Lisa's Substitute (aka Actually The Range Was Far From Home)

If there's a single episode of The Simpsons to which I feel especially indebted for getting me hooked on the series, it's "Lisa's Substitute" of Season 2 (episode 7F19), which first aired April 25th 1991. This was the installment where I really had the inkling that, far from being just another disposable cartoon fad, this show was something genuinely quite special. As a result, it's an episode for which I'll always feel a tremendous amount of affection. (It also introduced me to the word "spirochaete", which has clearly stuck with me over the years, so in a way it has a lot to answer for.)

When I first watched it some time in the early 90s, it was only the sixth episode of The Simpsons I had ever seen - due to the series still being a Sky 1 exclusive in the UK at the time, my exposure to the show was largely restricted to the VHS tapes put out by Fox Video as part of their Simpsons collection (released in Europe and Australia, although strangely not the US). I managed to get a hold of "Lisa's Substitute", which was packaged alongside "The War of The Simpsons", and I remember being really taken back by that entire double bill, because both episodes were a great deal more emotionally weighty than I had come to expect from my (admittedly limited) impression of the show. In my mind, I still thought of it as a fashionably crude cartoon about this somewhat grotesque-looking family; that these bug-eyed, overbitten freaks might actually be able to convey something in the way of genuine human emotion - what's more, stoke up genuine emotion in me - was an outcome for which I was totally unprepared. "The War of The Simpsons" had me on the edge of my seat because it my first real glimpse into the "trouble in paradise" dimension to Homer and Marge's marriage (not having seen "Life on The Fast Lane" at this stage), and I was a little taken back by just how vulnerable the pivotal tie that held the family together suddenly seemed. By comparison, the central conflict of "Lisa's Substitute" is less apocalyptic - if the relationship between Homer and Lisa breaks down completely, it might result in some long-lasting psychological fall-out, but needn't spell the end of the unit as a whole - but the climactic sequence where Lisa finally loses it with her father and chews him out for his insensitivity feels somehow even more searing and bitterly explosive than Marge's comparable bursts of indignation all throughout "War". Firstly, I don't think there was any real precedent for seeing the predominantly quiet and unassuming Lisa get quite this enraged (unless we count her momentary blow-up with Marge in "Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment") - you can see how her anger toward Homer has been slowly building throughout the episode, but when that diffident top of hers finally blows, it's still alarming. Secondly, there's also the matter that, unlike Marge, who does have the option of walking away from Homer if she so wanted, Lisa remains fundamentally powerless to change her situation, a fact of which she's painfully aware. Hence, there's a greater air of desperation in her final tirade, which is less a threat to the status quo than a grudging concession to its supremacy. What drives Lisa to her breaking point is the realisation that her beloved Bergstrom was merely a character of the week, whereas she's stuck with her oaf of a father for all eternity, and her angry outburst is but a vocalisation of her helplessness in the face of that. She accuses Homer of being a baboon (in Homer's words, the stupidest, ugliest, smelliest ape* of them all), yet there's an irony in that Lisa seems to have assumed the more primitive approach in this scenario - finding herself backed into a corner, her only recourse is to spit and shriek uncontrollably. Even more startling than Lisa's full-blown fury is the way her usual articulateness seems to fade away as it consumes her, to the point that all she can effectively do is bleat the same insult over and over (a childish insult it is too, although it seems to strike a nerve with Homer, possibly because they are finally communicating at the same level). She warns Homer not to see her outburst as being based on emotion, but are we going to perceive it in any other way?

I noted in my review of "Marge Be Not Proud" that Homer's relationship with Lisa went largely unexplored in Season 1. There were no episodes centred specifically on them as a pairing, and moments where they had any kind of meaningful interaction were few and far between. There is a nice sequence in "Moaning Lisa" where Homer attempts to hear Lisa out on her childhood angst, and later in "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire", when Lisa stands up for Homer against one of Patty's broadsides, but overall the state of their early relationship felt like it was best encapsulated in an exchange in "Bart The General", for which Lisa wasn't even present - Homer objects to Marge's attempts to weigh in on Bart's Nelson troubles with the rejoinder, "C'mon Marge, I don't bug you when you're helping Lisa." Homer, it seemed, had very little interest in Lisa at the beginning - possibly due to a traditionalist outlook that overseeing a daughter's personal and social development was more the mother's domain. As Lisa's character developed, it was established that she was a sensitive and precocious child who was starved for affinity in general, but her interest in all things creative and intellectual, in stark contrast with her father's more visceral pursuits, made it particularly difficult for she and Homer to connect on the same wavelength. "Lisa's Substitute" wasn't the first episode to pit Lisa's ideals against her father's - that honor goes to "Homer vs Lisa and the 8th Commandment" from earlier that same season - but it is the first to really attempt to get to the heart of their relationship, exploring Lisa's unexpressed resentment over Homer's lack of parental availability toward her, and the extent to which she and Homer, in spite of their blatant differences, will ultimately always find kinship in one another. Their touching father-daughter relationship demonstrates the core durability of the ties that bind the Simpson family perhaps more cogently than the repeatedly-tested union between Marge and Homer; clearly, the writers realised they had stumbled into a wealth of material here, because episodes centred on Lisa and Homer would become a regular feature of the series ahead, with Season 3's "Lisa's Pony" and "Lisa The Greek" continuing to build on the insights of this particular tale.

