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"Lisa the Beauty Queen" |
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| “ | Oh my God. I'm ugly... | „ |
| ~ Lisa Simpson |
"Lisa the Beauty Queen" is the fourth episode of Season 4.
Synopsis[]
Homer tries to boost Lisa's confidence by entering her into a beauty pageant. By default, Lisa earns the crown and she uses her new platform to inundate Springfield with public service announcements.
Full Story[]
Outside the Springfield Elementary School carnival, Principal Skinner nearly gets sued by the Blue-Haired Lawyer (who normally represents Mr. Burns, but is representing The Disney Corporation in this episode) for using "The Happiest Place on Earth" as the slogan. Skinner reveals to the Blue-Haired Lawyer and his hired goons (who look like the ones who work for Mr. Burns) that he's an ex-Green Beret and takes them out with swift and brutal force. At the carnival, Nelson finds it more fun to spray Martin with a water gun than play the carnival game the water gun is attached to; Bart nearly gets in trouble for running an unauthorized three-card monte booth; Groundskeeper Willie has no luck getting anyone to like the haggis he's selling; the "Guess Your Age and Weight" psychic is troubled that his prediction of Homer being 53 years old and 420 pounds is off by 17 years (36) and 181 pounds (239); Otto flees to Mexico after crashing a carnival ride car into the side of the school; and Milhouse and Bart find a carnival spook house that's actually scary (an abandoned cabin with Dolph, Jimbo, and Kearney standing inside and ready to beat up anyone who comes in). Over at the caricature booth, Lisa gets her picture drawn by the Sarcastic Middle-Aged Clerk. When everyone laughs at it, she takes it as a sign that she's ugly. Homer enters a raffle where the grand prize is a ride on The Duff Blimp. Though Homer really wanted a shoe buffer (that ended up going to Ned Flanders), Homer is overjoyed when he wins the grand prize.
Back at home, Lisa is still upset that she's seen as ugly. Homer walks by the room and tries to console her, telling her that the caricature is not representative of what she actually looks like, but Lisa is too upset to listen to reason. After discussing the concept of beauty with his buddies at Moe's, he sees an ad for The Little Miss Springfield Pageant, run by Laramie Cigarettes CEO, Jack Larson. The entry fee for the pageant is $250, but Homer is currently broke. He chooses to sell the Duff Blimp ticket to Barney (who receives money from being a lab rat for medical testing, thanks to animal rights activists protesting over real animals being used for experimentation) to get the money. Homer tells Lisa that he entered her in the Little Miss Springfield pageant and used her embarrassing caricature for the photo part of the application. Lisa refuses and runs crying out of the kitchen. Despite Marge being concerned over Lisa and Bart's lustful reaction to the girls who would be competing with Lisa, Homer believes that Lisa is beautiful enough to compete and win. Marge consoles Lisa, saying that she doesn't have to compete in the pageant if she doesn't want to, but Homer sacrificed his ticket to ride on the Duff Blimp just so he can afford the $250 entry fee. Moved by this gesture, Lisa decides to go along with it.
Amber's introduction
At the pageant sign-ups, two girls warn Lisa about a formidable competitor: Amber Dempsey, a regular contestant who, in the same week, was crowned Pork Princess and Little Miss Kosher. Her secret weapon: eyelash implants (which are only legal in Paraguay) and batting them as much as possible to charm the judges. Lisa is worried that Amber will defeat her, but Marge suggests a day at the hair salon ("Turn Your Head and Coif") while Bart helps Lisa with all the tricks and tropes associated with beauty pageants: wiping away a tear and hugging the loser when the emcee announces her as the winner, how to perfectly walk in heels, and using petroleum jelly on your teeth for a frictionless smile (alongside taping your swimsuit to your butt, "the ancient art of padding," and lifting his sister's spirits by saying she's not ugly).
At the introductions, Amber wins over the crowd and judges with her eyelash implants, Apu's niece and Sanjay's daughter gets laughed at for announcing that she'll be playing "MacArthur Park" on the tabla (Apu and Sanjay still remain supportive of her, even after Dolph, Jimbo, and Kearney wheel off the Squishee machine from the still-open Kwik-E-Mart in their latest act of petty crime and her performance puts everyone to sleep), and Lisa vows that she'll use the title of Little Miss Springfield to make Springfield a better place.
Despite Lisa's rousing rendition of "Proud Mary" and all the practice and self-esteem building from her family, she loses to Amber Dempsey. However, at Amber's first appearance at an opening ceremony for SHØP (which also is the site of Barney crashing the Duff Blimp a la The Hindenburg, complete with Kent screaming, "Oh, the humanity!"), it starts to rain. While watching the ceremony at home, Marge worries that Amber's dress is going to get wet. Lisa is more concerned that the Little Miss Springfield scepter will act as a lightning rod...unless it's a plastic one. Lisa is proven wrong when Amber is struck by lightning so badly that she has to be taken to the hospital (where Dr. Hibbert personally crowns Amber as "Little Miss Intensive Care") and Lisa steps in as the new Little Miss Springfield (after Krusty teases her with the scepter and gets struck by lightning as well).
Homer and Lisa reconcile
As Little Miss Springfield, Lisa gets her own statue at the Springfield Wax Museum (whose torso was repurposed from sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer's, with Dr. Ruth's head next to Mr. T's and Ronald Reagan's in The Chamber of Horrors) and gets whistles of admiration from every boy in her class (including Ralph Wiggum). However, her role as Little Miss Springfield starts to get sketchy when she welcomes who she thinks are incoming immigrants, when, really, she's supposed to be sending off deportees and gets chased off the stage of a USO show with special guest star, Bob Hope. Things come to a head when Jack Larson tells her she'll be riding a pack of cigarettes during a parade as a way to promote cigarettes to young people (as a lot of their regular, older customers keep dying from the effects of habitual cigarette smoking), replacing Menthol Moose. Lisa reluctantly rides the float, but, after seeing kids, teens, and even her own sister smoking cigarettes, she stops the float out of outrage and announces that she's using her position as Little Miss Springfield to fight back against social injustice, such as dognapping, pushing cigarettes on minors, mismanaging college funds badly needed for education and the arts (which leads a group of college nerds to go after some football players...until a newspaper headline reveals that the college nerds still got beat up), and stopping Mayor Quimby's corruption.
Quimby and the Laramie officials meet to look for a way to dethrone Lisa as Little Miss Springfield and get Amber Dempsey (who is implied to still be in the hospital, though it's unknown whether or not she actually survived) reinstated. Lisa is stripped of her crown after one of the pageant officials discovers that Homer stupidly wrote, "Okay" under the "Do Not Write Anything Below This Space" part of the application. At home, Homer apologizes to Lisa for costing her the title, but she is grateful to him as he entered her in the contest because he may have been drunk and, more importantly, because he wanted Lisa to feel better about herself after being humiliated over the carnival caricature. Lisa agrees to remember this the next time Homer ruins her life.
The episode ends with Kent Brockman walking off the set after his pre-taped interview with Pope John Paul II gets replaced with b-roll of a baby goat getting bottle-fed.