I take great pleasure in flying the flag for The Simpsons' introductory season, easily the most undervalued of all Simpsons seasons, and I can think of few episodes more undervalued than episode 7G06, "Moaning Lisa" (first aired February 11th 1990), where Lisa's preadolescent anxieties about life, the universe and everything lead to an interest in crazy bebop and a friendship with an enigmatic outsider, although not without upsetting the apple cart both at home and at school. Not everyone was won over by this in-depth exploration of childhood angst, with Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood of I Can't Believe It's An Unofficial Simpsons Guide dismissing it as "the most syrupy of all Simpsons episodes" and attesting that it has the power to send "viewers raised on later seasons scurrying to the bathroom", whatever that's intended to mean. (To throw up? Eh, to quote Abe Simpson, maybe you're just a lousy cook.)
It goes without saying that I take a very different perspective to Martyn and Wood. To me, this is a smart and thoughtful episode about arriving at the realisation that you're slightly out of sync with your peers, potentially for life, and coming to terms with that fact. It's also an important episode, in being the first time the series had taken the trouble to properly map out who Lisa was. Up until now, she'd largely been defined by her status as middle child, and through her dynamic with Bart. Although I think it somewhat hyperbolic to say that she was originally nothing more than a female version of Bart (even in the Ullman shorts, we saw occasional contrasts between the characters), she was seldom ever more than Bart's foil in the Simpsons' infancy. This was something that carried over into the first few episodes of the series proper - "Some Enchanted Evening" and "There's No Disgrace Like Home" depict her as a hell-raiser in a similar vein to Bart, and while "Bart The Genius" started to explore the idea that she was booksmart beyond her years, there she doesn't get a whole lot to do other than periodically undermine Bart's alleged genius. "Moaning Lisa" was effectively Lisa's coming out episode, and in that regard it's another episode that arguably had a smidgen of its thunder stolen by the production fiascos of Season 1 which caused a couple of installments to air drastically out of order. Since "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" (originally intended to be the eighth episode of the series) was bumped to the front of the queue, we'd already gotten a small but momentous glimpse of the new, improved Lisa during the portion of the episode where she stands up to Patty on behalf of Homer. Seeing Lisa in such a downbeat, introspective mood in this episode perhaps isn't that much of a revelation, although it does fill in a few of the gaps to how she got there. But then "Moaning Lisa" also doubles as Marge's coming out episode, and in this regard it probably benefits from the switcheroo. Had "Some Enchanted Evening" kicked off the series as planned, then it would have been established from the go that Marge is a privately unhappy housewife who's well-accustomed to bottling her negativity and putting up a ruse of contentment, but who harbours a considerable amount of unfulfilled fervor underneath. This is also touched on in "Moaning Lisa", but it happens so subtly, in the shadow of Lisa's story, that it is genuinely startling when Marge's inner anguish suddenly snaps to the surface and makes itself known. It also serves as a perfect appetite-wetter for what was to come in the latter half of the season.
Lisa may have been a dark horse when the series began, but Marge was darker still - in forty-eight Ullman shorts, we never even learned her name. In part, this had to do with how heavily focused the Ullman shorts were on the kids' perspective (usually Bart's) - there were no Ullman shorts focussed exclusively on Marge and Homer. The tetchy relationship between Bart and Homer was where a lot of the early fascination lay, and we can certainly see remnants of this in the way that the spotlight was distributed throughout the first season. If we categorise each episode according to which family member was the key driving force behind the story, things do come out looking a little lop-sided. Season 1 is only half the length of all subsequent Simpsons seasons, so obviously there's not a whole lot of screen time to go around, but the results are still very telling:
Homer: Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire, Homer's Odyssey, There's No Disgrace Like Home, Call of The Simpsons, Homer's Night Out
Marge: Life on The Fast Lane
Bart: Bart The Genius, Bart The General, The Tell Tale Head, The Crepes of Wrath, Krusty Gets Busted
Lisa: Moaning Lisa
Maggie: Nadda
All: Some Enchanted Evening (I consider this one an ensemble episode)
On the surface, it looks as if Bart and Homer at least are evenly matched, but that's not quite true in practice - at least three of those five Homer-centric feature Bart prominently as a deuteragonist (Homer's arcs in Bart-centric episodes, meanwhile, tended to be crucial but competitively smaller). Season 1 was when the series was most heavily slanted toward being The Bart Simpson Show - which stands to reason, given that he was, at the time, the face of the relatively young franchise (the focus of nearly all of the Ullman shorts, and the star of the Butterfinger campaign). The relationship between Bart and Homer still took centre-stage, while Marge and Lisa continued to exist largely on the sidelines (and Maggie, but she's a tough character to build stories around). It's probably not a coincidence that their respective focal episodes are the two most understated and emotionally grounded of the season - being the quieter, less assuming Simpsons in the equation (sans Maggie), they were naturally suited to stories centred on exploring hidden depths, and tensions easily overshadowed amid the crazier antics unfolding around them. Season 1 remained reluctant to put the Simpsons girls at the forefront terribly often, but it did a sweet job in deepening the dynamics of the household all throughout.