The plot of "Lisa's Substitute" involves Miss Hoover taking a leave of absence on the (as it turns out, erroneous) belief that she has Lyme disease, and being replaced by Mr Bergstrom, a substitute teacher with an unconventional but empathetic approach that Lisa immediately responds to. Bergstrom is like no other adult authority figure Lisa has ever encountered - he's warm-hearted and conscientious, always seems to know what he is talking about, and has an eye toward encouraging each of his young charges to embrace their individuality in lieu of forcing them through the same rote educational meat grinder. He picks up on the fact that Lisa is a girl with boundless potential, but that she doesn't receive a staggering amount of encouragement in her daily life, not least from the father who seems to have very little awareness of her talents. The episode title refers ostensibly to Bergstrom's status as a substitute for Miss Hoover, but more potently to his role as a substitute father figure to Lisa, in answering a need that Homer has left vacant. There are echoes of "Life on The Fast Lane", in that Lisa's infatuation with Bergstrom, and what it says about the derelict state of her relationship with Homer, is obvious to everyone around them - Bergstrom, Marge and Bart all very openly comment on it, and Homer's reaction to Bart's words on the matter suggest that he himself isn't completely oblivious, if reluctant to take charge of the issue. On that note, "Lisa's Substitute" also sees the origin of one of the show's quirkiest running gags - Homer's brain berating him as though it were a separate entity, indicating that not even someone as unrepentantly swinish as Homer is above a little self-disgust.

Bergstrom was voiced by guest actor Dustin Hoffman, although like a few of the show's earlier guests he did not wish to be credited, fearing that an association with this silly cartoon would reflect badly on the state of his present-day career (we weren't quite at the point yet where a guest appearance on The Simpsons was a sign that you were truly notable). Which certainly didn't discourage Hoffman from delivering one of the all-time greatest guest performances this series has ever seen. As with Karl, Homer's Harvey Fierstein-voiced assistant from "Simpson and Delilah", Bergstrom speaks with a passion, wisdom and benevolence that immediately marks him out as an outsider - he seems to have wandered in from a different universe altogether, possibly to impart a little enlightenment to the unfortunate denizens of this one, before the cosmos inevitably realigns itself and reasserts its predominantly cruel order. Like Karl, we sense that he's too pure and kindly a soul to take root in Springfield for particularly long, and from the start our gratification at the rapport Lisa forges with Bergstrom is tempered by the knowledge that, by the very nature of his profession, his place within Lisa's life can only be finite. The paradox with Bergstrom is that one of his main provinces, having set foot in Lisa's life, is to point her attentions to the wider world outside of Springfield, and to the possibility that she might some day find herself gravitating in its direction (not so long ago, in "Dancin' Homer", Lisa had flat-out stated that she never had any ideation of leaving Springfield, a statement that seemed to spring more from resignation than from loyalty to her home turf), only for that same outside world to eventually claim Bergstrom for its own. As Bergstrom himself so caustically puts it (in a manner that both undercuts the sentimentality of their final encounter, and makes it that much more harrowing), "That's the problem with being middle class...anyone who really cares will abandon you for those who need it more." It's essentially a more pointed variation on what Bleeding Gums Murphy had already informed her in "Moaning Lisa", upon airing her familial grievances via a midnight jam session: "You play pretty well for someone with no real problems." In both cases, Lisa learns that she is but a tiny component of a vast world overflowing with suffering, and in the scheme of things her own suffering matters no more than the next middle class suburbanite's. Bergstrom's words appear to damn her to a life of perpetual loneliness, which at first glance seems like the worst fate imaginable (earlier, we were reminded of the plight of Charlotte the spider, whom, as E.B. White took a disturbing amount of relish in assuring us, was completely alone when she died). Yet Bergstrom's parting message to Lisa is that she can ultimately survive on her own - the note he hands Lisa before exiting her life forever, which he insists contains everything she needs to know whenever she feels alone or unable to rely on anyone, offers only the stark reminder that, "You are Lisa Simpson."

