Season

13

Production Code

DABF15

Episode Number

0

Airdate

12 May 2002

Writer

Jon Vitti

Director

Lauren MacMullan

Executive Producer

Al Jean

Editor

Jimmy Heenan

Plot Lisa finds herself unable to do any sports in PE class, taught by Brunella Pummelhorse, and finds herself failing gym. She then signs up to do gymnastics with Coach Lugash (from Children of a Lesser Clod). There, she receives encouragement from the ghost of John F. Kennedy in a dream. That and her large head gives her perfect balance, Lisa passes with flying colors. Lisa also meets two girls and becomes friends with them, but with their fractals and parking permits, it’s obvious they are college students “with small gymnast bodies!” They give Lisa a ride home, and she acts like a college student to keep their friendship. The two girls invite her to a poetry reading by Robert Pinsky soon after. Lisa finds herself looking more like a college student with a beret, which helps her fit in all the more.

Meanwhile, Bart gets bitten by a Chinese mosquito that was in his Krusty-saurus toy manufactured in a sweatshop with a communist Krusty logo, and becomes infected with “Panda virus.” To prevent getting others sick, Dr. Hibbert puts Bart in a plastic bubble. Bart has trouble adapting to life in the bubble even though Hibbert emphasized just how “normal” it would feel; he has trouble eating and Homer gives him a bath by filling up the bubble with the hose and rolling Bart around.

Lisa is able to keep up her double life, attending a poetry reading by former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky (voiced by Pinsky himself) at night and attending her second grade class during the day. While going to Springfield University, she is tracked by Milhouse, Martin, and Database. At a lecture about Itchy & Scratchy cartoons, they blow Lisa’s cover.

Lisa loses all of her friends her age, thinking they are not “college enough for her.” Bart, in the meantime, gets used to his bubble, gets more popular, and also a thing of amusement for Homer. Bart tells Lisa what she should do to get her friends back: she has to pull a prank on Principal Skinner. The next day, Chalmers is dedicating the Seymour Skinner parking annex. While Martin takes pictures of Skinner posing next to a giant chocolate cake in his dress polyester, Bart rolls Lisa (inside his bubble) to the edge of the school’s roof. He then pushes her over the edge, splattering the cake all over Skinner. Lisa gets her friends back...while Bart goes happily crazy after being outside for the first time in days...stays in an air vent...and gets sucked in.