Milhouse's presence might have been suspiciously downplayed in "A Milhouse Divided" (for an episode bearing his name in his title), but maybe the extra attention he'd receive in the subsequent Simpsons outing would go a little way in making up for that. "Lisa's Date With Density" (4F01) arrived hot on the heels of "A Milhouse Divided", airing on December 15th 1996 and blessing us with another well-observed story about relationship troubles, this time among the younger Springfieldians. It is in some respects the perfect accompaniment, but the placement is also a little jarring. It's important to keep in mind that the writers don't necessarily coordinate the precise order in which the episodes will air whilst brainstorming and writing them; certainly, there's nothing in "Lisa's Date With Density" to suggest that it was consciously written to come after the Van Houtens' divorce. There are no references, explicit or implicit, to the idea that Milhouse is having to deal with his parents' break-up in the backdrop of everything else he's going through here. "Density" gives Milhouse arguably his most substantial supporting role since Season 3's "Bart's Friend Falls In Love" (shining a much bigger light than before upon who he is outside of his dynamic with Bart), but it's also a particularly punishing installment for the young Van Houten. Having it come directly after "A Milhouse Divided" gives it that extra bite of cosmic cruelty, one of the pivotal jokes being that nobody seems to care much about how Milhouse feels. But it also lends a little added catharsis to the final scene, which allows Milhouse to have the last word (at least as far as the A-story is concerned), proving that he is, however abjectly, a survivor.
As with "A Milhouse Divided", the title of this episode warrants its own special mention. The wordplay is so subtle that if you only glance at it too quickly, it's easy to miss out on it altogether (ditto for "Realty Bites" of Season 9, which I still see people muddle with the title of the Winona Ryder movie). I'll confess that I initially misread it as "Lisa's Date with Destiny", and in my head I still think of that as the correct title. So apologies in advance if I accidentally refer to it as "Destiny" here. And yet, the confusion seems entirely appropriate, in that destiny is something that weights heavily on its central scenario. The outcome is a foregone conclusion, and that is essentially the point.
"Lisa's Date With Density" was, surprisingly, the first episode to
centre on the premise of Lisa developing romantic feelings for one of her
peers, an avenue already explored with Bart, in "Bart's Girlfriend" of
Season 6. We'd seen her on the receiving end of Ralph Wiggum's awkward
infatuations in "I Love Lisa", sure, but episodes that involved her
putting her own heart on the line had tended to focus on her feelings
for adult characters, be it her schoolgirl crush on her teacher Mr
Bergstrom in "Lisa's
Substitute" or her foretold engagement, in "Lisa's Wedding", to fellow
college student Hugh in the far-off futuristic world of 2010. Nelson definitely feels like the perfect candidate Lisa's nascent stirrings, a kid so thoroughly unlike her in every shape and form that it holds that she would find him fascinating - a fascination that, as with so many prepubescent crushes, manifests first as intense irritation. Lisa sees Nelson making an exhibition of himself multiple times throughout the school day and is amazed at his gall and at his reckless compulsion to create a disruption at every opportunity. And then before she knows it, she can't take her eyes off him. As she attempts to rationalise it, "He's like a riddle wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a vest." (He's also fond of ending communications with the flippant "Smell you
later", and was there ever a more obnoxiously 1990s phrase? Will Smith
said it in the opening to every episode of Fresh Prince of Bell Air, and Blue/Gary Oak said it incessantly in one of the earlier installments of Pokémon.) But Nelson is also the kind of character with the potential to rip Lisa right out of her comfort zone; any prospective association with him constitutes a risk for Lisa. As
per the DVD commentary, it was a pairing that, much like
Skinner and Krabappel, the writers had been kicking around for some time
but had never figured out how to approach until the eighth season.