"Moaning Lisa" boasts another first - the very first Simpsons B story. While Lisa is struggling with figuring out her place in the world, Homer is plunged into his own personal crisis prompted by his inability to beat his 10-year-old son at a 16-bit boxing game. B stories are a useful means of padding out 22 minutes and giving family members who aren't heavily involved in the main story something to do. They can also add a splash of comedic balance to a more serious, emotion-driven story - and, as Lisa-focused episodes typically occupy that camp, they tend to show up a lot whenever she gets the spotlight. Here, the B story certainly fills the function of providing the episode with its quota of comic levity. Yet Homer's story isn't as disconnected from the central conflict as perhaps appears - there are a couple of intersections, most notably at the end, when Marge and Lisa's newfound understanding comes firmly at the expense of Homer's episode-long goal - but it's also Homer who expounds the central concern that's underpinning both his and Lisa's stories: "Getting old is a terrible thing." Lisa and Homer are both dealing with the pains of getting older, albeit from very different points in life, and with an increasing self-awareness regarding their mutual helplessness in the grand scheme of being. In both cases, the characters are in the process of crossing over into an unwelcome point of no return.
"Moaning Lisa" deals with waning childhood innocence, a theme the
series would revisit toward the end of the season with "Krusty
Gets Busted". Bart's disillusionment on discovering that his idol Krusty
may not be the model of upstanding anarchy he's spent his lifetime revering comes from a darker, angrier place than Lisa's melancholia, which has more of an air of sad inevitably about it. And whereas "Krusty Gets Busted" ends with Bart securing a kind of reprieve - he gets to retreat back into the warm comfort of childhood, with the grotesque array of cheap Krusty-themed merchandise that adorns it prompting us to question if it has not been something of a hollow victory - there is here no way back for Lisa. At 8 years old, her individual personality is still in the process of refining itself. Her precociousness gives her a sharpness and sensitivity that naturally drives a wedge between herself and her peers, and at the same time she's very much mired in the limitations of childhood. A pivotal character trait we see emerging from Lisa is her tendency to convey the intrinsic helplessness of a child through a distinctly adult voice (although she doesn't lay on the psychotherapist jargon as heavily here as in "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" or "Life on The Fast Lane"). What she is largely dealing with throughout "Moaning Lisa" is the burden of her newly-awakened self-awareness, which has clued her in to the general futility of her existence and to what a wretchedly indifferent place the world can be (among other things, Lisa is troubled by how inexplicably unconcerned the adult set seems about the general state of the world). And the worst part is that she's only 8 - Lisa knows that the challenges of her life are only just beginning. How, then, does she find the resolve to face another day?
