Lisa Denounces Gaga

The Simpsons, S023E22

Lisa was feeling bad for herself after both receiving an award for being the least popular and being exposed as promoting herself on a school message board.  Lady Gaga, traveling on her outlandish train, felt the presence of Lisa's low self-esteem and stopped into Springfield to cheer her up and the rest of the town.  After many failures to cheer up Lisa, Gaga herself adopted an uncharacteristic defeated attitude when Lisa exploded all of her frustrations upon her.  However, it turned out that was just what Lisa needed to bring herself out a dark and sad place.

For the season finale, I suppose they couldn't have gone bigger with a guest star other than Lady Gaga.  I'm not much of a fan of hers, but I don't think this episode was too cheesy.  In fact, I liked the way they poked fun of all of her outrageous outfits and flashy performances.  I think my favorite Gaga outfit was the one she had made out of meat where Homer kept roasting and eating it right off her.  If she had let him keep eating, it probably would have ended up being the fastest time Homer ever undressed a woman.

Another thing I just liked about Gaga in this episode was that she kept trying to promote positivity.  Yes, she was pushy despite that Lisa wasn't interested in her help, but I liked her style.  She could have been very vain and all flash and no substance, but she really wanted to see Lisa smile again and was truly hurt when Lisa exploded on her like she was the worst thing to come to town since Mr. Burns.  So I was little happy to see Lisa and Gaga make up and sing a song together (even though I didn't like the song).  Although, when Gaga was sad she was crying little diamonds, which was funny and sort of random.  That was a nice touch to add to the idea of her extreme glamor.

There were a lot of other little things that I enjoyed.  One was when a piece of glitter from Gaga's first little show in town landed on Mr. Burns' head and made him fall off his feet.  Another was when Skinner told Lisa to go along with her mean-spirited award in order to make things easier for herself.  Instead, the kids laughed at her and Skinner admitted that he doesn't know much about children.  The irony in that joke was not lost upon me.  But my favorite joke was probably when Moe was chasing after Gaga's train when she was attempting to leave town, asking her to wait:

[Moe] Can you help me with my self esteem?

[Gaga] I'm not that good.

Poor Moe.  Even the magical-like Gaga can't turn him into something that could remotely resemble a human.  But I loved that she didn't even need a moment to think about it.  Even someone who hasn't know Moe for more than a second can tell he's a hopeless case.

Finally, I think it was interesting that Homer was singing his own version of "Poker Face."  It wasn't hilarious, but I did like him putting "dohs" into the song to replaces "ohs."  I'm glad they saved that until the end when most people had probably stopped paying attention.  It wasn't a strong enough song to be included in the actual episode, so that was a smart move.  But I would have liked to see Homer dancing or something to the song.  That might have been good.

Overall, I don't think this was a bad finale with such a huge guest star.  I doubt that it was good enough to draw in fans that have been lost over the last decade or so, but I'm sure it made some people interested in how Lady Gaga would fare in Simpsons world.  I think she didn't do a horrible job and obviously had fun with it.  It was definitely a lot more funnier than I anticipated, and I had very low anticipations about a story about Lisa and Gaga.  This season wasn't brilliant, but it wasn't a complete failure, much like this episode.  So I think this was a good episode to end with.  It reflects the general tone of the 21 others.