"Density" also takes advantage of the fact that, despite being one of the more prominent students at Springfield Elementary, Nelson was still a relative unknown. His status as a serious threat to the Simpsons kids had peaked all the way back in his introductory episode, "Bart The General" of Season 1, after which he was reinvigorated with his catchphrase, "Ha! Ha!", popping up all over as a force of almost cosmic derision. But there hadn't been any episodes since "General" that had focussed on him so extensively as a character, and certainly none that tried to get to grips with what, if anything, was lurking beneath his thuggish exterior. The possibility that Nelson might actually be a sensitive soul acting out as a bully was intermittently raised, but always played solely for humor (the revelation that he has a talent for home economics in "Lisa on
Ice", his love of Andy Williams in "Bart on The Road", etc). "Density" was a fresh attempt to explore this question from a position of pathos (but not too much pathos). Nancy Cartwright gets to give a particularly nuanced Nelson performance, which surely compensated
for the fact that "Density" is an unusually Bartless affair (he gets a
small moment at the start when Skinner accuses him of vandalising
Chalmers' Honda, but his only role within the actual narrative is a
single scene where he cautions Lisa against an entanglement with Nelson).
Adding an extra dollop of pathos to the mix is that this story is actually about a love triangle, with Milhouse being the unhappy third party who's emphatically left out in the cold. I
could be wrong about this, but I think "Density"
was also the first episode to explore Milhouse's unrequited crush on Lisa, at least in the present.
It built on an idea introduced in "Lisa's Wedding", which prophesied
that an ill-fated teenage fling was in their future, going so far as to
insinuate that Lisa would lose her virginity to Milhouse before
unceremoniously dumping him. The adult Milhouse explicitly cites Lisa as
his "one true love", but the entire premise of Hugh being Lisa's first
love (ie: her first serious relationship) would indicate that she had no
such delusions about where their puppy romance was headed (her implied
willingness to get physically intimate, however, raises questions as to
what actually went on between them). For now, all Milhouse wants is for Lisa to notice and respect him, but alas, her only interest is in using him as a middleman to pass love notes onto Nelson, ultimately resulting in a painful misunderstanding that has Milhouse hospitalised for most of the second half. The kid is our underdog, sweetly endearing in his unfounded hopefulness that Lisa will eventually latch onto his winning qualities, yet wretchedly upfront and utterly inept in his futile attempts at self-assertion. "But I'm ALL Milhouse!", he indignantly insists in response to Lisa's condescending assurance that she wants to bring out the Milhouse in Nelson. "Plus, my mom says I'm the handsomest guy in school." Kirk spent the entirety of the preceding episode demonstrating that he's out of
touch with anything resembling dignity, and here we see how his son fares no
better. Mr Largo puts it most succinctly when he firmly declares that "Nobody likes Milhouse!" - although it is suggested that Janey might secretly like him, and possibly also Uter. So much of how this episode plays out puts me in mind of a slightly meaner version of Peanuts, with its parade of tragic young lovers all grappling with feelings they can barely understand, helplessly infatuated with people who wouldn't give them the time of day, naively clinging to whatever shreds of hope they can get that they might actually be loved in return.
Milhouse does get a moment of explicit endorsement, albeit one that he isn't around to witness. Bart, during his only substantial scene, makes it clear that he sees Milhouse as a worthier choice of boyfriend for Lisa than Nelson. Lisa has a compelling counterargument: "Milhouse likes Vaseline on toast!" For
a while there, a number of us naively assumed that this was included as a reference to
The Flaming Lips' song "She Don't Use Jelly", but no. Showrunner Josh Weinstein confirms
on the DVD commentary that it was inspired by a kid who would regularly board his school bus with a slice of Vaseline on toast at the ready...which was honestly more than I'd wanted to know. It's here that I'm going to plug the DVD commentary for "Lisa's Date With Density" as quite possibly the second most hilarious of all the Simpsons commentaries (the most hilarious being that of "Marge Be Not Proud", with its string of horror stories about working with Lawrence Tierney), if only for everyone else's aghast reactions when Weinstein shares this particular anecdote. (Weinstein: Apparently, you can do that...don't hold me responsible, but it's very healthy... Mike Scully: It's NOT very healthy!) Come to think of it, wasn't there a scene where Homer ingested an entire jar of petroleum jelly in the Season 4 episode "Lisa The Beauty Queen"? And this was before Weinstein even joined the show staff? Have the Simpsons writers known multiple people with this eccentric culinary inclination?