The same theme is evoked in Homer's story, when he pinpoints the moment his own childhood innocence crumbled - the day he realised that he could beat his father at most things (at this point in the series, Homer and Abe seemed to enjoy a relatively healthy relationship, which is more than can be said for Marge and Jackie, as we'll shortly discover). It was an upsetting revelation, we presume, because it taught the young Homer that nothing stays the same forever and that every human, no matter how revered, is doomed to fall victim to the marches of time. Right now, he's undergoing the loss of an altogether different kind of innocence, in the awareness that, like Abe before him, he's getting past his prime and the younger generation has surpassed him (to hammer that point home, even the two player characters in Slugfest resemble the respective Simpsons who control them, as if they are avatars competing in a much grander game of life). Whereas the episode's major conflict revolves around a discrepancy between Marge and Lisa regarding which survival strategies the latter must adopt as she veers ever closer toward adulthood, Homer's response to his own problem is to go backwards, in an attempt to keep a hold of his dissipating youth, by immersing himself deep in the culture of the younger generation. He does so by visiting the local arcade and seeking pointers from Howie, a kid who is something of a Slugfest guru. First though, he must undergo the humiliation of yet again having to submit to the supremacy of someone significantly younger than himself - Howie agrees to tutor Homer on the condition that he provides momentary amusement by barking like a dog. (If you ask me, Homer got off lightly there - Howie certainly seems nicer and more reasonable than the two boys with whim Lisa converses at the end of the episode.) Rather than step aside gracefully, Homer wants to prove that he's not down for the count and that he still has a few glory days left him, and the best way to demonstrate that is by mercilessly pummelling a 10-year-old in a virtual boxing match. Obviously, it's petty as hell, and it's a pettiness for which he ends up paying the price, but I think his motive is comprehensible. His subplot, and his attempted solution, also feeds into the general theme regarding a disconnect between the younger and older generations. Howie is the alpha kid at the arcade, and very respected among his peers, but
he is immediately put in his place with the arrival of his mother, who
disapproves of him spending his time and money on something as frivolous as video games.
"Moaning Lisa" was our proper introduction to Lisa the sensitive, precocious and misunderstood middle child (as opposed to Lisa the middle child, as she had been in the beginning). It was also our introduction to Lisa the saxophonist, and the two go hand in hand. "Moaning Lisa" is in part a story about how important Lisa's saxophone is to her, for it is her greatest emotional outlet and primary means of expression. Problem is, individual expression isn't exactly encouraged in the world she inhabits. At school, Lisa's musical finesse is tolerated only so long as she plays along with the rest of the band; her attempts to contribute her own impassioned bebop solo to the band's soulless rendition of "America (My Country 'Tis of Thee)" net the ire of her music teacher Mr Largo, who is unmoved by Lisa's compulsion to interject on behalf of America's disenfranchised ("None of those unpleasant people are going to be at the recital next week!") Lisa finds little refuge at home, where her playing irritates Homer and she is instructed to keep it down, though it is ultimately Marge who enforces the most damning oppression on Lisa. Compared to the reception she gets at school, her family isn't aloof or cold-hearted - they struggle to understand Lisa's despondency, but they do all express sympathy and attempt to help in some way. Homer offers to hear out Lisa's anxieties, but they go way beyond his comprehension. Bart attempts to cheer Lisa up with a prank call to Moe, but Lisa isn't biting. Marge is the one who takes Lisa's unhappiness the most personally, and who literally loses sleep over the matter, and while the solution she settles on is troublesome, we do not doubt that her heart is in the right place.
Something that stands out to me about "Moaning Lisa" is that it is by and far the most staccato of all the Season 1 narratives. Lisa and Homer's respective plights provide a strong enough emotional/comedic through line, but the story isn't as tightly structured as the rest of the season; instead, it feels like a string of vignettes that connect more loosely into a story, almost like watching a set of slightly elongated Ullman bumpers. There are a number of sequences that don't so much further the plot as provide a little more insight into how dynamics typically function around the Simpson household - for example, Bart antagonising Homer over his misplaced keys and the moment where Bart and Lisa test Maggie's loyalties, only for her to spurn them both in favour of the head of the Medusa (this one in particular feels like the punchline to a self-contained Ullman short).
For the relative realism of the first act, things take a slight veer to the romantic throughout the middle, when Lisa hears the sounds of another saxophone playing off in the distance and, intrigued, follows it to a downtown bridge, where she encounters Bleeding Gums Murphy (voice of Ron Taylor), a lonely jazz musician who copes with his own persistent dysphoria through nocturnal jam sessions. Impressed by Lisa's own woodwind abilities, he invites her to join him and teaches her something about the value of artistic expression. Lisa is relieved to finally have found a kindred spirit, but her gratification is short-lived - Marge eventually tracks her to the bridge and whisks her back to the stifling monotony of the Simpson household, leaving Bleeding to continue jamming by his lonesome.
