Lisa on Ice

Principal Skinner gathers the students of Springfield Elementary School at an assembly to announce which subjects they are failing, especially Ralph. Lisa, who prides herself on her academic achievements, is horrified to discover she is failing gym class. Lisa attempts to appeal to her gym teacher, who makes her a deal: if Lisa regularly participates in a sports program outside of school, she will get a passing grade in gym class. Lisa attempts to join a basketball team, but is unable to dribble properly. She then attempts to join a volleyball team, but the team's only ball is deflated when it lands on her spiky hair. Lisa becomes despondent. Later, the family watches Bart play hockey for his team, the Mighty Pigs, coached by Chief Wiggum. After the game, Bart ridicules Lisa for her lack of athletic skill and uses his hockey stick to pelt her with litter. Apu, the coach of the Kwik-E-Mart Gougers, witnesses Lisa deflecting the litter and throws a hockey puck at her without warning, which she catches. Apu makes Lisa the Gougers' goalie. Lisa excels as goalie and leads the team to its best season ever. Homer begins alternately favoring Bart and Lisa depending on whose team is winning more games. As a result, a sibling rivalry develops between Bart and Lisa. The rivalry peaks when the town learns that the Gougers will face the Mighty Pigs at their next match. Bart and Lisa's animosity towards each other enhances their athletic skill. With four seconds left, Bart is tripped by Jimbo, giving him a penalty shot against Lisa that will decide the outcome of the game. As they face off, Bart and Lisa remember the good times they had together when they were younger. Bart and Lisa discard their equipment and hug each other. The match ends in a tie, much to Marge's pride and Homer's distress. Dissatisfied with the outcome, the spectators riot and trash the arena. ==Production==

wrote the episode. |alt=A man speaks into a microphone. The idea for the episode came from The Simpsons writer Mike Scully, Bob Anderson, who also had a small interest in hockey, directed the episode. To better familiarize himself with the sport, Anderson ordered a batch of VHS highlight tapes, watched the NHL playoffs for the first time, and made several trips to scout youth games, taking notes on how players looked stickhandling and shooting. In his original draft of the episode, Scully had written cameos for Bobby Orr and Wayne Gretzky, but, he explained, "they wound up falling out of the story, because we had such a good story with the family." The episode starts out with Lisa tricking Bart into believing it is a snow day by throwing a snowball at him which she made out of the ice in the fridge. The scene was inspired by Scully, who as a child loved to sit and listen by the radio waiting to see if there was going to be a school snow day. Scully thought that there was nothing more disappointing than to wake up expecting a snow day, only to find out there was no snow. The academic alerts the Springfield Elementary School students receive were based on those Scully received in junior high. The scene where Milhouse was bound by his hands and legs to the net was inspired by stories Scully had heard about Springfield Indians owner Eddie Shore tying his players to the posts "trying to teach his goalies to stay in the crease." Lisa's line, "Hack the bone! Hack the bone!" was inspired by ex–Springfield Kings backstop Billy Smith. Although there was an emphasis on detail for the show, one mistake Scully regrets is having the game clock running (and eventually expiring) on Bart's penalty shot. The clock would be paused in a normal hockey game until the shot was taken. ==Cultural references==

The episode features several references to Rollerball (1975). The assembly is held at the Butt-Head Memorial Auditorium; Skinner muses "I really shouldn't have let the students name that one." When Moe visits Bart and Lisa at the Simpson house to see if they have any injuries that may affect the odds of the upcoming game, Marge sends him away as he pleads, "They're gonna take my thumbs!"; a reference to an Eric Roberts' line, "Charlie, they took my thumb", in The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984). ==Reception==

In its original broadcast, "Lisa on Ice" finished 34th in the ratings for the week of November 7 to November 13, 1994, with a Nielsen rating of 11.6. Since airing, the episode has received mostly positive reviews from television critics. The authors of the book ''I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide'', Gary Russell and Gareth Roberts, called it "a fabulous episode for Lisa and Bart, although with a special mention for a few seconds of tremendous Edna Krabappel wickedness". DVD Talk's Aaron Beierle said, "there are definitely some funny moments in this episode, the sweet-natured way that the episode ends never sat right with me". ESPN.com named the episode the fifth best sports moment in the history of the show. The Orlando Sentinels Gregory Hardy listed it as the seventh-best episode of the show with a sports theme. TV Squad's Adam Finley gave the episode a positive review, commenting that it is "a skewering of parents who become too involved in their children's sports and turn what should be a lesson in teamwork, trying your hardest, and losing gracefully into a kind of Roman Coliseum where grown adults live out violent fantasies and their own failed ambitions through their children". ==References==