"Lisa's Date With Density" is yet another Season 8 installment that's often overlooked, with many fans shrugging it off for being overly straightforward. I will agree that the narrative trajectory with Lisa and Nelson has few genuine surprises, going pretty much exactly where you'd expect from the outset. Lisa falls for Nelson, believing that there's a nicer, more upstanding citizen to be wheedled out of him. For a fleeting moment it looks as though she might have succeeded, but in the end his badness (and the status quo) prevails. Lisa terminates their relationship and goes home, thank you and goodnight. A predictable plot needn't be a death knell, however. What makes this one great is just how beautifully it delves into the characters along away, and the small, revealing moments it brings to the surface. The suggestion that Nelson has feelings should not, in itself, come as much of a revelation. We'd recently seen ample evidence of that in "A Milhouse Divided", where he'd opened up about how his parents' marriage fell apart after his mother developed a weakness for throat lozenges. There, his moment of soul-bearing was double-edged; his tearful admission that, "By the end, her breath was so fresh, she wasn't really my mother any more", an absurd one, but with darker undertones when you take into account that his mother's partialities are being used as a family-friendly, Muntz-adverse allusion to drug addiction and how it warps a person. "Lisa's Date With Density" further explores the idea of Nelson coming from a troubled background, but with a more subtle hand. There's a scene where Lisa accompanies Nelson back to his house after school, and his parents are conspicuously absent, the only mention of them in the entire episode being Nelson's off-hand comment that they haven't had any visitors since his dad "went nuts". The dilapidated state of the property, and small details such as the stolen Kwik-E-Mart doormat, are allowed to speak for themselves and tell us as much as we need to know about what Nelson has had to live with off of screen. "Density" was undoubtedly the most sympathetic an episode had ever been toward Nelson at this stage, but it's a point that Scully's script smartly avoids overselling. It doesn't turn Nelson's life into a walking sob story. He receives no big moment of emotional breakdown, as he did in "A Milhouse Divided". The most we get are a couple of little hints that he regrets that things can't work out differently, but by the end it's clear that Nelson is fully resigned to being who he is - not because he's necessarily happier that way, but because being a reckless, belligerent outlaw is the only way he knows how to survive in the world that he's been raised in. And Lisa comes to understand that it maybe isn't on her to be interfering
with that. She doesn't condemn Nelson for his failure to reform. She
gets angry with him for lying to her, but the bulk of her annoyance is
directed at her own idealistic thinking ("I was a fool to think I'd
actually changed you. Maybe I was seeing things in you that weren't
really there.")
Just as "Lisa's Date With Density" is often dismissed for being an aggressively straightforward story, so too is it often perceived as a more cynical episode than it really is, offering no possibility of redemption for Nelson at the end and having Lisa walk away sadly, realising she's been played a fool. To the contrary, I think this is hands down one of the season's most thoughtful, quiet and affecting character studies, eclipsed only by "Grade School Confidential" (both episodes were directed by Susie Dietter, who does a masterful job of bringing out the moodiness of their respective scenarios). The major difference being that, unlike "Grade School Confidential", the conclusions of this particular study don't point us to a happy ending. It's honest, but not excessively bitter in its conclusions, a point I would make by comparing it to another Lisa episode from Season 8. Just as I see "A Milhouse Divided" and "Grade School Confidential" as inverted reflections of one another, I would argue that "Density" has its own "twin" episode at the latter end of the season, that being "The Old Man and The Lisa". Both episodes involve Lisa entering into friendlier terms with typically
antagonistic characters, believing there to be something redeemable
about them, only to learn an unhappy lesson about leopards not changing
their spots (it would happen with Sideshow Bob too, but that's quite a
way off). Lisa takes Mr Burns' inevitable betrayal a lot harder than she does Nelson's, and why shouldn't she? What Burns did was so much more monstrously depraved, what he exposed Lisa to much more unspeakably traumatic. And it followed on from Lisa genuinely believing that the old man had changed and standing up for him against her family's mockery. Pure though her intentions might have been, there's a sense that she has debased herself by associating with Burns, and the only way for her cleanse her soul at the end is by rejecting his offer than she benefit financially from his misdeeds. "Old Man" is a thoroughly cynical slice of Simpsons life, the only brightness being in Lisa's ability to remain true to her morals. The way "Density" resolves is a lot more modest, but also more complex. There's no question that Nelson has done a bad and unpleasant thing with his malicious targetting of Skinner, but he isn't upheld as the clear-cut villain of the scenario (it helps that, unlike Burns' horrific mass porpoise slaughter, the coleslaw-heavy offensive on Skinner's property is played largely for humor). Nor does Lisa appear to have believed so sincerely in his capacity for change. She's prepared to give Nelson the benefit of the doubt when he shows up at her
