Scullyfied Simpsons: “Last Tap Dance in Springfield” (Season 11, Episode 20)

“Tap-a, tap-a, tap-a!” – Little Vicki Valentine. Those immortal words…

Airdate: May 7th, 2000.

Written By: Julie Thacker

Plot: While watching the movie Tango de la Muerte while out shopping with her mother, Lisa becomes enchanted with the art of dancing, and decides to take up the skill. Much to her displeasure, it turns out that the dancing school in town is taught by former child star Little Vicki Valentine, who not only railroads her into the Tap class, but whose technique also contradicts Lisa’s lack of experience… and skill. Concurrent to Lisa’s struggles, Bart and Milhouse have issues of their own, abandoning a camping trip in favor of hanging out in the Mall.

Review:

“Kill the Alligator and Run” was probably the most stereotypically awful episode of the entire series, or at least, the Scully era. I think it has everything many fans hate about the show’s more contemporary run – Homer’s beyond obnoxious and straight up odious, there’s a gratuitous celebrity cameo, the plot is unfocused at best and nihil at worst, every few seconds contain some form of insanity beyond the show’s universe put into focus instead of a light joke, the satire sucked, the list goes on and on.

I don’t know if I can call it the worst episode – “Alone Again, Natura-Diddily” gets more visceral hate from me for completely destroying the show’s soul, and “KTAAR” at least can be almost amusingly bad – but it’s pretty damn clear why it winds up on so many people’s “most hated” lists. (After all, by the time the likes of “Lisa Goes Gaga” aired, the viewership had fractioned.) From this point forward, I am honestly expecting most of the episodes (bar a couple) to be mediocre at best. I hope for the best, but I am more than prepared for the worst.

That said, this episode is part of the aforementioned exceptions. Maybe it’s because it comes after a string of what I felt were largely “mediocre to downright disastrous” episodes (“Pygmoelian” being the one good one out of the past eight to be any good, in my opinion – and three of the eight are contenders for the worst ever), but “Last Tap Dance in Springfield” felt a lot closer to the show’s classic era – specifically, the show during Seasons 7 and 8. Not quite as good, but it did feel weirdly close.

Lisa Simpson is one of the few characters thus far to have not been completely warped by the Scully era. Most of the damage done to her would be done by Al Jean, who transformed the character into a vehicle for the writers who sat more on the liberal side of the spectrum. Most of the damage done to her character is by proxy of what’s happened to Homer – again, she’s become but an orbiter for his own increasingly irritating antics. There was “Bart to the Future”, which made her president in the most boring way possible, but that’s about it.

For the most part, she’s remained tied to those same traits that made her character so endearing early on – intellectual beyond her years, of course, but still just as childlike as an eight-year-old. In many regards, this episode might showcase one of the last gasps of this character before it, too, is mutated.

Weirdly enough, though, it does take on a very similar role to many of the “Homer Takes Up A Hobby/Gets A Job” episodes this season. This time, she takes up dancing after seeing it in a dance movie, Tango De La Muerte. What the movie-in-a-movie presents is a very romanticized view of the art, complete with an audience stand-in from Lisabella (also played by Yeardley Smith), a bookish woman who turns out to be an impressive dancer. The audience can relate to the deuteragonist of the movie via her escapist nature, and naturally, Lisa is sucked in.

It’s also worth noting that this is eerily reminiscent of “E-I-E-I-D’oh” from earlier in the season. The difference is that the earlier episode was a lot more breakneck and disjointed – the whole “Glove Slap” thing was gone between the end of the first act and the dying moments of the episode. In contrast, this episode’s first act already feels a lot more concentrated, if a bit slow and mellow. That said, both episodes do have reality slap our protagonists right in the face. This time, instead of one’s jerkass behavior finally eliciting a response beyond mild irritation, it’s the fact that Lisa is not a naturally skilled dancer. Further, she’s in a class that she does not have her heart set on – tap instead of tango – and she has to deal with her teacher, Lil’ Vicki Valentine.

