The Simpsons: 8 Ways How Lisa Got Worse & Worse

Of the many characters on The Simpsons, Lisa is arguably the most polarizing due to how bad her characterization got over the years

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One of the main characters on The Simpsons is the spiky-haired Lisa; an eight-year-old known for her incredible intelligence and love/hate relationship with her dumb brother Bart. While the show’s early days were dominated by Bart and Homer, Lisa was given her fair share of starring episodes that were often emotional and built around her struggles with bullying or her complex love life.

But however subjective the claim may be, it’s an open secret that The Simpsons has declined in quality over its many years of production. Given its longevity, this was sadly an inevitability but it’s still a hard pill for fans to swallow – especially for fans of Lisa. Not only has Lisa changed over the years, but her character has also deteriorated massively. Without further delay, here are 8 ways Lisa got worse and worse the longer The Simpsons went.

8 She Got Less Funny

As with the whole show, Lisa got less funny as a character. Originally, she was full of catchphrases and her controversially skeptical world view led to a variety of disagreements with those around her. She was more intelligent than her father and a saxophone virtuoso at the very young age of eight.

But when this is all there is to an eight year old prodigy, these novelties and traits simply lose all their impact over time. Sadly, this is what happened to Lisa.

7 Her Stories & Arcs Became Repetitive

Another issue with Lisa was how repetitive her storylines became. She was made to be Buddhist early on, as well as vegetarian. She was in MENSA and loved science. As such, any time religion came into play, her Buddhism was brought up. Anything to do with animals? Here comes the obligatory reminder that she was vegetarian.

Various storylines revolved around different angles surrounding her education: maybe she messed up on a test and found out that test results don’t matter or perhaps she was worried about her social status? But by the end of these episodes, her self-esteem was always back on track. Long story short, she became predictable.

6 She Became The Catch-All For ‘Good’

Speaking of the long list of traits Lisa took on over the course of The Simpsons, it’s hard not to notice that everything associated with her almost always considered to be the universally “good” stuff.

She became vegetarian when issues surrounding the meat industry came to light, she is an advocate for recycling in a town that doesn’t really care, she has a very left-leaning moral compass, and many more. Giving her all of the trademark ‘good’ traits ended up getting a bit boring; why not share these traits around?

5 She Stopped Being Unique

As she was piled with more and more positive traits, Lisa lost what was unique about her. At the start of the show, she was a feminist icon who was able to break away from the shackles of patriarchy by being smarter and wittier than her father and brother in every way. She also excelled at her goals in some way in pretty much every episode proving that, at times, she was the only real adult in the family.

Over time, she became less and less impressive, while the other women around her began adopting these same traits and apparently picking up the slack. Obviously this isn’t a bad thing at all, but it does leave Lisa – one of the original main characters – behind.

4 She Was Slowly But Surely Ignored

This loss of character for Lisa also meant that she hasn’t featured as prominently in the most recent seasons. Seasons 1 to 4 were almost all about Bart and Homer as they were the easiest to market at the time, but fans soon realized Lisa could star in her own brilliant episodes and she did so frequently for a long time.

The same, however, can’t be said for the way she’s being used in the show’s most recent history. She’s obviously still a major player in the cast, but fans wish they could see more of what she was doing alone these days.

3 Her Various Futures Don’t Align

This isn’t so much an issue with Lisa as an issue with the show as a whole. Most Simpsons fans are aware of the fact that the episodes set in the future are non-canonical, so the various things they see Lisa getting up to don’t necessarily ‘actually’ happen.

The issue is that now that the show has been running for so long, fans have seen way too many fake futures (both ideal and otherwise) for Lisa that even her most dedicated fans are getting a little sick of it.

2 She Starred In The Show’s Worst Episode

According to IMDb, the general consensus about The Simpsons is that the Season 23 finale is its worst in its tenured history. ‘Lisa Goes Gaga’ recycles one of Lisa’s many attempts to become more popular and ends (again) with Lisa being upliftingly told to believe in herself more. Obviously, Lisa isn’t really the problem here.

The episode is dragged down by its shameless promotion of the Lady Gaga brand. Rather than just having a cool cameo, Lady Gaga is pretty much the focus of the whole episode, and it really doesn’t work.

1 Her Voice Has Deteriorated Somewhat

The entire cast of The Simpsons has (in accordance with the natural progression of human life) aged thirty years in the thirty years (and counting) that the show has been on air. There’s nothing that can be done about that and no one can be blamed. However, each of the voice actors have therefore endured various subtle changes in their voices as the years went by.

Regular viewers probably wouldn’t notice this slight slope, but going from season one to thirty can often be quite a jarring experience. As such, hearing Lisa sound a certain way in early episodes but slightly different in later ones (while apparently being the same age) is a bit disconcerting.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/the-simpsons-lisa-got-worse-bad-how/