house in the early hours of the morning, insisting that he's been
falsely accused, but does not sound overly shocked when the
truth later outs. As with "Old Man", Lisa finds herself having to review her role in the equation, but all that's required here is for her to graciously go her own way, recognising that (unlike Burns), Nelson was never asking for her support in the first place. I don't see that as a cynical conclusion, but a sensitive one in which the characters come to some understanding about human weakness and their personal limitations. The point of "Density" is not that Nelson is an inherently bad apple, unworthy of anyone's affections. It implies that there's a reason for why he's the way he is, just as there's a reason why he's not looking to change that, one that goes a little further than the usual snag of "the character
can't grow and improve because the status quo wouldn't allow it". And where Nelson rejects the possibility of change, Lisa takes the opportunity to do a little growing herself.
I also don't see "Density" as a sardonic refutation of the old cliche that love conquers all, a reading that dramatically overestimates what Lisa and Nelson have between them. Because let's be real here - they're kids, and there isn't a whole lot of substance to their attraction beyond curiosity and a passing fancy. They do form something of an emotional attachment, enough for Nelson to seem genuinely startled when Lisa initiates their break-up, but there isn't a sense that they were ever massively devoted to one another. I think it's far more accurate to say that while Lisa and Nelson both liked each other, in the end they just don't like each other enough. Nelson is certainly intrigued by Lisa, and by the freshness that her rose-coloured outlook brings to his table, but not so much that he would treat that as incentive to mend his ways. Likewise, Lisa might be captivated by Nelson's bad boy persona, but she cannot overlook the aspects of his behaviour that she finds troubling. And compared to "Lisa's Substitute", where Lisa was always leaving herself wide open to eventual heartbreak, here she seems to have always entered into the situation a little too warily to be overly hurt by the outcome. No tears are shed, and she and Nelson are able to part ways on basically amicable terms. Her final scene has her emotionally grazed, but already acknowledging
the light at the end of the tunnel - for now, she's not interested in
thinking about her next crush, but doesn't doubt that she will learn to open her heart up again.
Before then, we get plenty of awkward character moments where Lisa and Nelson each get to sit in one other's worlds and struggle to know what to make of them. Lisa is more vocal in her own philosophical discordance with what passes as normal in Nelson's realm - his ownership of a "Nuke The Whales" poster and his predilection for singing songs about teachers being brutally decapitated - but Nelson seems every bit as baffled by the various manifestations he encounters of Lisa's personality (while visiting her house, there's a background gag where he picks up her plush bear, as if he can't grasp what it's even for, and churlishly casts it aside). I'm in two minds on how to interpret that scene with Lisa trying to impress Nelson by coaxing Snowball II into acting like a baby, and failing. Lisa insists that the cat is usually very compliant with her role-playing, implying that Snowball II is possibly being thrown off by the negative energy in the room coming from Nelson (and the way Bart's eyeline follows the fleeing cat as he enters the scene is a really nice detail, as if he's already picking up on the disturbance). Or maybe there's a metaphor in there for what she's trying to do with Nelson - ie: forcing a bad-tempered animal into a part they are not inclined to play, and getting her face swatted for her efforts. Lisa's assumption that she can bring out the better qualities in Nelson is, notably, at odds with what she'd previously told Bart in "Bart's Girlfriend" about how it's naive to think you can change a person - although even there, her yearning for a surly young library assistant implied than she wasn't necessarily going to heed her own words. And to be fair to Lisa, she seems ready to take the obvious lesson midway through the episode, but gets pushed into persistence by Marge, who gives her daughter some flagrantly bad advice on the level of the teachings she initially tried to impress on her in "Moaning Lisa" (if Marge were being halfway sensible about this, she would tell Lisa
that she's only 8 years old and shouldn't be too worried about finding a
partner at her time in life). As with "Moaning Lisa", the advice very transparently stems from Marge's own insecurities about her life's choices. Agreeing with Lisa that it's impossible to change Nelson's fundamental character would be tantamount to admitting that she failed in her own aspirations of transforming the "loud, crude and piggish" Homer into "a whole new person". For evidence of how that's working out, we need look no further than the B-story, which has Homer acquiring an autodialler and using it to bug the town with an incessant message promising non-stop happiness in exchange for a dollar.
