Lisa's First Word

"Lisa's First Word"
The Simpsons episode
File:Lisas First Word.png
Episode no.	Season 4
Directed by	Mark Kirkland
Written by	Jeff Martin
Original air date	December 3
Episode features
Chalkboard gag	"Teacher is not a leper"
Couch gag	The Simpsons form a Vegas style chours line
Commentary	Matt Groening Al Jean Jeff Martin Mark Kirkland

"Lisa's First Word" is the 10th episode of The Simpsons' fourth season.

Plot

When Homer, Marge, Bart and Lisa try unsuccessfully to get Maggie to speak, Marge tells the family the story of when Lisa said her first word.

In March of 1983, Homer, Marge, and Bart are living in the Lower East Springfield district. One day, Marge announces to Homer and Bart that she is pregnant with another baby. When asked what he thinks, Bart imagines a new brother whom he can use as a scapegoat for his own misbehavior. Marge suggests to Homer that with their family expanding, they need a bigger house. Homer and Marge try to look for houses, including one in the ghetto that just came on the market due to a very recent murder (the police are still examining the crime scene when they arrive), one next to a pork fat-rendering plant and a houseboat owned by Captain McCallister who, in the middle of showing them the boat, jumps overboard to fight a giant shark. After the three unsuccessful attempts, the Simpsons find the perfect house on Evergreen Terrace and buy it with a $15,000 down payment from the sale of Grampa Simpson's house that he won in a crooked 1950s game show.

In 1984, the Simpsons move into their new Evergreen Terrace home, with the Flanders family as neighbors. Homer asks to borrow a TV tray that Ned just purchased at the hardware store, just for "a little while", but Homer still has it in the present time, eight years later. Bart turns two years old, and for the first time, he watches Krusty the Clown, as well as The Itchy & Scratchy Show. Krusty also begins a promotion for the 1984 Summer Olympic Games with his Krusty Burger chain, which is advertised as the "Official Meat-Flavored Sandwich of the 1984 Olympics" (Itchy and Scratchy are also promoted as the "Official Animated Cat and Mouse Team of the 1984 Olympics"). The promotion is a scratch-and-win game in which people scratch off the name of the event from the game card and if the U.S. wins a gold medal in that chosen event, that person would win a free Krusty Burger. However, the game cards are rigged so they only contain events in which the Soviet Union typically performed strongly. But when the USSR boycott the Olympics, Krusty loses $44 million and Homer receives a steady supply of Krusty Burgers.

Bart is now asked to give up his crib so it can become the new baby's. Bart refuses, so Homer builds Bart a new bed shaped like a maniacal clown, which terrifies Bart (see below). Marge thinks that the baby is coming, and she and Homer go to the hospital, leaving Bart with the Flanders family. Bart returns home and is scared until Homer asks him to see Lisa, to whom Bart takes an immediate dislike. Everyone, except Bart, agrees that she is a beautiful baby. Later, Bart does bad things to Lisa — such as giving her a bald haircut with household scissors, asking who's cuter now, sticking stamps on her and putting her in a mailbox, and putting her through the Flanders' doggy door — and is punished by being put in the corner. He blames Lisa for his problems and packs his toys into a hobo's bundle, about to run away for good until Lisa says her first word, "Bart." Bart discovers that Lisa can talk, and she can even say David Hasselhoff's name. After Lisa says "Homer" instead of "Daddy," to which Homer becomes angry, she and Bart laugh and embrace, and Bart appears to accept her as his little sister.

However, back in present day, the flashback ends and we see Bart and Lisa fighting. Homer takes Maggie to bed, saying that "the sooner kids talk, the sooner they talk back." He tells her that he hopes that she never says a word. However, when he leaves her bedroom, Maggie removes her pacifier and says her first word: "Daddy."

