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"Lisa the Vegetarian" is the fifth episode of The Simpsons' seventh season. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on October 15, 1995. In the episode, Lisa decides to give up eating meat after bonding with a lamb at a petting zoo. Her schoolmates and family members ridicule her for her beliefs, but with the help of Apu, Paul McCartney, and Linda McCartney, she commits to vegetarianism.

David S. Cohen wrote the episode, and Mark Kirkland directed it. Cohen formulated the idea while he was working on a script for another episode of The Simpsons. He then pitched the idea to David Mirkin, the show runner at the time. Mirkin supported the episode because he had just become a vegetarian himself.

Former Beatle Paul McCartney and his then-wife Linda McCartney guest star in the episode. Paul McCartney's condition for appearing was that Lisa would remain a vegetarian for the rest of the series. The episode makes several references to his musical career, and his song "Maybe I'm Amazed" plays during the closing credits. If the credits are played backwards, McCartney can be heard reciting a recipe for lentil soup.

"Lisa the Vegetarian" finished 47th in the ratings for the week of October 9 to October 15, 1995, with a 9.0 Nielsen rating. It was the fourth highest-rated show on the Fox network that week. The episode received generally positive reviews from television critics. It has won two awards, an Environmental Media Award and a Genesis Award, for highlighting environmental and animal issues.

Plot

The Simpson family visits a petting zoo, where Lisa is enraptured by a cute little lamb. That night, Marge serves lamb chops for dinner, but Lisa makes the connection between the food and its living counterpart, and announces that she will no longer eat meat. At school, she requests a vegetarian alternative to the cafeteria food, which leads Principal Skinner to label her an "agitator". The students are then forced to watch a propaganda film, starring Troy McClure, that urges children to eat meat. Reaction at home is no better; she is razzed mercilessly by Homer and Bart for rejecting meat, particularly since Homer is ready to host a barbecue, complete with roast pig. Lisa, in an attempt to prevent everyone from eating meat, makes enough gazpacho for all the guests at her father's shindig, but the attendees laugh at her. Enraged, she climbs aboard a riding mower and drives away with the roast pig in tow. Homer and Bart chase her, but she pushes the pig off a slope, and they are too late. The pig rolls through bushes, into a river, and is shot into the air by a dam spillway's suction.

At home, Homer scolds Lisa for ruining his party, and she rebukes him for serving meat. They fight, and she leaves the house. As Lisa walks along, she decides that she can no longer fight the pressure to eat meat, prompting her to grab a hot dog from the grill at the Kwik-E-Mart and take a bite. However, Apu, himself a vegan, reveals that she has eaten a tofu dog. Apu takes Lisa through a secret passageway to the Kwik-E-Mart roof, where they meet Paul and Linda McCartney. The McCartneys explain that they are old friends of Apu from Paul's days in India, and discuss their interest in animal rights. One brief heart-to-heart later, Lisa is committed once more to vegetarianism, but she realizes that she should tolerate those who disagree with her views. Inspired, Lisa begins to walk back home and finds Homer frantically searching for her. She apologizes to Homer, admitting she had no right to ruin his cookout; he forgives her and offers her a "veggie back" ride home.

Production

Writing

"Lisa the Vegetarian" was the first full length episode David S. Cohen wrote for The Simpsons. His only previous work for the show was the "Nightmare Cafeteria" segment in the season six episode "Treehouse of Horror V". The idea for "Lisa the Vegetarian" came to him while he was working on another Simpsons script. Cohen could not concentrate on his task because he was waiting for lunch, and on the back of the script he scribbled, "Lisa becomes a vegetarian?" Cohen showed that note to Simpsons writer Brent Forrester, who liked the idea. Show runner David Mirkin then approved the story when Cohen pitched it to him. Mirkin had just become a vegetarian himself, and later noted that many of Lisa's experiences in the episode were based on his own experiences when he stopped eating meat.

Writer Bill Oakley suggested that the episode contain the barbecue scenes. Cohen's first draft contained a more philosophical argument between Lisa and Homer about eating meat, but Oakley told Cohen that the story needed something more specific to serve as the basis of Homer and Lisa's dispute. George Meyer, a writer known among the Simpsons staff for his "bizarre physical jokes", contributed the idea of the barbecue pig getting caught in the spillway and flying into the air.

