They Saved Lisa's Brain - Production

Production

"They Saved Lisa's Brain" was written by Matt Selman and directed by Pete Michels. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on May 9, 1999. Although the episode's first draft was written by Selman, the idea for the episode was pitched by former staff writer George Meyer. In the episode's setpiece, Homer and Bart participate in a gross out contest, while Marge and Lisa are in the audience. According to Selman, the writers took inspiration from real gross out contests, which were "sweeping the nation" at the time. Before the contest in the episode, the spectators are given free samples of a pudding called Grandma Plopwell's. The name of the pudding was inspired by a brand of pies called Aunt Freshly, which the Simpsons writers usually ate at the time.

The episode features the first official appearance of Lindsey Naegle, a sleazy businesswoman who has since become a recurring character in the series. While different versions of the character had appeared in the series before, namely in the season 9 episode "Girly Edition" and the season 10 episode "Make Room for Lisa", the character's final design was first seen in "They Saved Lisa's Brain". The episode also mentions the character's name for the first time. Naegle's name was partly based on Selman's agent Sue Neagle, and Lindsey was chosen as the first name because Selman thought it sounded "annoying" and "pretentious." Naegle is voiced by Tress MacNeille, who Selman described as a "huge asset" to the series, and stated that she "breathes life" into the character.

"They Saved Lisa's Brain" features English theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking as himself. According to executive producer and current showrunner Al Jean, Hawking was asked to guest-star because "we were looking for someone much smarter than all the Mensa members ," and so they "naturally thought of him." Selman added that the Simpsons staff had heard that Hawking was a fan of the show, and that Hawking's family members wanted him to guest-star. Bill Mann of The Press Democrat argued that Hawking was chosen to guest star in order to boost the series' ratings during the May "sweeps". Mann wrote that "sweeps" are "used to set local TV ad rates for the months ahead."

In her book Stephen Hawking: a biography, Kristen Larsen wrote that Hawking almost missed his recording session, as his wheelchair broke down two days before his flight to Los Angeles, where the recording took place. In order to make the necessary repairs, Hawking's graduate assistant Chris Burgoyne, aided by a technician, worked a 36 hour shift. Hawking was 40 minutes late when he arrived in Los Angeles. When he met the Simpsons staff, he apologized, saying "Sorry for being late." According to Selman, Hawking was very humble regarding the episode's jokes about him, and stated that he "took a lot of shots" at himself. The only note that Hawking gave regarding the script was that he did not want to be portrayed as drunk in the episode's last scene, in which he is discussing astronomy with Homer in Moe's tavern.

Because of his motor neurone disease, Hawking is unable to speak, and he communicates using a custom-made computer. With small movements of his body, Hawking writes a text onto the computer, which is then spoken by a voice syntheziser. Because of this, Hawking had to write all his lines on his computer, while the staff recorded them by placing a microphone in front of the computer's speaker. "It's easy to do a fake Stephen Hawking in your comedy TV show," Selman said in the DVD commentary for the episode. "Any computer can sound just like his computer, but every line that we wrote for him, he typed in himself and we recorded with our microphones as if had come out of a regular mouth." Some of Hawking's lines were difficult to record. In particular, the word "Fruitopia" was difficult for Hawking's computer to "put together" correctly, and it "took forever" to make the word sound right from the voice synthesizer.