It's the "Happy Dude" subplot that slightly lowers the tone of "Density", making it feel like a less assured piece overall than "Grade School Confidential". It's reminiscent of Homer's sugar pile subplot in "Lisa's Rival", also written by Scully, in that it's conspicuously a silly B-story for the sake of a silly B-story, to bring levity to a more grounded Lisa adventure. There's an intermittent friction between the great, perceptive character observations for which Scully had such a knack as a writer and the excessively crass energy that would dominate the series during his impending turn as showrunner. "Lisa's Rival" arrived at a time when Homer was coming to feel less like an everyman than an out-and-out Looney Tune, but "Density" signalled the next logical step in his debasement, in having him be really kind of odious. You can certainly see the Homer of the Scully era creeping his way into the picture, with his wholly unrepentant efforts to scam his neighbours out of money (and later try to pass it off as Marge's doing). You could argue that he isn't doing anything too egregiously terrible, on the grounds that a) he's only asking for every dialled individual to
send him a single dollar, not their life savings and b) nobody
except the ridiculously gullible is going to fall for it anyway (we get
no evidence of anyone actually responding besides Abe and Jasper). Yet
he still manages to victimise the entire town by beleaguering them with his inane recording. "Density" also went some way in cementing Marge's role in this equation, by having her murmur disapprovingly and point
out just how stupid and inconsiderate Homer is being, but otherwise stand back and let it
happen. What was preventing her from unplugging the autodialler and dumping it in the trash while Homer's back was turned?
Still, Homer's seedy antics do allow for a few great character moments. Often quoted is Burns' avaricious musing: "One
dollar for eternal happiness? I'd be happier with the dollar." Even better, for
my money, is Apu's broadside, "A jolly rancher is not a
sprinkle, sir! Perhaps in Shangri-la they are, but not here!" Best of all, though, is a sequence entailing a rare glimpse of marital discord within the Flanders' walls, with Maude getting progressively exasperated with Ned for his reluctance to unplug the phone and stop Happy Dude's nocturnal intrusions. A seldom cited but wonderful
thing about Season 8 is that it gave Maggie Roswell, one of the show's
more undervalued cast members, numerous chances to shine. Helen Lovejoy
finally got to fulfil her antagonistic potential in "The Twisted World
of Marge Simpson", while Luann Van Houten delivered a string of cutting one-liners about life with Kirk in "A Milhouse Divided". Here, we have Maude's revelatory delivery of "If you don't unplug that phone right now, you're sleeping on the lawn!", demonstrating that even she finds Ned's deference awfully hard to bear at times. I'll also give the B-story points for the fact that, unlike the sugar pile in "Lisa's Rival", Happy Dude does have some bearing on how the A-story is resolved.There's a clever bit of narrative intersection in the third act, when
Wiggum, Lou and Eddie raid the Simpsons' house, supposedly in pursuit of
the coleslaw punks, leading to a dramatic fake-out where it looks
like Wiggum might have killed Nelson, when in actuality he's shot the
autodialler. Having busted Homer and thwarted Happy Dude, Wiggum considers that closure enough for the night and effectively decides to let Nelson and co go scot-free. Of course, Nelson still has to answer for what he did to Lisa.
