 |
| The saga of Jake "Toilet" Boymen almost ended before it began. |
The Simpsons see a play about Itchy & Scratchy. Its a hit, and afterwords the crowd demands to see its director, Juliana. As she goes to thank the crowd, Principal Skinner comes out of nowhere to point out that she graduated from Springfield Elementary in an effort to point out that such graduates actually have futures. However, Skinner accidentally states that girls are weaker than boys in math and science, the 'real' subjects, and there is instant backlash. At a later press conference, Skinner tries to make up for it, but only makes things much worse. Superintendent Chalmers has no choice but to relieve Skinner of his duties, and appoint a new Principal: Melanie Upfoot. The first thing she does is to separate the school into halves: one for boys and the other for girls.
At first, Lisa is thrilled that she'll finally be able to learn without boys getting in the way. Upon entering the newly remodeled school, the girl's half looks much fancier, containing artwork and such, much to Lisa's delight. However, she's disappointed to learn that the girl's math class, taught by Upfoot herself, is more about confidence boosting, and there's no actual math to be learned. Lisa sneaks over to the boy's half of school. Here, she finds it to be a no man's land, with Skinner having been reduced to Assistant Groundskeeper. Still, she sees a class do some hardcore geometry, and she wants in. Marge helps Lisa out by giving her daughter a new persona, a boy named Jake Boymen.
While Lisa gets to enjoy difficult math, "Jake" has trouble fitting in as "he" is quickly referred to as Toilet, and accidentally gets into a fight with Nelson Muntz. Bart spies Lisa crying in her room while still dressed as Jake and, after learning why she's doing this, decides to help Lisa become a boy in order to survive. With Bart's help, Lisa is able to become both a math whiz and, I dunno, an assistant bully or something. Either way, she's eventually given an award for her math prowess. Its then where she reveals that Jake is actually Lisa, to the shock of some. Lisa tries to teach everyone that girls can be great at math too if given the chance, but she still has some of the 'boy' that Bart taught her as well.
Quick Review
This episode hardly had the time to be funny, spending way too much time embroiled in gender differences to push in actual comedy. The bits were Skinner were nearly unbearable to watch. The Itchy & Scratchy play at the beginning was probably the funniest the episode had to offer, as everything went severely downhill from there.
Final Score: 4.3
No comments:
Post a Comment