Trivia

• It is revealed in this episode that Bart's first word was "Ay Caramba!", after seeing Homer and Marge having sex in bed.
• The FOX censors wrote a note concerning Homer's line, "Bart can kiss my hairy, yellow butt!" after Marge tells Homer that Bart might be jealous of baby Lisa, citing that the line is considered "coarse" since, due to the fact that Bart was two during the flashback, it may imply pedophilia. The line was not taken out and has since appeared on countless merchandise.
• The episode was named "Maggie's First Word" in Latin America, despite the main focus on Lisa. Maggie does say a word however and was voiced by the same voice actress of Lisa in Latin America.
• The Olympic promotion by Krusty Burger is loosely based on a similar "scratch-and-win" promotion by McDonalds in which McDonald's visitors could win a hamburger, french fries, a soft drink, or even a cash prize up to $10,000 if Team USA won a medal in the visitor's listed event. McDonald's lost millions on the promotion, just like what happened to Krusty.
• In the '80s flashback, Sideshow Bob is shown with teal-colored hair the same color as Sideshow Mel's due to an animation goof.
• Another animation goof (or unexplained mystery) is that even though it is obvious Granpa is a younger looking man in 1984 than he is normally is in the series, he has a picture of his elderly self in his residence.
• An unexplained factor in the series continuity is that in the 1990 episode "Krusty Gets Busted" he says he is illiterate. In this episode, which is a 1984 flashback, Krusty successfully reads and deciphers a communique about the Soviets boycotting the Olympics.
• When seen in Gump Roast, Maggie saying her first word was redubbed with Nancy Cartwright's voice.
• The animation of Homer making Bart's clown bed was recycled from Homer at the Bat, when Homer is making his Wonderbat.

Cultural references

• Wendy's — The Springfield Shopper headline from the day Lisa was born ("MONDALE TO HART: WHERE'S THE BEEF?") uses the currently popular advertising slogan for Wendy's. Although "where's the beef?" was intended to be a slogan for Wendy's, it gained popularity in jokes and also in political slogans.
• If the Springfield Shopper article was printed the morning after the Democratic primary debate that featured that line from Walter Mondale, then Lisa's birthday would be March 12, 1984.
• After reading the 1984 headline (quoting Mondale) in the present Homer laughs and quips "No wonder he won Minnesota" referring to the fact that Minnesota was the only state that Mondale carried in the 1984 presidential election.
• "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" — Homer sings the Cyndi Lauper song as he is walking home from work (even though the song wasn't released until late 1983/early 1984)
• Marge went into labor during the 1984 Olympics, which were held between July 28 and August 12.
• References from 1983
  • Joe Piscopo — At the time of this episode's flashback, the New Jersey comedian was enjoying success on Saturday Night Live, but hasn't enjoyed success since.
  • M*A*S*H — Marge commenting about the TV series — which had just aired its last episode — to her neighbors.
  • Mama's Family — A promo for an hour-long episode of the then-new TV series is heard. (Yeardley Smith, who voiced Lisa Simpson, had previously appeared in a 1986 Mama's Family episode as a teenage escapee from juvenile hall.)
  • Ms. Pac-Man — A then-currently popular arcade game.
  • The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson — In its heyday at the time. Bart watches the program after Marge falls asleep telling him a bedtime story.
  • Webster — Ned Flanders' T-shirt "I ♥ Webster" features a picture of Emmanuel Lewis, who played the title character in the TV series which premiered that year.
  • Knight Rider — When Bart asks Lisa to say "David Hasselhoff", he points to a picture of Hasselhoff on a T.V. magazine standing in front of K.I.T.T., as the series ran from 1982-1986.

"Can't sleep, clown will eat me"

File:Bedclown.jpg

"If you should die before you wake...!".

"Lisa's First Word" is perhaps best known as the source of Bart's meme "Can't sleep, clown will eat me".

Inspired by an event in Simpsons writer Mike Reiss' childhood, young Bart does not want to give up sleeping in the crib to make way for his newborn sister. Noticing Bart's affection for Krusty the Clown, Homer decides to build a clown-themed bed to please his son. But thanks to Homer's poor handicraft skills, the bed takes on a sinister appearance and frightens Bart, especially in the darkened room. In his first night in the new bed, far from "laughing himself to sleep," Bart imagines that the face on the headboard of the bed is coming to life, intoning with sinister glee, "If you should die before you wake...", before collapsing into evil cackling. Bart then curls up into a fetal position on the floor, next to the sofa downstairs, chanting "can't sleep, clown'll eat me..."

The catchphrase inspired the Alice Cooper song, "Can't Sleep, Clowns Will Eat Me," and has become an insomniac joke.

External links

• "Lisa's First Word episode capsule". The Simpsons Archive.