Voice acting

At the time the episode was being written, Paul McCartney was the only living member of the Beatles who had never appeared on The Simpsons. (John Lennon died before the show was created,my mistake, he did not die, but Ringo Starr and George Harrison had guest starred in 1991 and 1993, respectively.) The Simpsons staff wanted to bring McCartney onto the show, and David Mirkin thought "Lisa the Vegetarian" would be an attractive story, since McCartney is a vegetarian himself. McCartney agreed to appear, but requested that Lisa remain a vegetarian for the rest of the series, rather than revert to meat-eating in the next episode. The Simpsons staff promised that she would remain a vegetarian, and that trait has become one of the few permanent character changes made in the show. Mirkin also recruited McCartney's then-wife Linda McCartney to appear in the episode. She told Entertainment Weekly that the episode was a chance for her and her husband "to spread the vegetarian word to a wider audience".

Mirkin later said that recording with the McCartneys was one of the most "amazing" experiences of his life. He flew to London and met the couple at Paul McCartney's recording studio. The McCartneys spent an hour recording their parts. Simpsons creator Matt Groening was supposed to go with Mirkin to London, but missed his plane. Groening commented that having McCartney and the rest of the Beatles on The Simpsons "was a dream come true for all of us".

Linda McCartney died of cancer at age 56 on April 17, 1998. The Simpsons' season nine episode "Trash of the Titans", which aired on April 26, 1998, was dedicated to her memory. Simpsons executive producer Mike Scully said, "It just seemed like the right thing to do. Everyone here was surprised and saddened by her death."

Directing and animating

The episode was directed by Mark Kirkland, who was intrigued by the story because he had not seen many television episodes that explored vegetarianism. The designs for Paul and Linda McCartney are unusual for The Simpsons in that the characters have brown and blue irises, respectively. (Most Simpsons characters simply have black spots in the centers of their eyes.)

In one scene of the episode, Homer fills the grill with two bottles of lighter fluid and prepares to grill, giving the idea that there will be a big explosion when Homer throws a match on it. When he does throw a match on it, however, it barely catches on fire. The joke originated from an older episode of The Simpsons, "Treehouse of Horror", and Mirkin liked it so much that he decided to reuse it in this episode. The same animation from the older episode was used, but they doubled the amount of lighter fluid Homer used to make the joke "even funnier".

Cultural references

The episode features several references to The Beatles and McCartney's solo career. For instance, McCartney tells Lisa that playing his 1970 song "Maybe I'm Amazed" backwards will reveal a secret recipe for lentil soup. The song plays over the closing credits of the episode, and when played backwards, McCartney can be heard reciting the recipe in the song. Mirkin had McCartney record that for him, because it does not actually appear in the original song. McCartney thought it was "very funny" that the staff wanted to "send up the whole cult thing" of backmasking on the Beatles' songs. "A secret lentil soup recipe seemed a nice parody of that," he said. One of the backwards snippets says: "Oh, and by the way, I'm alive," a reference to the Paul is dead theory. "Maybe I'm Amazed" is also played in the final scene of the episode, when Homer finds Lisa and apologizes to her.

Apu tells Lisa: "I learned long ago to tolerate others rather than forcing my beliefs on them. You know, you can influence people without badgering them always. It's like Paul's song, 'Live and Let Live'." Paul corrects Apu and says the song's title is actually "Live and Let Die". "Live and Let Die" is the main theme song of the 1973 James Bond film Live and Let Die and was performed by McCartney and Wings on the film's movie soundtrack. In the same scene, Apu also refers to himself as the "fifth Beatle", and Linda rephrases the line "In an octopus's garden in the shade" from the Beatles' 1969 song "Octopus's Garden" when she appears in Apu's secret garden.

Reception

Critical reviews

"Lisa the Vegetarian" has received many positive reviews from television critics, fans, and the staff of The Simpsons. It is one of both Mirkin and Kirkland's favorite episodes. "Lisa the Vegetarian", "Lisa's Date with Density", and "Lisa's Wedding" are also The Simpsons writer Ian Maxtone-Graham's favorite episodes of the show. The authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, described it as "a very simple, very memorable episode with superb guest cameos from the McCartneys." MSNBC listed the episode as their second favorite of the series, and called the "You don't win friends with salad!" song an archetypal The Simpsons moment, "one in which the writers hit a joke so long that it goes from funny to unfunny and back to funny again."

