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"Lisa the Treehugger" is the fourth episode of the twelfth season of The Simpsons, which was originally aired on November 19, 2000. It was written by Matt Selman and directed by Steven Dean Moore.
Plot
Needing money after seeing a commercial for a new video game console, Bart is forced to get a job as a menu boy for a Thai restaurant named You Thai Now. However, the menus he delivers soon litter Springfield, upsetting Lisa over the number of trees cut down to make them.
Later the family goes to the Krusty Burger only to find a group of people dressed in cow suits protesting on the roof. She meets Jesse Grass (voiced by Joshua Jackson), the hunky and non-violent leader of a radical environmentalist protest group named Dirt First, who claims to be a level five vegan (he refuses to eat anything that casts a shadow). She later joins Dirt First, and after learning that Springfield's oldest redwood tree is about to be cut down by Rich Texan, volunteers to camp in the tree to keep the loggers at bay. However, missing her family, she leaves the tree for a night, and returns in the morning to find the tree fell by lightning.
Not knowing her fate, everyone in Springfield thinks Lisa died in the storm and offers condolences to the family, which Homer and Bart briefly take advantage of. The Rich Texan also decides to turn the forest into a sanctuary in memory of Lisa, but later he changes his mind and offers to build an amusement park, "Lisa Land".
Unfortunately, Lisa comes to the site, and protests the park. The log being used as the sign for Lisa Land is cut loose by Jesse and heads for Springfield's business district, destroying the Rich Texan's company, Homer's favourite "Kentucky Fried Panda" and eventually heads out on a cross-country journey out to the sea. Although Jesse lands himself in jail again, he has apparently not stopped his crusade for the environment.
Cultural references
- Bart is reading an "Itchy & Veronica" comic book and sighs, "Oh, Betty." This is a reference to Betty and Veronica from Archie Comics.
- The Gamestation 256 is a parody of the Nintendo 64 and the PlayStation, which the Gamestation resembles.
- The environmentalist group's name is a parody of Earth First.
- At a Dirt First meeting, Jesse Grass says "Once you're up there, you can't come down. Not for a Phish concert, not even for Burning Man."
- The song playing during the end credits is "Spybreak!" by Propellerheads, which featured on the soundtrack to The Matrix. The song also plays during Bart's martial arts delivering scene, which parodies the lobby scene from the film.
- The Lisa Log demolishes a restaurant called Kentucky Fried Panda, a portmanteau of sorts combining the names of two well-known fast-food chains, KFC and Panda Express. Homer even said an altered version of KFC's tagline, saying, "It's finger ling-ling good." The restaurant is to explain the endangered Giant Pandas.
- The song on the end of the episode is a parody of the song "This Land Is Your Land" by Woody Guthrie.
External links
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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: "Lisa the Tree Hugger" |
- "Lisa the Tree Hugger" episode capsule at The Simpsons Archive
- "Lisa the Tree Hugger" at the Internet Movie Database
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