I can remember watching "Lisa's Substitute" for the first time and feeling real suspense in between the moment when Bergstrom hands Lisa his note and when she opens it, wondering what he possibly could have written that might turn this distressing situation into something halfway redemptive. And I was not disappointed; as a child, I wasn't entirely certain what was meant by "You are Lisa Simpson" (I'm not sure if Lisa herself knows, either, for she does not reflect on or even mention the contents of his note again), but this was was the first occasion on which I felt that the series had conveyed something genuinely profound. Bergstrom's note is beguiling in its simplicity, in a way that hints at a greater potency while not entirely undercutting the bleakness of the scenario. Nowadays, I'm inclined to see a call to self-affirmation, in assuring Lisa that she has everything she needs right inside of her, and that she shouldn't have to depend on anybody, be it Bergstrom, Homer or anyone else, to confirm the worth of her many good qualities. In that regard, it is empowering. But the implication is also that, in the end, the only thing you can be certain of really having is yourself, which is at once liberating and depressing. Still, there is perhaps something even more damning than the threat of eternal solitude implicit in Bergstrom's note. After all, his exact words are "You are Lisa Simpson" - whether deliberately or not, he reinforces her alignment to that dysfunctional Simpsons clan, an awareness of which, as Lisa herself observed in "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?", was enough to destroy the once-successful Herb Powell.

Bergstrom's tenure in Springfield is a gift to which only Lisa (and Bergstrom's neighbour) are seemingly privy. The other children appear happy enough during his lessons, although they mindlessly mock his eccentricities and do not exhibit any visible feelings of loss when Hoover returns and Bergstrom is forced to move on. We are reminded that Springfield as a whole is a stifling venue that does not cherish curiosity or learning, with the news that its natural history museum has been earmarked for permanent closure due to lack of footfall. The shot of the T-Rex skeleton at said museum seems to subliminally reinforce the idea that the joint values embodied by Lisa and Bergstrom are threatened by a pending extinction. But the most valuable lesson Bergstrom has to teach, in Lisa's words, is that life is worth living; he invigorates her will to go on surviving, first in being a kindred spirit, and second in stipulating that, far from finding themselves at a dead-end, somewhere out there is a wealth of possible growth and broadened horizons that are theirs for the taking. The tragedy is that, as Bergstrom himself ventures forward to take advantage of those fresh possibilities, Lisa is unable to follow him, leaving her stranded in the aloof and stagnant Springfield, where she doomed to repeat the same cycle of fruitlessly scratching the walls for 30 seasons and counting.

Bergstrom is an awe-inspiring figure, and it's worth considering what Hoffman's casting specifically brings to the character. His Jewishness is highlighted repeatedly throughout the episode - Lisa comments on his "Semitic good looks" and later considers using Bergstrom's presumed pork avoidance as her starting point for an invitation to a dinner with the Simpsons that sadly never materialises. Before "Like Father Like Clown" of Season 3, in which Krusty identifies as Jewish and attempts to reconnect with his estranged Rabbi father, Bergstrom was the show's first really prominent glimpse into Jewish culture and here it is treated as part of the character's otherness (to the extent that he might arguably be categorised as the Magical Jew to Bleeding's Magical Negro and Karl's Magical Queer). Bergstrom's Jewishness, and his soft-spoken, unthreatening demeanour set him apart from the world to which Lisa has been predominantly exposed for her first eight years of life, in a way that is perhaps evocative of how the casting of Hoffman in the role of Benjamin Broddock in Mike Nichols' 1967 film The Graduate dramatically defied the conventional models of masculinity favoured by Hollywood at the time (Homer, by comparison, is hardly Steve McQueen, but he nevertheless advocates a more traditionalist view of masculinity when he mocks Bergstrom for his outward display of emotion). "Lisa's Substitute" is sharp enough to twist Hoffman's unwillingness to make his involvement explicit into one of the episode's great underlying gags, as the viewer is repeatedly taunted into speculating that it might indeed be him. The voice is instead credited to the joke name "Sam Etic", an obvious pun alluding to Bergstrom and Hoffman's aforementioned shared ethnicity ("Semitic"), and a sequence is included directly evoking Hoffman's role in The Graduate, when Edna Krabappel attempts to coax Bergstrom into a sexual liaison, with her leg arched suggestively a la Anne Bancroft (who would go on to provide her own memorable Simpsons guest performance later on down the line). To make the pastiche totally overt, Bergstrom even yields a modified version of Benjamin's most iconic line, "Ms Krabappel, you're trying to seduce me..."

