Episode 19 - Lisa's Substitute
6 July 2010
Synopsis: Lisa's teacher Miss Hoover thinks she has Lyme disease and so Mr Bergstrom (Dustin Hoffman) steps in as substitute teacher. Lisa falls for him and his encouragement of her talents and desire to learn. She slowly becomes more disillusioned with Homer and his lack of interest in her. When Mr Bergstrom leaves town she lashes out calling Homer a baboon. Meanwhile Bart becomes an unlikely candidate for class president.
The Good: The Bart class president plot was excellent. He sees it for what it is: a popularity contest and egged on by Homer he is going to win it by a landslide (see Best Joke). Until of course it comes to voting time when none of Bart's supporters bother to vote. It's a very fitting and believable conclusion to Bart's derision of the contest.
Lisa's affection for Mr Bergstrom plays out as you would expect with Hoffman providing a strong warmth for the character. The highlight was Lisa telling Marge all about her love for him and refusing to believe that Marge could ever have felt the same way about Homer. This naive understanding of love was entirely believable from a child to her parent.
I also enjoyed the return of Miss Hoover who admits that her lyme disease was psychosomatic. Ralph asks if that means she is crazy while another child suggests that she was faking it. Amusingly Miss Hoover corrects them with no malice and begins "No actually it was a little of both..."
The Bad: The link between Mr Bergstrom and Homer wasn't drawn out as well as it could have been. We have heard Lisa complain before about Homer's lack of interest in her life. So understandably the appearance of a more caring father figure makes her resentful of her own actual father. But that point feels tacked on as her resentment of Homer doesn't directly connect in the story with her feelings for her teacher.
In the end Homer wins her affection back just by making her laugh which seems to make light of her serious disaffection with his behaviour. It's all a little dissatisfying and as well drawn as Bergstrom was as a character the episode was neither funny nor touching enough to be very memorable. His entertaining classes were perfectly pleasant to watch but no more.
Best Joke: The campaigning montage shows Bart destroying Martin at every turn. He and Homer work on a poster which reads: "SEX. Now that I've got your attention, vote for Bart!"
The Bottom Line: The writers are still finding their way at this stage. Despite a string of quality episodes they manage to misfire on sentiment here. Though to be fair the episode is a perfectly pleasant way to pass twenty minutes.
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