Bye Bye Nerdie (The Simpsons)
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| Not to be confused with "Bye Bye Nerdy", an episode from Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends. |
| "Bye Bye Nerdie" | ||||||||||||||||
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 Bullies have their reasons for bullying, but we are pretty sure that they don't bully nerds because of the chemicals in their sweat.
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Bye Bye Nerdy is the 16th episode of the 12th season of The Simpsons.
Plot
Lisa tries to figure out why the new girl at school only picks on nerds.
Why It Should Go Bye Bye
- While the plot is interesting at first, it eventually becomes silly, and ridiculous and starts to make no sense at all, as it goes haywire in the later acts and turns completely outlandish.
- In fact, this episode is another example of how outlandish most of the episodes in Seasons 11 and 12 are, even though Season 12 is better than Season 11.
- It feels like a harsher rehash of "Lisa's Rival" from Season 6 and "Lard of the Dance" from Season 10, because those episodes involve Lisa's relationship with a new kid at school, except those episodes were executed much better because they allowed learning more about Lisa's character and her relationship with her other friends in school. This episode could have turned out well because most episodes with Lisa making a new relationship at school have turned out pretty well in the past, but this episode in particular almost fails in every way.
- It introduces Francine Rhenquist, who is an unlikable character.
- Her, along with the other bullies in this episode, only bullies Lisa because of her sweat glands.
- Unlike Allison Taylor in "Lisa's Rival" or Alex Whitney in "Lard of the Dance", she is never given a backstory as to why she started to pick on Lisa, neither is she was given any info about what she does outside of school and what her personality is like.
- This is the only episode of the entire show that ever focuses on her, as she only makes small cameos in episodes after this one, thus making her a pointless character.
- Nelson may be unlikeable at times due to the fact he likes to bully everyone non-stop, but at least he can be treated as sympathetic due to his tragic back story of his father running away, as well as the fact that he has an abusive mother, but Francine, on the other hand, has none of these attributes, making her even more unlikable.
- She never gets punished or disciplined for her actions, even at the end of the episode where she beats up everyone at the nerd convention, making her a Karma Houdini.
- Lisa is pretty much non-stop tortured and bullied throughout the first few acts in this episode, and neither is it funny or satisfying as Lisa didn't do anything to deserve all the torture she gets in this episode.
- The episode's reason for bullies beating up nerds is all because they produce a chemical in their sweat that causes those who can detect it to aggressively beat them up, which is not only ridiculous but completely false.
- Terrible Ending: Francine turns harmless after Lisa sprays herself with salad dressing, but it soon wears off causing Francine to go violent and to beat up every nerd in the convention.
- What makes it worse is that no one, not even Francine's parents, tries to stop her, and her parents only comment that she will sleep better that night. Talk about good parenting!
Redeeming Qualities
- The concept of Lisa experiencing what it's like to be bullied, as well as the idea for another episode of Lisa making a new relationship with a new kid in school are decent ideas for an episode, albeit poorly executed here.
- The subplot with Homer and Marge trying to keep their house "baby-proof", while not great, is a bit better than the main story.
- The first few minutes of Marge trying to get Lisa and Bart ready for school is great.
- There are a few funny scenes, such as Ralph imagining the new school student as a goat, a flashback of Homer beating up Smithers in high school while he and Barney Gumble sing "Kung Fu Fighting" by Carl Douglas, and Maggie shooting a nailgun at Homer.
Reception
Bye Bye Nerdy currently has a user score of 6.7 on IMDB. On NoHomers.net it was rated the 28th worst episode on the 2003 list and dropped to 39th worst on the 2006 list.
Trivia
- This episode spawned the "Lisa Simpson's Presentation" meme.
References
- ↑ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0701079/
- ↑ https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/NoHomers.net%27s_50_Worst_episodes
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