The allusion makes for a subversive in-joke, one that manages to be both celebratory of and at the expense of its guest star. It also ties in with the episode's wider theme of parent-child disconnection and the yearning to get away from your roots, The Graduate being the story of a young man who (ostensibly, at least) rejects the values of his middle class parents and the perfectly plastic future they have laid out for him, by finally persuading his romantic interest to flee her own preordained future, in the form of an arranged marriage, and board the next bus to uncertainty with him. The ending to The Graduate (directly recreated in the Season 5 episode "Lady Bouvier's Lover") is an unsettling one, because it seems to superficially convey triumph while intuitively suggesting anything but - the young have taken on the middle-aged establishment and defied their elders, but the Greek chorus of Simon and Garfunkel implies a hollowness to that victory, one that effectively takes us right back to where we started, with the same mournful ode to The Sound of Silence. The overall sense is of inevitability; as H. Wayne Schuth puts it in his Twayne's Theatrical Arts Series study of Nichols, "they both still must live in the world." (p.59) So too must Lisa, having brushed up against that alternate reality in which she might have belonged with someone as gentle and learned as Bergstrom, eventually return to Earth and resume her place at the Simpsons' table. This is where the universe, in is infinite callousness, decreed to put her, and it is a connection she will never be able to transcend, no matter how far away she might eventually hope to flee. Her lot is a cruel entrapment, but in the final sequence we are shown the ways in which it might also be a tremendous blessing. Homer admits that he cannot fix the hurting Lisa feels over losing Bergstrom, but offers to repair her broken doll house (an obvious symbol of fractured domesticity), demonstrating that, whatever his failings, he is capable of providing his family with a fundamental degree of warmth and stability - an environment where, however much pain and anger is explosively aired, once the dust has settled, forgiveness and solidarity will ultimately prevail. That is the real perk of being a Simpson - it is a humble belonging, but a belonging nonetheless, and no matter how adrift and alone Lisa feels in the universe, she'll always have that one unshakable foundation on which to land.

"Lisa's Substitute" is also a story of romantic awakening, pre-puberty - unsurprisingly, given Lisa's age, her attraction to Bergstrom is of a wholly chaste and innocent nature, although her guilelessness is intermittently contrasted with the experiences of the adult women lurking upon the sidelines of the story, namely Miss Hoover and Edna Krabappel, neither of whom are strangers to the heartache of abandonment, in a way that underscores the endangerment of this innocence. Lisa is not oblivious to the turbulence that characterises a good percentage of relationships in the adult world - the episode opens with Miss Hoover walking into the classroom in fits of tears, and a sympathetic Lisa speculating that, "My god, she's been dumped again". Bergstrom is an appealing figure, in part, because he seems thoroughly uninterested in the sexual matters that have the rest of the adult set so stupefied, keeping him firmly entrenched in Lisa's own unsullied world - stealing a voyeuristic glimpse of Edna's attempt at propositioning Bergstrom, Lisa is visibly jealous of Edna's advances, and feels validated when Bergstrom rejects her invitation, insisting that, "It's the children I love." As is illustrated in the sequence between Edna and Bergstrom, the sexual drive is posited as a threat to the idealistic purity over which Lisa and Bergstrom are able to bond, a disturbing reality constantly seeking to disrupt the callow equilibrium - at the start of the episode we get a nod to the ugliness of the reproductive process in general, when Bart shows his classmates a horrifying home video revealing the traumatic means through which Snowball II entered the world (and raising a few questions in the process - for one, it implies that Snowball II's cannibalistic mother was also owned by the Simpsons at one point, and I don't recall there being a scrap of evidence anywhere else for that). Sex (now that I've got your attention, vote for Bart) constitutes adulthood at its most intrinsically corrupted, gratification-seeking and, in the end, self-destructive; Bergstrom sets himself apart in remaining focussed on his mission to encourage and educate the children, and refusing to be sidetracked by carnal desire. But perhaps this is finally mitigated in the way the episode ends, when Homer, having helped each of his children to reach some kind of resolution to their problems of the week, returns to the kitchen to find Marge still anxious as to whether or not he managed to patch things up with Lisa. Rather than bring her up to speed on the matter, Homer suggests that they go to straight to bed, because, "I'm on the biggest roll of my life." In some respects, this is a jarring ending, with its immediate shift from the sentimental to the sexual - Homer goes directly from dispensing warm reassurances to his children to fucking his wife right under their noses. If nothing else, it is a deliciously subversive Simpsons twist on our expectations for a happy ending in which the family demonstrate that they are a functional unit after all. Perhaps the intention is that we are finally shown a positive example of an adult relationship, the stability of Homer and Marge's marriage (the events of "War" notwithstanding) contrasting with the disarray that has befallen Krabappel and Hoover. But this privileges sex as the be all and end all, the grand answer within the scheme of all things, and the supreme driving force behind adult preoccupation. The juxtaposition of sex with loss concedes that it is a necessary indulgence, essential not just in replenishing new generations through further traumatic kitten births, but as a coping mechanism in navigating life's despairs (even if, as with alcohol, sex is often the cause of said despair).

