Lisa the Iconoclast

As Springfield celebrates its bicentennial, Lisa's class at Springfield Elementary School are assigned essays. Lisa goes to the historical society to research Jebediah Springfield, the founder of Springfield. While trying to play Jebediah Springfield's fife, she makes the shocking discovery that the town's founder was actually a villainous pirate and enemy of George Washington who kept his dark past hidden. He had written his confession on the back side of a portrait of Washington and hidden it in his fife. Meanwhile, upon Lisa's suggestion, Homer is elected the town crier after he demonstrated that he was better suited to the position than Ned Flanders.

Lisa conducts further research about Jebediah Springfield, and finds out that he once lost his tongue to a Turk in a groghouse fight and had it replaced with a prosthetic silver tongue. The town, including Marge, does not agree with Lisa's revelations, resulting in an "F" on a report about Springfield while Ms. Hoover deems her to be a "PC Thug." Homer believes her, and sympathizes with her story, claiming he's been called a "greasy thug" too. However, when Lisa attempts to show the town historian Horace Hurlbut the confession, he dismisses it as an obvious forgery, and when she presses him, he bans her and her descendants from the museum for three months. Lisa tries to convince the town her claims are true, but is met with outright hostility everywhere. However, she convinces the municipal government to disinter Mr. Springfield's body to search for evidence of a legendary silver tongue. Despite Lisa's suspicions, when they open the coffin, the skeleton possesses no silver tongue. Lisa is forced into admitting she was wrong and Mayor Quimby strips Homer of the role of town crier and reassigns it to Flanders.

That night, Lisa has a dream wherein the ghosts of Jebediah Springfield and George Washington appear. After seeing the incomplete portrait of George Washington in her classroom, Lisa soon figures out that the piece of paper upon which the confession is written is the bottom half of the portrait. She confronts Hurlbut with this piece of evidence. Hurlbut confesses that he stole the tongue while the dust cleared seconds after the coffin was opened and hid it in a cowboy maquette in the museum. He explained that he had done so to protect his career and the myth of Jebediah Springfield. After realizing the mistake of celebrating a pirate, the two decide to go public with their discovery. Just as Lisa is about to expose the "real Jebediah" to the parading townspeople, she realizes that Jebediah Springfield's good image means too much to the town, and decides to keep the truth a secret, knowing they will lose hope and morale if the truth is revealed to the public. At the parade, Homer takes a tricorne and bell from Flanders and replaces him, marching through the parade with Lisa on his shoulder.

Das Bus
The Springfield Elementary School Model United Nations club is going on a field trip. On the bus, Bart, Nelson, Ralph and Milhouse are playing a game by racing fruit down the aisle. Milhouse rolls a grapefruit that gets stuck under the brakes. When bus driver Otto attempts to press down on the pedal, it squirts juice into his eyes, causing him to lose control and drive the bus off a bridge.

Otto attempts to swim for help but ends up being swept away by the current. It is later revealed Otto is picked up by Chinese fishermen, who plan to use him for slave labor. The students – Bart, Lisa, Milhouse, Nelson, Lewis, Ralph, Martin, Wendell, Sherri and Terri – swim to a nearby tropical island. Bart tries to tell the children that being stranded on an island is just like TV where life is easy and cocktails are plentiful, comparing it to The Swiss Family Robinson, only with more cursing. Reality soon sets in when the island is found to be largely barren and the children lack survival skills. With no food found on the island and no adult supervision, the children rely on snack food retrieved from the sunken bus by Bart. They awaken the next morning to find the snacks all gone. Suspecting Milhouse because of his pot-belly and nacho cheese breath, the students put him on trial and he blames the loss on a mysterious island "monster".

Back at home, Homer discovers that Ned Flanders has his own home-based Internet business, Flancrest Enterprises. Homer complains to Marge that everyone except the Simpson family are getting rich off the Internet, and he wants a piece of the action, despite knowing nothing about it. He launches his own dot-com company, Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net, which is later bought out by Bill Gates and his goons. Unfortunately, Bill Gates' "buying out" procedure is having his goons destroy Homer's office and break all of his possessions, stating that he "didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks".

During the trial held by the students, there is insufficient evidence to prove Milhouse ate all the food. Because of this, Bart, acting as judge, acquits Milhouse. The other students are not happy with this verdict and attempt to kill Milhouse. Lisa tries to stop the violence, but gets pushed by Nelson. Bart, angered by this, tells everyone to leave Lisa alone. The other students end up chasing Bart, Lisa, and Milhouse into a cave, where it is revealed that Milhouse's "monster" is actually a wild boar. On one of the boar's tusks is an empty bag of chips, revealing that it was the actual culprit for eating the snacks. Nelson apologizes to Milhouse for the misunderstanding, who reveals that he only took "two sandwiches and a bag of Doritos". The kids kill the boar and eat it (except for Lisa, who adheres to her vegetarianism and licks slime from a rock instead, since the slime is what the boar is feeding on to survive on the island). The episode concludes with a comically obvious deus ex machina ending, narrated by James Earl Jones:

So the children learned how to function as a society,
and eventually they were rescued by, oh, let's say...Moe.

Das Bus is quite possibly my favorite episode.

I'm so hungry I could eat at Arby's.

Das Bus, easy.

the internet subplot is an all time favorite


oh, the have the internet on computers now'

when i had AOL back in the day, this used to be my sign-in when the interweb loaded up

Okay, yeah, this is my favorite episode.

I will say that "Lisa the Iconoclast" has at least one classic joke.

"Now get out! You're banned from this historical society! You and your children, and your children's children!"

*they leave*

"...for three months."

I have a soft spot for Lisa episodes so I'm throwing a vote her way.

Lisa episodes usually are very good and have their own distinct feel. I voted for Lisa the Iconoclast due to its guest star as well--Donald Sutherland is one of the best they've ever had, up there with Dustin Hoffman.