Plot
Bart and Homer are watching a program featuring Boobarella, a well-endowed female vampire. A commercial plays for the Ribwich, a new Krusty Burger sandwich in which meat from an unidentified animal is processed and molded into the shape of ribs. Homer cannot wait for it to come to Springfield. Homer samples the Ribwich, recently arrived at the Krusty Burger in Springfield, and becomes addicted.
The next day at a school assembly, Principal Skinner announces that the school is holding a spelling bee. Lisa is excited when she wins the school spelling bee, for which she is awarded a scale model of the planet Mars (a kickball with the word "Mars" written on it). She continues to the state spelling bee, and wins again, qualifying her for the Spellympics to be held in Calgary.
Marge suggests they celebrate by going to a movie, but Homer says he has "important daddy business" — which turns out to be eating Ribwiches with Lenny and Carl. Unfortunately, when they arrive at Krusty Burger, the limited-time-only Ribwiches are no longer in stock. Homer is shattered, but a "Ribhead" (a fan of the Ribwich) tells him that it is being tested in other markets and shows him a tour schedule. Homer decides to follow a group of Ribheads as they track the release of the Ribwich.
At the Spellympics, hosted by George Plimpton, Lisa wins the semi-finals and secures a spot in the finals. The other two finalists are Sun Moon, a Korean girl, and Alex, a cute little boy with big round glasses. George Plimpton takes Lisa aside and tells her that if she lets Alex win, she will be given a free scholarship to any Seven Sisters college—and a free George Plimpton hot plate ("it's perfect for soup!"). Lisa is torn between wanting to win the Spellympics and free college.
That night, Lisa dreams of an ancient Greek setting in which each anthropomorphized Seven Sister tries to lure her to her college. She wakes up and asks Marge whether they can afford to send her to college. Marge is unsure, but promises to do whatever it takes to get Lisa into college. Despite Marge's reassurances, Lisa is still uneasy as since she is aware of how low Homer's salary is and how unlikely Marge's hopes are.
In San Francisco, Krusty informs all the Ribheads that the Ribwich can no longer be made, as the animal from which it is made is now extinct (smaller and with more legs than the cow it was believed to be made from). He tosses the last one into the crowd. Homer catches it, fighting off the others. An Italian Ribhead offers Homer the "lease-a" to his car for the last Ribwich, and Homer remembers Lisa and the Spellympics. He agrees to the trade and takes off in the car.
At the Spellympics finals, Lisa steps up and is asked to spell "intransigence". She is about to start, when Homer shows up and shouts encouragingly at her. Lisa, happy to see her father, tells everyone that she was told to take a dive, but then unintentionally misspells her word. Lisa loses, and since she did not do it on purpose, George Plimpton rescinds his offer.
On the way back to Springfield, Homer tries to cheer up Lisa when she admits that she let down everyone in town. However, she finds that in coming second she has become Springfield's most successful native ever (even outachieving the Springfield woman who once dated Charles Grodin). In her honor, the town carved Lisa's face on the side of a mountain.
Read more about this topic: I'm Spelling As Fast As I Can
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)