"Lisa's Substitute" might be as perfectly crafted an episode as The Simpsons had made at this point, although it does have one tiny flaw, and we might as well address that right now. In the ending sequence, when Homer has his big emotional heart-to-heart with Lisa, he tells her that, "I'm lucky, because I never lost anyone special to me." Erm, are you quite sure about that, Homer? I mean, it hadn't escaped my attention that one of your own parents isn't around any more. At this point, the series was still extremely vague on the subject of Mona Simpson and what became of her - she was seen, briefly, in a flashback in "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?", but we still knew next to nothing about the woman (not least that her name was Mona), other than what was already self-explanatory...that she was Homer's mother, and there was presumably a good reason why her appearances should be restricted to flashbacks (indeed, it was precisely because the show had taken so little time to develop this particular blind spot in the family's backstory that, when the writers did finally take an interest, during Season 7, they realised they had sufficient wriggle room for establishing that she'd been alive all along). She had always very blatantly been around at some point, however. So it feels jarring that Homer's loss of Mona not only doesn't factor into the final discussion, but is actively undermined by it, and I suspect this likely came down to Mona still being such a non-entity as far as the production staff were concerned. You could argue of course that Homer isn't being entirely truthful - that he's purposely downplaying his own feelings so that he can make a nice and comforting speech for Lisa. The problem there being that when Homer says, "Everyone special to me is under this roof", Lisa groans, indicating that she doesn't buy it, prompting him to insist that, "No, it's true." In order for the emotional integrity of this scene to work, we clearly do need to believe that Homer is being 100% sincere on this point. Which he so blatantly can't be. Also, since we've brought up "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?"...shouldn't Herb Powell technically count as another special person whom Homer has lost? He hadn't known Herb for too long, but it's clear that he'd forged an emotional connection with the man, to the point that you are supposed to feel a sense of loss when Herb disowns him at the end of the episode. The idea presented here, that Homer has never experienced loss at all, is frankly a bit much to swallow, in a way that somewhat impedes the naked emotion of his final speech. You do have to love how he basically ends up going nowhere coherent with it, however: "You'll have lots of special people in your life, Lisa. There's probably some place where they all get together and the food is real good and guys like me are serving drinks." Say what now?

Is there anything else I'm overlooking? Oh yes, the episode also has a really great Bart subplot in which he runs against Martin Prince for the prestigious title of class president and, egged on by Homer, appears to gain a substantial edge in the race...until his tactic of discouraging his classmates from taking the election at all seriously reaps devastating consequences (in the end, only two students can actually be bothered to cast votes - Martin and Martin's wingman, Wendall; guess who they both voted for?). This being a Lisa story, and thus a more emotionally-centred one, a lighter subplot is somewhat necessary to add comic levity and appease those who tune into to The Simpsons primarily for the funnies. But it serves an additional purpose in providing a refuge for Homer throughout the episode, in the form of a truly ludicrous pursuit in which he can subsume his attentions, when he knows as well as anybody that there's a mounting conflict with Lisa he probably should be confronting. It also intersects very nicely with the A story at several moments, particularly in the final sequence when Homer, fresh out of enabling Lisa to see the light at the end of the tunnel, helps Bart to get over his loss by encouraging him to partake in a remedy of 100% pressed sour grapes. The subplot also yields one of the most gleefully barbed gags from the show's earliest years - when Martin declares that his priority, as class president, would be to create a science fiction library featuring an ABC of all the great names of the genre: Asimov, Bester, Clarke, etc. Wendall brings up Ray Bradbury, to which Martin dismissively responds, "I'm aware of his work". As a fan of Mr Bradbury, I'd say that he did not deserve that jab. But then I suppose you underestimate The Simpsons at your own peril.

* A baboon is actually a monkey, not an ape, but I wouldn't necessarily expect Homer to differentiate.