Now that I think about it, Bleeding Gums Murphy (so named because of his self-professed dentophobia) might even have been the first prominent African American character to have appeared in the series (I probably shouldn't count Smithers, who underwent something of an ethnicity swap following his first on-screen appearance in "Homer's Odyssey"; we'd also met Bart's friend Lewis, but he's never been more than a glorified - just barely - extra). He's also, for better or for worse, the first of a particular line of characters of the week who were fairly common in the show's early days. The first couple of seasons or so had a number of these vaguely mysterious characters would wander in for seemingly no other reason than to support one of the family through some form of personal crisis, after which they would conveniently disappear, satisfied that their work here was done. They had a wisdom and a benevolence that made them feel distinctly out of place in a crummy little burg like Springfield. In addition to Bleeding Gums Murphy, we also had Karl from "Simpson and Delilah" and Mr Bergstrom from "Lisa's Substitute", with Leon Kompowsky from Season 3's "Stark Raving Dad" being potentially the last character of this ilk. There are certainly enough of them that I think they deserve their own team name, like the Home-Wreckers, so I'm just going to call them "Elliotts", after Elliott the Dragon, and see if it catches on.
In Bleeding's case, there is a very obvious risk of the character wandering into the territory of the "Magical Negro", a term popularized by film-maker Spike Lee in 2001 to describe any black character whose sole function is to dispense pellets of wisdom or moral support to white characters, with little to no hint of any ambition or agenda of their own. When I covered "Simpson and Delilah", I weighed in on the discussion as to what extent Karl might be considered the LGBT equivalent of the Magical Negro, and yeah, it is kind of hard to deny that that's what's going on here. Compared to Karl (who received exactly ONE line of dialogue hinting at any kind of personal life or interests outside of Homer), we actually get a decent flavour of who Bleeding is in his day-to-day being - in addition to having notoriously poor dental hygiene, he was dumped by his significant other and sees loneliness as one of the defining traits of his existence. He also never had an Italian suit, and that vexes him. It's also noteworthy that Bleeding's initial moment of validation toward Lisa takes the form of a backhanded compliment, in which he assures her that her problems are insignificant compared to his own ("You play pretty well for someone with no real problems"). There is, nevertheless, little use in dancing around the fact that he exists, as a character, exclusively for the benefit of Lisa. He may have problems of his own, but they're predominantly cited as a means of putting hers into perspective. There's also the matter of his legacy post-"Moaning Lisa". Unlike most other Elliotts, Bleeding didn't disappear off the face of the Earth after his one episode; he made the occasional cameo here and there (most prominently in "Dancin' Homer" of Season 2), and was also heard on the show's first tie-in album The Simpsons Sing The Blues. His only other major appearance, however, was in the Season 6 episode "Round Springfield", where he earned the more unfortunate distinction of being the first recurring character to be killed off in the series (prior to that, the most significant character death had been Beatrice Simmons in "Old Money"). This, honestly, only reinforces his Magical Negro credentials, as he was effectively sacrificed to provide Lisa with another life lesson, this time in coping with bereavement. Killing off black characters in order to light some kind of fire under their white cohorts is a well-worn cliche, one that the Simpsons crew had previously demonstrated some savviness toward, as they sent it up rather brutally in the Season 3 episode "Saturdays of Thunder" ("MENDOZA!!!") - here, though, it's played more-or-less entirely straight. Furthermore, the episode ends with Bleeding exhibiting actual supernatural powers, by reappearing as a spirit in the sky and performing one last jam with Lisa (granted, I prefer to read this as more of a symbolic sequence, as it doesn't mesh with the overall reality of the series, although that does raise questions on what some of it potentially says about the state of Lisa's mind).
