Plot
After a day of watching mind numbing videos in class, Lisa becomes increasingly concerned that her education is not advanced enough and confronts Principal Skinner about it; however, he is unable to do anything for her. Meanwhile, Bart's class visits the Springfield Police Department, where Bart is left alone with several megaphones. After putting them all end-to-end to compound and increase their amplification, and then saying "Testing" into them, Bart inadvertently creates a massive sonic feedback loop, sending out a tremendous shock wave that shatters every window in Springfield.
In an effort to cure Bart of his juvenile-delinquent mindset, Chief Wiggum suggests sending Bart to Rommelwood, a military school. The entire Simpson family takes Bart to the school, where Lisa sees that the students are being given challenging school work. Instead of going home, she decides to stay at the school with Bart; although Marge and the school's Commandant are both originally against the idea, they reluctantly agree to let her attend.
Lisa is originally enthusiastic about her new environment, but gradually her presence stirs discontent among the other students, as she is the first female student and gets her own barracks to herself. Bart and Lisa are both subject to harsh hazing, but while Bart is eventually accepted by the other students, and thus distances himself from his sister, Lisa remains an outcast. Lisa grapples with her isolation and even considers calling Marge and asking to be brought home, but decides to stay.
As the school year comes to a close, the Commandant reveals the final test for the students: a hand-over-hand crawl across a rope suspended 40 feet above a patch of thorn bushes, referred to as the "Eliminator". Lisa fears that she will not be able to complete the task, but Bart secretly helps her train for the challenge. The next day, all of the students cross the Eliminator, including Bart. Lisa is the last to go, and while she struggles and nearly falls at first, she manages to cross safely after being cheered on by Bart. As a result, the other students vow to make the rest of the semester a living hell for him, but this backfires when the students find out that the semester ends with graduation three hours later, so they leave him alone. As a result of her efforts, Lisa is awarded by the Commandant with a medal, "For Satisfactory Completion of the Second Grade."
Read more about this topic: The Secret War Of Lisa Simpson
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)
“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)
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)