Lost Our Lisa

Plot

Bart and Milhouse visit a joke shop. Meanwhile, Marge and Lisa plan a trip to the Springsonian Museum so they can see the Egyptian Treasures of Isis exhibit and the Orb of Isis. Marge has to take Bart to a doctor instead, since he has superglued various novelty items to his face. Since this is Lisa's last chance to see the exhibit, she phones Homer to ask him if she can take the bus. He seems uncertain, which prompts her to trick him into letting her take the bus.

However, once on the bus, Lisa realizes she is on the wrong bus and is dropped off in the middle on nowhere. During his lunch break at work, Homer has a conversation with Lenny and Carl. He tells them that he let Lisa ride the bus alone. Lenny and Carl point out the error of his judgment, and Homer leaves work to go look for her. He heads to the museum and ends up in downtown Springfield. He uses a cherrypicker to get up higher. Homer and Lisa spot each other, but the vehicle's wheels creak backwards and it rolls down a hill. It slides off the edge of a pier at the harbor into a river. Lisa tells the drawbridge operator to close the bridge so Homer can grab on. His head is caught between the two closing halves and he survives with nothing more than a few tire marks across his forehead.

With Homer and Lisa re-united, he tells her that it is all right to take risks in life. The two decide to go to the museum after all, by illegally entering since it is now closed. While there, they make a fascinating discovery that the Orb of Isis is a music box which had gone overlooked by scientists and museum staff. Lisa concludes that what her father said about risks was right – until the alarm goes off and guard dogs chase them out of the building.

Production

Writer Mike Scully came up with the idea for the plot because he used to live in West Springfield, Massachusetts and he would ask his parents if he could take the bus to Springfield, Massachusetts and they finally agreed to let him one day. The production team faced several challenges during development of this episode. The animators had to come up with a special mouth chart to draw Bart's mouth with the joke teeth in. The pile of dead animals in the back of Cletus' truck originally included dead puppies, but the animators thought it was too sad, so they removed them. Scully used to write jokes for Yakov Smirnoff so he called him up to get the signs in Russian. Dan Castellaneta had to learn proper Russian pronunciation so he could speak it during the chess scene in which he voiced the Russian chess player.

In the season 9 DVD release of the episode, The Simpsons animators use a telestrator to show similarities between Krusty and Homer in the episode. This episode contains the last showing of character Lionel Hutz. He is seen standing at the bus stop with Lisa, but does not speak. Due to Phil Hartman's death, the recurring characters of Lionel Hutz and Troy McClure were retired.

Themes

In his book Planet Simpson, Chris Turner cites Lisa's experiences on the bus as an example of "satirical laughs scored at the expense of Lisa's idealism". "Lost Our Lisa" is cited in The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'oh! of Homer along with episodes "Lisa the Iconoclast", "Lisa the Beauty Queen", and "Lisa's Sax", in order to illustrate Homer's "success bonding with Lisa".

In The Psychology of the Simpsons: D'oh!, the authors utilize statements made by Homer in the episode to analyze the difference between heuristic and algorithmic decision-making. Homer explains to Lisa, "Stupid risks are what make life worth living. Now your mother, she's the steady type and that's fine in small doses, but me, I'm a risk-taker. That's why I have so many adventures!" The authors of The Psychology of The Simpsons interpret this statement by Homer to mean that he "relies on his past experiences of taking massive, death-defying risks and winding up okay to justify forging ahead in the most extreme circumstances".

Reception

In its original broadcast, "Lost Our Lisa" finished 45th in ratings for the week of May 4–10, 1998, with a Nielsen rating of 7.8, equivalent to approximately 7.6 million viewing households. It was the fourth highest-rated show on the Fox network that week, following The X-Files, Ally McBeal, and King of the Hill.

Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood write positively of the episode in their book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide: "A smashing episode, loads of good jokes and clever situations ... and best of all, Lisa working intelligently. The teaming up of father and daughter has rarely been more enjoyable and lovely. Gives you a warm feeling." A review of The Simpsons season 9 DVD release in the Daily Post notes that it includes "super illustrated colour commentaries" on "All Singing, All Dancing" and "Lost Our Lisa".