So yes, for their first major African American character The Simpsons leaned back on a rather hackneyed archetype without a hint of self-awareness, proving that they weren't always ahead in the subversiveness game. Which is not to say that Bleeding has no value as a character, or that his friendship with Lisa isn't genuinely affecting. For one, the guy is so splendidly voiced, by guest star Ron Taylor; his performance conveys a fundamental, largely unspoken pathos, but there's a certain wryness to his character too, a spirit to his despairing. And he and Lisa had this wonderfully offbeat rapport, two seemingly mismatched characters who felt a tremendous affinity based on the mutual release they sought in jazz. The sight of them jamming together was positively iconic - it reappeared in the "Do The Bartman" music video, it was immortalised on a collector's plate, they flashed back to it in "Lisa's Sax" of Season 9, etc. There was a rather mean-spirited joke in the Season 7 episode "The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular" about how he was "never popular", but to that I say, "So what?" We all know what popularity is the hallmark of.
The sequence where Lisa goes out in search of Bleeding and bonds with him atop the bridge ranks, for me, as the most hauntingly beautiful in all of Season 1. I think only Marge's dream sequence from "Life on The Fast Lane" rivals it in terms of its aesthetic and atmospheric mettle. It was nevertheless a sequence that caused some understandable hand-wringing behind the scenes - according to the DVD commentary, there was unease among the production team as to how appropriate it was to have a child as young as Lisa roaming the streets unaccompanied in the dead of night. Arguably, it fits in with the general theme of adult indifference/insensitivity toward the welfare of the young, although probably from a darker angle than was intended (we're not quite into "My Sister My Sitter" territory here). It is not, though, a particularly unsettling sequence to watch in context. The radiant blue moon that dominates the backdrop during the encounter conveys more of a quiet, mournful insomnia than an atmosphere of overt menace. The run-down streets of Springfield - devoid of all life, it seems, except Lisa and Bleeding - have a sad desolation that reflects the solitude of these two jazz enthusiasts. There's an almost Edward Hopper-like quality to how it captures the loneliness of the individual in a world of urban indifference. It's a very poetic sequence, and I think it works best when viewed in precisely that sense - as a representation of Lisa's inner despair, and her yearning to find at least one individual, in the vast impassive dust bowl, who can connect on her same wavelength. I've already compared Bleeding and his ilk to Elliott the Dragon, and while I wouldn't go so far as to suggest that Lisa's interactions with the misfit jazz artist are to be regarded as the onset of childhood schizophrenia, there is something about him that seems ever-so-vaguely unreal. Just as Karl gives off the air of being Homer's self-appointed guardian angel, Bleeding gives the impression of being a kind of corporeal imaginary friend for Lisa. Which may sound like a contradiction in terms, but remember that Elliott the Dragon managed it just fine. He was real - the 1977 film left precious little ambiguity on that point (I cannot speak for the 2016 remake, which I have not seen) - but he still acts as a reflection of something inside Pete, leaving once the troubled orphan is settled with a new family and has outgrown the need for his reptilian coping mechanism. I'm compelled to take a similar view of Bleeding Gums Murphy, who here gives a voice to a certain energy ingrained deep in Lisa's psyche - her latent creativity. It is an itch that will not cease, a part of Lisa that, no matter how much frowning it generates in the adults around her, keeps on stirring, leaving Lisa restless and compelled to heed its call. It is a defiant energy, one that beckons her well away from the dual authorities of home and school and into more unknown, unorthodox ground. Which makes Bleeding a natural adversary to Marge, who fears what lies off of the beaten track and the prospect of losing her daughter to it.
Bleeding is very different to the adults Lisa is used to encountering in her regular diurnal existence. He doesn't condescend her or pretend to have the answers. He tells her straight up that he cannot help her with her problems, but he offers her something equally valuable in being a willing recipient of her art. He tells her that the ability to express oneself through art is an empowering one indeed - not because it brings the artist catharsis, but because it enables them to convey just a little piece of their inner turmoil to the outside world; to give their audience insight into what it's like to inhabit their skin, and to be heard. ("The blues isn't about feeling better, it's about making other people feel worse - and making a few bucks while you're at it.") Conversely, he is also dismissive of the personal worries she expresses in her vocal performance, which have to do with the emotional divide between herself and her family. Certainly, the specific problems cited by Lisa are indicative of the kind of banal, everyday problems you'll encounter in any number of households, despite Lisa's colourful methods of sending up her family ("My dad he acts like, like he belongs in the zoo"), but to someone as young and fundamentally powerless as Lisa, they would seem overwhelming, so Bleeding's comment might be perceived as strangely insensitive for such an otherwise benevolent character. But then I'm inclined to think that this is Bleeding simply assuring Lisa that the disconnect isn't as bad as she believes, and that the problems she cites are the kind that will eventually pass in time.