Lisa can see that what Marge is saying about Homer is straight-up denial, yet that doesn't deter her from having a go at it with Nelson, convincing him to swap out his wardrobe for more presentable attire and waxing lyrical to him beneath the moonlight. Lisa's gestures might seem hopelessly ungainly, but they get results, at least in the short-term. Nelson kisses her, if only to buy a few moments of silence from Lisa's poetic musings, and discovers that he likes it. It's a development that immediately brings them into direct conflict with Jimbo, Dolph and Kearney (and produces the immortal two-liner: "You kissed a girl?" "That is so gay!"). Lisa assumes that the trio are a toxic influence on Nelson and, given that they are all visibly older than him (in Kearney's case, god only knows how much older), she's probably correct. But it's not hard to understand why Nelson might view things differently. In the absence of an attentive family, their camaraderie likely provides him with a sense of belonging. He's unwilling to give that up, and appears to have zero qualms about participating in their hooliganism when Lisa isn't around. Which doesn't automatically mean that his feelings were Lisa were feigned. It's not that he chooses their fellowship over Lisa so much as he naively assumes that he can have them both. He wants the freedom to express himself the only way he knows how, though his antisocial actions, but he also seems to like the neutralising presence that Lisa brings to his life, and having the option of retreating back to it. Lisa's prior observation about him being an enigma wrapped in a vest stands by the end, since what Nelson wants isn't entirely clear-cut. His insistence that Lisa was always misguided in thinking that she could ever make an upstanding citizen out of him is compounded by his response when she asks him why he ever wanted to be with her. He admits that she was the first person who believed that there was latent good in him. He wasn't able to make that transition, and agrees that Lisa should not have expected it, but he nevertheless appreciated that she was willing to look at him and see more than just the same obnoxious hoodlum as everyone else. The possibility that he could at least be perceived differently is something that Nelson has clearly responded to, suggesting that there is a part of him that wishes that he could be a better person. He doesn't know how to get there, but his interactions with Lisa enabled him to at least rub shoulders with the suggestion. He rounds off his poignant admission with a bitter sting, by putting the onus on Lisa for her inevitable disappointment. "I guess you really blew that one, huh?" he states, insinuating that it really wasn't his fault if Lisa was projecting her mistaken assumptions onto him. Nelson isn't entirely blameless on that front - he did lie to Lisa and take advantage of her desire to see the best in him - but Lisa seems prepared to accept responsibility. She does not disagree with Nelson's observation, and walks away with no further hard feelings. From the looks of it, Nelson is sorry to see her go.
The final sequence, as Lisa makes her way back to Evergreen Terrace, visibly sadder but presumably a good deal wiser from her experience, is truly a thing of beauty, so haunting in its colours and so arousing in its direction and score. The evocative atmosphere, and the quiet sense of overall solitude, remind me a little of the sequence in "Moaning Lisa" when she sets out to find Bleeding Gums Murphy (and, as with "Moaning Lisa", we have the questionable sight of an 8-year-old girl wandering through town unaccompanied at a potentially dangerous hour). Along the way she's greeted by Milhouse, who emerges from his house to give his Shih Tzu an early morning toileting (I was going to label it another one-off pet, like Smithers' Yorkie, Lovejoy's sheepdog and Ralph's cat named Mittens, but according to the Simpsons Wiki, the Van Houtens' Shih Tzu has appeared in a few other places). He becomes the first to learn that she and Nelson are no longer an item, and asks her if she has anyone in mind for her next crush; she responds that it could be just anyone. It's a perfunctory answer that barely conceals Lisa's disinterest in the matter, but Milhouse takes it as confirmation that he has, against all odds, come out as the victor of the scenario. The final shot is a freeze frame of him leaping into the air (unwittingly throttling his dog in the process) in celebration of that rekindled hope for the possibility, however remote, that his place in the newly rising sun might be coming. It's a meagre prize, but Milhouse seizes it for all that it's worth, and we both pity and admire him all the better for it.
