Lost Our Lisa

"Lost Our Lisa" is the twenty-fourth episode of the ninth season of The Simpsons.

Plot
Although Marge agrees to take Lisa to the Springfield Museum so she can see the Orb of Isis, Marge learns she has to take Bart to a doctor instead, since he has glued various novelty items to his face. Since this is Lisa's last chance to see a certain exhibit, she phones Homer to ask him if she can take the bus, despite her young age. He seems uncertain, which prompts her to trick him and he unwisely agrees.

Lisa takes bus route 22 which passes Crackton. Having not passed the museum for so long, she asks the driver if the bus is route 22 and learns that she is riding 22A, the wrong bus and has to get off at the last stop, which is in the middle of nowhere, where she finds area 51a. After a conversation with Carl and Lenny during his lunch break, Homer learns the error of his judgment. He leaves the canteen and goes looking for her. He heads to the museum and ends up in Springfield's Russian district. He cannot find her amongst the crowds and bribes a workman with balloons so that he can use the workman's cherrypicker to get up high. He spots her and she spots him, but the vehicles wheels creak forwards and it hurtles down the hill, with Lisa in hot pursuit. After scraping his head under a tunnel and smashing into some traffic lights, it slides of the edge of a peer at the harbour but, fortunately, the cherrypicker's "neck" is tall enough to keep Homer just above the water level. Homer prays as he flows underneath a closing drawbridge "I'm not normally a praying man, but if you're up there... please save me Superman!" His head is caught between the two closing halves but he miraculously survives with nothing more that a few tire marks across his forehead.

Meanwhile, Bart's novelties get removed by Dr. Hibbert with "terror sweat." Marge and he return home, thinking Lisa is crying in her bedroom. Marge asks him to apologise to her, much to the anger of Bart. Bart hears no response from Lisa. With Homer and Lisa re-united, he tells her that it is all right to take a few risks in life. Thus, the two decide to go to the museum after all, by illegally entering since it is now closed. While there, the two make a fascinating discovery that the Orb of Isis is a music box which had apparently been gone overlooked by scientists and museum staff, and Lisa concludes that what her father said about risks was right – until the alarm goes off and guard dogs chase them out of the building.

Episode cross-references

 * The Khlav Kalash/Crab juice guy from "The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson" appears in this episode.
 * The Orb of Isis is shown inside a pyramid in "Simpsons Bible Stories".

Cultural references

 * The X-ray specs supposedly can't see through lead, much like Superman.
 * The Springsonian museum is named very similarly to Smithsonian Museum.
 * The military base Area 51A is a reference to Area 51.
 * Comic Book Guy asking Lisa three questions is a nod to a scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
 * Comic Book Guy's phrasing "Question the first" refers to Lewis Caroll's nonsense poem The Hunting of the Snark, which is divided into 'fits', listed 'Fit the first', 'Fit the second' etc.
 * The telephone booth Lisa uses in Springfield's Russian district has an onion dome on top, similar to those on Saint Basil's Cathedral.
 * The melody played by the orb is very similar to that played by the music box in the film The Gate II.