Lisa Simpson Replaces Bart in Detention in ‘The Simpsons’ Latest Episode

This season of The Simpsons has repeatedly illustrated that it’s been willing to shake up many of the show’s established norms, concocting a fraudulent series finale, offering up a belated explanation for a decades-old running joke and spicing up Homer and Marge’s relationship with an alien-inspired dry-humping session.

This week’s episode, “Women in Shorts,” also challenged our preconceived notion of The Simpsons to some extent, beginning with its opening credits sequence. Fans were surprised to discover that the episode kicked off with Lisa, not Bart, writing lines on a chalkboard in Springfield Elementary. Although, Lisa’s work seemed to indicate that she only got detention in order to “to practice cursive.”

The reason for the character swap is that “Women in Shorts” was a female-centric sequel of sorts to “22 Short Films About Springfield,” the Season Seven episode that gave us brief vignettes starring some of the show’s less significant players, and famously birthed the “Steamed Hams” phenomenon. 

“Women in Shorts” worked best when it was fulfilling that promise, shining the spotlight on less prominent female Springfieldians’ inner lives — like the very funny scene in which Helen Lovejoy believes that she only has 10 minutes to live, or the segment where Lunchlady Dora waxes poetically about her culinary malpractice. 

And Homer’s unwillingness to buy Marge tampons became the subject of a memorably lavish musical number:

But the episode also threw in several random fantasy sequences, including parodies of the Barbie movie (with Malibu Stacy, naturally) and The Chronicles of Narnia. They were pretty funny, and thematically on point, but still felt extremely clunky.

As for Lisa being in trouble, that wasn’t just a one-off gag in the opening credits, which also featured Marge buying a book for her book club, not groceries, ultimately culminating at the Van Houten’s house. The final segment of the episode revealed that Springfield Elementary’s teachers place bets on kids’ recess activities. Ms. Peyton wins big after Lisa flips off her classmates, despite the 500 to 1 odds. But Lisa is in on the scam, and takes a payoff from Ms. Peyton, which she then uses to buy jazz records with. 

So perhaps that explains why Lisa ended up in detention, in addition to her desire to work on cursive writing? 

Of course, it’s not the first time that Lisa has landed in hot water at school. She received detention for telling off Miss Hoover in “Separate Vocations,” and again for crushing on Nelson during band class in “Lisa’s Date with Density.”

More recently, Lisa was sent to detention in Season 32’s “Sorry Not Sorry,” again, for clashing with Miss Hoover.

Lisa has always been principled and rebellious, so perhaps it’s not so shocking that Bart no longer has a monopoly on the punitive chalkboard gag.

Maybe this means that we’ll also start seeing Lisa on more T-shirts and Butterfinger commercials.