By the numbers, “The Simpsons” is undoubtedly one of the greatest (and most rewatchable) TV shows of all time. The series has won 37 Emmy awards from over 100 nominations, and it passed “Gunsmoke” in 2018 to become the longest-running scripted TV show in history. There have been 856 episodes of “The Simpsons” as of this writing, and viewers have submitted almost a half million ratings via IMDb. The lowest-rated episode of “The Simpsons” to date by that metric is the Season 23 finale, “Lisa Goes Gaga.” It’s scored an average of 4.0/10 stars by 3,700 viewers, with one-star ratings outnumbering perfect 10s nearly two to one.
The episode takes criticism on several fronts. It’s regarded as a showcase for the guest star and not a chapter in the story of Springfield, and there are some offbeat moments in the Simpson family living room. Lady Gaga and Marge (Julie Kavner) kiss on the sofa, and Homer (Dan Castellaneta) eats pieces of the singer’s iconic meat dress in another scene. The main plot has the singer stop her touring train to help Lisa (Yeardley Smith) during a crisis of self-esteem; some fans regard that as a preposterous premise, even for a cartoon.
One IMDb user named rated the episode 3/10 and called it “a fawning, twenty-two minute commercial for Lady Gaga? Yuck.” Many reviewers made similar comments about the episode being little more than an extended promo for the 16-time Grammy winner, and others noted the hypocrisy bookending the episode. It starts with Lisa being bullied at school and ends with her literally bullying Lady Gaga out of town, but that’s hardly the end of the discussion about the episode.
The Simpsons later engaged in some self-mockery over the Lady Gaga episode
“The Simpsons” writers made a callback to “Lisa Goes Gaga” in Season 34, Episode 16, “Hostile Kirk Place.” In the latter, Kirk Van Houten (Hank Azaria) leads a campaign to revise the school curriculum, and Gloria Prince (Grey DeLisle) references Lady Gaga’s visit and the building of the monorail as Springfield’s darkest days.
It’s not often that “The Simpsons” refers back to itself like this, and the two episodes the writers chose to highlight are held in widely different esteem. While the episode “Marge vs. the Monorail” is ranked as the series’ 6th best episode according to IMDb reviews, there is plenty of online commentary from viewers who agree that “Lisa Goes Gaga” deserves its spot at the bottom of the list. In a thread on the r/TheSimpsons subreddit, one fan wrote, “they played it super safe with the Lady Gaga episode, having basically zero conflict, putting their guest star on a massive pedestal, and going with easy zingers.”
In a two-star IMDb review, one fan had multi-layered criticism for the episode, writing “The storytelling is very annoying and lays on so heavily with the sugar that it’ll make your teeth ache. All the regular characters featured are either bland or out of type in the most bizarre of ways.”
For longtime fans curious to read more, be sure to check where “The Simpsons” placed in TVLine’s rankings of the best animated shows of all time.
This story originally appeared on TVLine