Marge's intrusion on their melancholic jamming is another aspect of this sequence that's honestly kind of odd, when you attempt to reconcile it with the narrative flow of the middle act. Sandwiched in between Lisa's urban journey and impromptu music lesson is a sequence where Homer and Marge are sleeping and each is taunted by a dream vision pertaining to their respective preoccupation - the implication being that both of them retired to bed without realising that their eight-year-old daughter had slipped the coop, which itself raises questions about the quality of their parenting. More startling to my sensibilities than the images of Lisa wandering away per se is the idea that while Homer and Marge are discussing their private anxieties in the comfort of their bedroom, their daughter is apparently off having a wild night on the town at god-knows-what hour. How Marge discovers what Lisa is up to is indicated only minimally - she's kept awake by the sounds of the two saxophones jamming in the distance, somehow puts it together that one of them is Lisa, and shows up at the bridge to reclaim her daughter from Bleeding's wayward influence. Having their encounter fall around our fleeting glimpses into Homer and Marge's dream life only reinforces their own vaguely illusory air, with Marge's appearance being as symbolic as anything else in the sequence - she comes between Lisa and her newfound lease of creative freedom, bearing out the aforementioned gulf between Lisa and her family. Under the circumstances, any reasonable parent would naturally be concerned to find their child conversing with a stranger in the middle of the night, although Marge's hilariously polite, if candid address to Bleeding - "Nothing personal, I just fear the unfamiliar" - is revealing of what's actually driving her. It underlines the implicit opposition between Marge and Bleeding, in terms of what each of them aspires to bring out in Lisa - Marge wants Lisa to learn how to blend in, to have endless social opportunities and not to put herself in a position that may cause her to be singled out and ostracised by her peers, whereas Bleeding encourages her to embrace that underlying alienation as part of her life's path. As Marge whisks Lisa away, Bleeding resumes his solitary jamming long into the night, assuring us that Lisa's own nonconformist itches will not be silenced.
Marge has her own ideas about how to address Lisa's unhappiness, and with them we get our first major glimpse into Marge's background. "Moaning Lisa" marked the first appearance of her mother, Jacqueline Bouvier (named, naturally, in reference to Jackie O), albeit only in a dream sequence, and drawn and characterised completely differently to her subsequent appearances (she wasn't the only one either - see my closing notes). Compared to Homer's more overtly nightmarish fantasy, in which he envisions himself as one of the player-characters in Slugfest being brutally pummelled by his opponent in the form of Bart, Marge's nightmare is far more prosaic, but no less squeamish - she recalls being packed off to school by her mother and being instructed to smile before she walks out the door. Clearly, the school aged Marge isn't in much of a smiling mood, but she manages to churn out a strained plastic smile, one that very visibly conveys suppressed despair over genuine happiness, and Jackie does the same in return. Of course, Jackie betrays her true intentions with the line, "People know how good a mommy you have by the size of your smile", making it plain that what she's actually doing is projecting her own insecurities onto her daughter's public presentation. She also tells Marge to "put on our happy face", reinforcing that there is a complicity to the deception - by pretending that all is well in the Bouvier household, she permits her mother to do the same. The moment where Marge and Jackie exchange their gruesome feigned smiles is harrowing (in the way that the first two seasons frequently were), because of what's really being communicated in their futile gesture - both characters are denying themselves the freedom to express how they feel, on the mutual understanding that this is their only survival mechanism in a world that doesn't care anyhow. Jackie's dubious advice about always smiling was later brought up again in the Season 6 episode "Fear of Flying", if only in passing - the root cause of her own repressed anxieties is never explored, although I guess that's an entire story in itself.