Valentine is meant to be a pastiche of older child stars who wind up falling into obscurity. Having once warmed the hearts of Americans in Depression-era and War-era films ala Shirley Temple, she wound up falling off the map, and wound up settling in some tiny town such as Springfield. (We’re still a few seasons out from Springfield being a young and happening place, episodes that I will not be touching.) Adding on to that is that the films, based on a clip we see at the start of the third act, really have not aged too well – they’re just feelgood stories meant to help the nation through its darkest hours, and even served as propaganda to get the Allied forces the advantage. Yeah, she was used to aid the war effort, as she remarks near the episode’s climax…

Vicki: I’m sorry, Lisa, but giving everyone an equal part when they’re clearly not equal is called what, again, class?
Class: Communism!
Vicki: That’s right. And I didn’t tap all those Morse code messages to the Allies ’til my shoes filled with blood to just roll out the welcome mat for the Reds.

Even taking into that bit of pathos (some of the ill effects of the total war effort), the specter of those films has not gone away in her mind, and as a result, she remains a bitter narcissist who can teach kids to emulate her style, and well, that’s it.

Good for those who know how to dance, but apparently, Lisa’s not brilliant at the whole tap dancing thing, what with a lack of innate rhythm. As a result, she’s left in the dust by Valentine. And might I add, Tress MacNeille is actually pretty damn good for the role. She’ll be overused as the series goes on (partially due to the frayed relationship between the staff and Roswell, I would suspect), but her voice manages to hit a good level of snobbish for Vicki Valentine.

This does not help Lisa’s insecurities, especially as her parents keep doting on her. This, I feel, was used… not quite as well. I mean, this isn’t the first time Lisa has gone out of her normal realm of geekery into a more traditionally “girlish” venue. My mind goes back to “Lisa the Beauty Queen”, where Homer entered her into a pageant so she could try and confront her insecurities. But here, it comes out of left field – for all of Homer’s faults (and I’m talking pre-Scully here), his failure to connect with his daughter came more from an intellectual gulf, not really this idea that he thinks his daughter is unfeminine. (Although to be fair, I’ll take this over Jerkass Homer any day.)

Now, Marge, I could possibly buy as having some form of envy or jealousy – given that she had her own toxic family combined with the societal attitudes of the 70s force a lot of her talent onto the back burner, I could imagine her trying to live vicariously through her own daughter. It would have to be done just perfectly, however – otherwise, you risk making her a completely unlikable character. That said, you could also argue that Marge was elated that Lisa found an interest in something and she was present to see that interest bud. So, that could work.

I dunno – the whole “can’t disappoint the parents” is not executed too well, comes out of left field somewhat, and as a result, it comes off a bit cliche. Maybe that was the joke, but if so… yeah, they didn’t play it that well.

Anyway, we get our weekly dose of silliness from Lisa’s attempted path into the good graces of Vicki, with her trying on self-dancing shoes, courtesy of Professor Frink. Honestly, I’m not even fazed at this – in a season where we’ve had Mole People, jockey elves, and Teletubbies shooting lasers out of their antennae, this is child’s play. At least there was a reason for Professor Frink to be there (silly as his initial role in setting up the set was), and it did allow for the protagonist and antagonist – who I have to suspect took over the central role of the recital to boost her own fragile albeit inflated ego – of the episode to fight each other, in a sense. So at least the episode builds up in a rather consistent manner, which makes it better than “KTAAR”. Although, anything would’ve been.

Even further, Homer’s character is toned down compared to much of Season 11. Besides not being the center of the plot, most of his faults in this episode come out of a childlike insensitivity rather than the borderline sociopathic callousness of some of the episodes earlier in this season. So even when he does confirm that Frink’s device was working – thus smashing Frink’s attempt to build up Lisa’s self-confidence by lying – it doesn’t come off as cruel so much as it comes off as just traditional boneheaded Homer. That alone helps to make the episode go down a lot easier.

Yeah, I don’t know if there’s much to talk about with this plot. So let’s talk about the B-Plot instead – Milhouse and Bart camping out at the mall, which then gives way to Chief Wiggum trying to track down mall vandals. It is definitely filler, albeit one based in the opening scenes of the first act, so that makes it slightly less egregious.

Weirdly enough, in a season where a lot of the action has been compared to a really bad Looney Tunes cartoon in terms of the outlandishness, this episode actually manages to do similar tropes effectively, almost as a pastiche of said plot elements. There’s just enough subversion of the traditional Looney Tunes tropes – a panther actually being introduced to hunt down an alleged rat, therefore, increasing the damage; the setup of the hunt backfires before it even commences; even the distraction of the puma is brief and has to be redone.

Besides, it was ultimately amusing enough to distract from the relative vapidity of the plot… it was either this or rip off the classic “Kamp Krusty”. (Which they did many years later, in an episode that infuriated even the show’s staunchest defenders, so…) So I guess that means the subplot gets a rather tepid “thumbs up” from me.

Lastly, it is worth noting that this episode was penned by Ms. Julie Thacker – the second of three episodes she wrote. Adding it all together, much like her prior outing, this episode is not likely to be remembered too quickly. But I would argue that this episode is better because it is more coherent and its immediate predecessor was so awful that anything would’ve been an improvement.

It’s a bit cliche, and that does impact some of the family dynamics in a slightly adverse way, but on the whole, “Last Tap Dance in Springfield” is definitely a serviceable episode if, y’know, you have to see anything from Season 11. Which I don’t advise, and there are better episodes from this season. But at least this is one of those few Season 11 episodes that I can say gets my thumbs up. It’s not good, but it is… okay.

Tidbits:

• Homer’s… experience with Laser Eye surgery has probably reminded me why I’ll be wearing glasses as they stick me in the grave. As unnerving as his… eyes crusting over was, it did at least lead to an amusing act break, where he is kidnapped by Dolph/Kearny/Jimbo to pick up alcohol and cigarettes, and he falls for the admittedly rather cheesy impersonation.
• This is certainly more coincidence than anything, but Tango De La Muerte features Lisabella as a rather bookish and stodgy woman, whose dancing transforms her into a more “stereotypically” conventionally attractive character. Around the same time that this episode debut, the telenovela Yo Soy Betty, La Fea was a major hit in Spanish-speaking countries, with its protagonist being a rather dowdy-looking character, rather notable at the time in Telenovelas. It was actually somewhat loosely adapted here in the States as Ugly Betty, a dramedy that aired on ABC for a few years. Again, I’m pretty sure that this is a coincidence, but it’s not completely out of the realm of possibility.
• Yeah, I don’t know why Luanne Van Houten was at the recital despite nobody she’s related to being part of the recital.
• “Radio Hut”… well, that tiny background definitely dates this episode. The few times I went into RadioShack before it went under a few years ago, it was a glorified cell phone outlet with electronic components in the back half. Feels like I missed the glory days, and I regret not going more often. (As Last Week Tonight phrased the store’s eulogy, “Goodbye, and go to hell, you filthy animals!”) Meanwhile, fun personal fact – I can recall only one time I’ve had Pizza Hut Pizza. In fact, I can count on a grand total of both hands the number of times I’ve had chain pizza, period. That’s growing up on Long Island for you.

Wrap-Up:

Favorite Scene: The Tango de la Muerte display, absolutely hilarious on all ends.

Least Favorite Scene: If only they wrote another draft of Homer and Marge showering praise on Lisa… too cliche by half.

Zaniness Factor: 3. Yeah, self-tapping shoes (“I’m ever so pissed!”) adds a bit of insanity to an otherwise grounded episode.

Jerkass Homer Meter: 2! There are a couple of off-color quips here and there, we do get a… pleasant view of his eyes crusting over after he refuses to take post-laser surgery drops, and the episode does end with him getting shocked and screaming his head off, but this is the closest Homer’s gotten to his old school self since “Grift of the Magi”.

Score: 6. Again, watchable, but far from spectacular. Compared to the episode that preceded it, though, it is a marked improvement.

Don’t worry – two episodes left this season. We have one that I fear is going to be really bad, and one that is often considered quite good. But we’re almost near the end.