Matthew Singer of the Ventura County Reporter said: "Some Simpsons nerds criticize the episode for its perceived preachiness, but it is overflowing with great individual scenes " He went on to say that the Meat Council propaganda video "may be the funniest isolated segment in the history of the show". Singer added that he felt the Paul and Linda McCartney cameo was very shoehorned in, "but it's worth it to hear Apu refer to himself as the fifth Beatle." John Serba of the Grand Rapids Press named "Lisa the Vegetarian" his favorite episode, "because the tale of Lisa's conversion to vegetarianism has more humorous scenes per square inch than any other episode". Phil Dzikiy of the Niagara Gazette said the episode is his favorite of the show, and described it as "hilarious", "touching", and "satirical". He added that he thought the McCartneys' cameo at the end is "a little forced", but that the character development and storytelling is "perfect". Dzikiy also thought that the propaganda film, "Meat and You: Partners in Freedom", is Troy McClure's "second-finest hour" on The Simpsons. The Daily Bruin's Dan Crossen named the episode his favorite of the show.

Jake Coyle of USA Today compared the episode to The Simpsons Movie and said that Homer's love for the pig Plopper in the film is not his only "go-around" with a pig on the show: "Fans will recall his 'pig-de-la-resistance' in 'Lisa the Vegetarian', the excellent 1995 episode in which vegetarianism is tackled more successfully than pollution is in ." Todd Gilchrist of IGN said in a review of the seventh season that he thinks the key to the show's longevity is its "sentimental but not gooey" approach to storytelling and character development, "more even than its inventive humor". He took "Lisa the Vegetarian" as an example and said: "Lisa sabotages Homer's barbecue, which results in an unceremonious death for his prize pig. But rather than simply punctuating the episode with an iconic image of the porker soaring through the air, the writers actually develop a story into which the joke fits. The comedic effect is actually intensified because we care about the characters, are invested in the story, and primed for a great gag."

IGN ranked McCartney's performance in this episode, along with Ringo Starr's performance in "Brush with Greatness", and George Harrison's performance in "Homer's Barbershop Quartet", as the tenth best guest appearance in The Simpsons' history. They added that "Although none of these appearances were really large, the fact that the most popular band of all time appeared on The Simpsons is a large statement on the popularity and importance of the show." Simon Crerar of Times Online named Paul and Linda McCartney's performance in the episode as one of the thirty-three "funniest Simpsons cameos ever". Larry Dobrow and Mike Errico of Blender named the McCartneys' performance in the episode as the eight best band cameo on the show, and said that Apu's cover of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" is the "single greatest cover in the history of recorded music".

Ratings and awards

In its original American broadcast, "Lisa the Vegetarian" finished 47th in the ratings for the week of October 9 to October 15, 1995, with a Nielsen rating of 9.0. The episode was the fourth highest-rated show on the Fox network that week, following The X-Files, FOX NFL Sunday, and Melrose Place.

The episode won an Environmental Media Award in the "Best Television Episodic Comedy" category, which has been awarded every year since 1991 to the best television episode or film with an environmental message. The episode has received a Genesis Award in the "Best Television Comedy Series, Ongoing Commitment" category. The Genesis Award is awarded annually by the Humane Society of the United States for producing outstanding works that raise the public's understanding of animal issues.

Merchandising

"Lisa the Vegetarian" originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on October 15, 1995. The episode was selected for release in a 2000 video collection of selected episodes titled: The Simpsons - Raiders of the Lost Fridge. Other episodes included in the collection set were "Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner?", "King-Size Homer", and "Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk". It was included again in the 2005 DVD release of the Raiders of the Lost Fridge set. The episode was included in The Simpsons season seven DVD set, which was released on December 13, 2005. Cohen and Kirkland participated in the episode's DVD audio commentary, alongside Groening and Mirkin.

References

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External links

• "Lisa the Vegetarian" at The Simpsons.com
• "Lisa the Vegetarian episode capsule". The Simpsons Archive.
• "Lisa the Vegetarian" at TV.com
• "Lisa the Vegetarian" at the Internet Movie Database

• The Simpsons episodes, season 7
• Vegetarianism
• 1995 television episodes
• Paul McCartney