In the climax of the episode, Marge attempts to force Jackie's recipe for ostensible bliss onto Lisa, and while she's never as upfront as Jackie about her intentions, it's nevertheless clear that she's driven by similar anxieties as to what Lisa's visible aberrancy potentially says about her as a parent. She denies Lisa the freedom to be her own person in order to make her a reflection of herself and how she wants to be perceived, a move that ultimately backfires dramatically for Marge. When Lisa objects to being made to smile in spite of her actual feelings, Marge retorts with this disheartening monologue: "It doesn't matter how you feel inside, you know. It's what shows up on the surface that counts. That's what my mother taught me. Take all your bad feelings and push them down, all the way down, past your knees until you're almost walking on them. And then you'll fit in, you'll be invited to parties, and boys will like you. And happiness will follow." Disheartening, in part, because much of it seems crushingly inappropriate advice to be dispensing to an 8-year-old (Boys will like you? Should Lisa really be expected to worry about that at her age?) but also because the advice is nowhere near as empowering as Marge assumes - not least because it puts one's personal happiness firmly at the mercy of the approval of others. Lisa manages a strained plastic smile of her own, with some cajoling, and goes out to face the world. At first, Jackie's methods seem to get the desired results - Lisa strikes up a conversation with two boys at band practice, who seem well-disposed toward this new, "happy" Lisa, and one of them invites her to his house. The odiousness of the matter is made plain, however, when he brazenly reveals that he only wants her there to do his homework for him; what Marge hadn't anticipated is that the other children, sensing that Lisa is eager to please and be accepted, will be quite prepared to take advantage of that. Watching this sordid scenario play out, Marge's mood changes, and she suddenly becomes very, deeply enraged. Although Marge's own problems, much like Jackie's, are not explicitly explored in this episode, the implication is that Marge's rage is twofold - she's angry in seeing just how badly her second-hand advice is working out for Lisa, but she's also angered in finally receiving this chilling reflection of just how poorly it's also worked out for her (there is not, after all, a world of difference between what Lisa faces here and what Marge puts up with every day in the Simpson household). The moment where she completely loses her cool - when Largo appears and rebukes Lisa for her previous outburst of "unbridled creativity" - and physically removes Lisa from the situation, what we're seeing is all of Marge's repressed fury bubbling to the surface for the very first time - 34 years' worth of it, in fact. The implication that Marge herself is sitting on a whole well of untapped energy and ingenuity is borne out in Largo's observation that, "That's where she gets it." (Appropriately, it was established in the Season 2 episode "Brush With Greatness" that the young Marge had her own creative passions - in her case, painting - in which she eventually lost confidence through the goading of adult authority.)
Marge realises that the survival mechanisms Jackie instilled in her were little more than a self-serving sham, and that she was wrong to do the same to Lisa. Instead, she finds the courage to break the cycle, telling Lisa that she should always be true to herself and that she can take solace in the fact that her family will unconditionally have her back: "We'll ride it out with you. And when you get finished feeling sad, we'll still be there." Her revised speech to Lisa is a powerful moment, possibly as nakedly sincere and as righteously vehement as the series had been at this point. It is a case of empathy overcoming barriers, with Marge concluding that the imperative to defend her children overrides the inclination to put up another layer of vapid self-protection. She acknowledges that there is no easy solution to the way Lisa feels, and that she simply has to be allowed to get through her sadness on her own terms. The acknowledgement itself, though, is enough to raise a smile from Lisa - not the horrifying Stepford smile we saw earlier, but a genuine, natural smile. After all, for the first time in the episode someone other than Bleeding Gums Murphy has signalled that they understand her, and that understanding is the first major step in enabling her to feel less at sea. The part of Marge's final speech that I find heart-breaking, however, is her proposal, "From now on, let me do the smiling for both of us." I've thought about that line a lot, and what it's supposed to mean. It's an altruistic offer, but I can't help but think it sad that Marge continues to deny herself the same freedom of expression that she ultimately affords Lisa, particularly as "Moaning Lisa" suggests that there is a lot seething beneath Marge's collected exterior. Possibly she means that she will continue to smile to Lisa, to give her that extra bit of encouragement, so she knows that her mother is always rooting for her. But I also suspect that by "smiling" she means that she will defend Lisa, and that Lisa herself does not have to answer for herself or justify how she feels - Marge will face down the cold and condemnatory world on her behalf.
