part, and I fault the writers.
Homer's drinking song and Ralph's on-screen urination, along with the flat
scene at Krusty's sweatshop and the rather uninspired and repetitive jokes
thrown into Bart's plot, make for an episode the fails on many levels. Bart
did nothing original in his bubble. It was a waste of airtime, and yet who
of you noticed that the promotions for the episode mentioned nothing of the
main plot, but instead Bart's bubble story? The writers may have been
willing to give its harshest critics a bone, but they sure as hell did not
want the average viewer to know about that until it was too late to plan to
watch something else.
uke:
