Plot
The episode begins with the Simpson family visiting a renaissance fair. Homer eats eight different kinds of meat, and an embarrassed Lisa wanders off and eventually finds a fortune telling booth. Although Lisa is at first skeptical, the fortune teller gets her attention by telling Lisa the names of everyone in her family. She then uses tarot cards to predict Lisa's future, and says she will tell Lisa the story of her true love.
The story then shifts to an Eastern University in the year 2010 (15 years in the future) where a now 23-year-old Lisa meets a British student named Hugh Parkfield. At first, the two quarrel over a book in the library and their respective academic talents, but the pair eventually fall madly in love. Hugh invites Lisa to come back to his home in England so she can meet his parents. While there, Hugh asks Lisa to marry him; she immediately accepts.
The next day, Lisa calls home to tell Marge of the news; Marge promises that she will prevent Homer from ruining the wedding. Marge is still a housewife, Bart (now 25) works as a successful building demolition expert, Maggie is a teenager who wears a necklace with her pacifier attached and apparently never shuts up (although each time she opens her mouth in the episode, she is interrupted) and Homer still works at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant in Sector 7G, with Milhouse as his supervisor. Lisa and Hugh travel to Springfield, where Lisa is worried that her family will embarrass her. Things get off to a bad start when Bart and Homer accidentally set the British Union Flag on fire, which they put out by throwing compost on it.
At dinner, Lisa plans on going for a wedding dress fitting and Homer decides to take Hugh out to Moe's Tavern. While there, Homer presents Hugh with a tacky pair of cuff links (a bride and groom pig) that all Simpsons men have worn on their wedding day, asking him to continue the tradition; Hugh reluctantly agrees to wear them during the wedding. Later that night, Lisa apologizes profusely for her family's behavior; although Hugh says it does not bother him, he appears worried. On the day of the wedding, Homer talks with Lisa and she discovers that Hugh did not wear Homer's cufflinks. She finds Hugh and asks him to wear them. He agrees, but lets slip that after the wedding he plans for them to return to England and never see her family again. Lisa is outraged, stating that she cannot marry him if he cannot understand that she still loves her family despite their shortcomings, and calls off the wedding, running off in anger and sorrow.
Back in the present, the fortune teller says that Hugh went back to England and never saw Lisa again, and that there is nothing Lisa can do to prevent it — although she should "try to look surprised". Lisa questions the fortune teller about her "true love" and the fortune teller reveals that although Lisa will have a true love, she "specializes in foretelling relationships where you get jerked around." Lisa leaves the booth and finds her father, who is excited to tell her about his day at the fair. They walk off, hand in hand, as Lisa listens, happy and content.
Read more about this topic: Lisa's Wedding
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“But, when to Sin our byast Nature leans,
The careful Devil is still at hand with means;
And providently Pimps for ill desires:
The Good Old Cause, reviv’d, a Plot requires,
Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
To raise up Common-wealths and ruine Kings.”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)
“There saw I how the secret felon wrought,
And treason labouring in the traitor’s thought,
And midwife Time the ripened plot to murder brought.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)