Although "Moaning Lisa" was as Marge-orientated as a Simpsons episode had been at this point, her personal woes are still regulated largely to the subtext of the narrative. The episode does not, however, seem oblivious to the irony that Marge's lifelong tactic of feigning contentment and not asserting her own needs has not succeeded in making her socially popular. If anything it's made her more cut off and disregarded by the rest of the world. Outside of her bowling/brunch sessions with Jacques in "Life on The Fast Lane", there was very little hint of her having much of a social life from the start of the series. The aerobics class she attended in "Homer's Night Out" is the only other example I can think of in Season 1 (she also got tipsy with some other women at the company picnic in "There's No Disgrace Like Home", but something tells me they weren't her natural social circle). We can, in part, attribute this to the series' early lack of interest in Marge as a focal character, but then as a character she's always thrived with her story existing largely in the cracks of episodes centred on other family members. When we finally got to hang with Marge and see her pursue her own temporary break from the demands of her family in "Life on The Fast Lane", it felt so natural, as if the series had been purposely laying the ground for this scenario the entire time by pretending not to be interested in Marge (even if "Life on The Fast Lane" itself was clearly written to be the culmination of Season 1's Trouble in Paradise trilogy, not the beginning as air date order decreed). For now, we see a small instance of Marge finally speaking up and making herself heard in a milieu that's well-accustomed to ignoring her - she forces Homer and Bart to listen to her make an announcement on Lisa's behalf by physically unplugging the television set, obliterating Homer's chance to finally beat Bart at Slugfest in the process. Homer doesn't exactly take this well, demonstrating that, even though he cannot stop the march of time, emotionally he's never really progressed beyond the school kid level. His story ends up being a cautionary example about the futility of pinning one's self-worth on something as inconsequential as winning at a boxing video game.
"Moaning Lisa" ends with a display of unity among the Simpsons, who attend Bleeding Gums Murphy's favourite haunt, The Jazz Hole (yay for disgusting puns), at the suggestion of Lisa, where Bleeding performs his own rendition of the song Lisa had regaled him with earlier ("Moanin' Lisa Blues" as it was entitled on The Simpsons Sing The Blues), reaffirming that he's heard Lisa, that he both acknowledges and accepts her and that she has his solidarity. Meanwhile, the fact that Lisa's family are all here with her in this dark and unfamiliar venue indicates a reconciliation between Lisa's untamed creativity and the rest of her clan, proving that they do not have to be at odds. Somewhat incongruously, they are presented, for their receptiveness, with a less-than-flattering song describing their own individual foibles, but then this particular reality seems to go over their heads - except possibly for Homer, who is triggered by the mention of a patriarch behaving like a zoo animal. The important thing is that Lisa is finally happy. She's happy because she's found where she belongs, and it happens to be both within the murky walls of the Jazz Hole, and there among her singularly neurotic kin.
A couple of stray observations:
- There is a subtle instance of continuity between this episode and "Life on The Fast Lane". Here, Homer is distressed to learn that the Bowlarama was razed in a fire that seems to have wiped out a large proportion of Springfield's downtown culture. When we finally see the Bowlarama first-hand in "Life on The Fast Lane", there is a sign at the top indicating that the establishment is new, so I presume this is supposed to be the new reborn Bowlarama.
- Jacqueline Bouvier wasn't the only character to get a somewhat off-colour introduction in "Moaning Lisa". Apparently, the wire-haired kid who attempts to wheedle Lisa into doing his homework for him is officially recognised as the earliest incarnation of Ralph Wiggum (a proto-Ralph had previously appeared in "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire", but I suppose it works if we go by production order). There is a slight resemblance - slight enough that I can buy that Ralph's design evolved from this character - and yet they are distinct enough that I honestly prefer to think of them of separate characters. Both are voiced by Nancy Cartwright, but the voice she uses here is much closer to her Nelson voice, and his characterisation is completely different. Intriguingly, I have noticed that during the moment in the arcade scene where Homer vies for the attention of Howie, there is another kid in the vicinity who looks like a proto-Ralph; he's dressed in similar clothing to the kid at band practice, but has a rounder, more benign face. I think we may have found Ralphie's missing link.
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