As many of you, I thought that "Lisa goes Gaga" was the worst Simpsons episode ever. I have to give credit to writers, it needs some unique talent to be able to produce an episode worse than that. But they did it.
The episode starts with the classic nonsensical plot that we are already used to from the episodes season 20 and onward. Since a long time epsiodes in the Simpsons don't have a story anymore it is just an assortment of random things happing one after eachother. I heard people referring to it as the era of Family Guy Simpsons.
What makes "Lisa goes Gaga" and "The Musk who fell to earth" stand out, is their unprecedented betrayal to the characters. Since long time I gave the hope, that the writers would develop Homer back into the character he once was - a loving father. I got used to the fact that such a character is, as their consultants probably told them, without any appeal to the target audience anymore. But there was still Lisa. You see, Lisa was the Simpsons gateway to social commentary. Her character was the bridge between comedy and social critism. It gave the simpsons meaning.
Since Lisa goes Gaga we learned, that the shows integrity towards the character Lisa had a price tag, and the writers were more than willing to sell. I like to compare the character Lisa as she was once intended as the common sense, the inner guidline everyone has of whats right and wrong. The audience still has this guideline, even though we listen to pop songs and drive cars we are still aware of the destructive and amoral sutructures that are attached to those industries. We are - but the writers are not. Why? Because the writers are the industry, Simpsons became Musk and Gaga. I don't believe that they want to shape the audience into their neolibertarian worldview - that would give them too much credit. They are simply too detached to even pretend to have any humanistic values.
