TV Recap / Review: Lisa Does a Quantum Leap in “The Simpsons” Disney+ Exclusive Episode “The Past and the Furious”

Today saw the release of the new Disney+ exclusive episode of The Simpsons, entitled “The Past and the Furious" (a riff on the title of the popular 2001 action film The Fast and the Furious) and below are my brief recap and thoughts on this streaming special.

“The Past and the Furious" begins with another really funny parody of streaming services’ menu screens. Wuhu– the all-Simpsons streamer– offers some pretty great self-satirizing categories like “Social Commentary 5 Years Too Late," “Fan Infuriators," and “Two-Parters, But Why?" But the cursor moves to click a thumbnail subtitled “Alternate Realities," and within that folder there are fake episodes about Bart becoming Prime Minister of England, Marge marrying Ned Flanders, and others. The next choice is made, which brings us to a slightly-more-dystopian present-day Springfield (referred to as a “Non-Botanical Hellscape"), depicted as an industrial wasteland where not even a daisy is permitted to grow in a paved-over riverbed. Naturally Lisa Simpson (voiced, as always, by Yeardley Smith) is striving to make a change, but her rally is interrupted by Nuclear Power Plant owner Charles Montgomery Burns (Harry Shearer), who shoos away the crowd to make room for a performance by the Hobo Philharmonic.

Lisa becomes depressed by Burns’s efforts to prevent the town’s improvement, so her parents Marge (Julie Kavner) and Homer (Dan Castellaneta) sign her up for therapy, where her doctor (Tress MacNeille) introduces a device to help calm her down. But instead of simply inducing a meditative trance, these vibrating clackers literally send Lisa back in time roughly a century to 1923, where she inhabits the body of her great-grandmother Edith. In a jazz club there, she meets a young Mr. Burns (guest star Joseph Gordon-Levitt from Inception, Looper, and 3rd Rock from the Sun) who happens to be a fairly hip singer at a club that stands on the spot in town later occupied by Moe’s Tavern. Lisa/Edith and young “Monty B." collaborate on some hoppin’ tunes, and outside the club later on we learn that the Springfield of this era is overrun by a species of miniature moose. The two new friends make their marks in some wet cement, and then Lisa returns to the present, where we get a fun rant from Homer about the use of the word “crazy" in regards to his daughter.

Strolling past Moe’s the next day, Lisa makes the discovery that she has in fact visited the past when she finds her saxophone drawing on the sidewalk hidden under a drunken Barney Gumble (also Castellaneta), though Marge believes that the memory must have been left over from Lisa having looked at some old photos. Lisa visits Professor Frink (Hank Azaria) for some science-based advice, and together they discover that the extinction of the mini-moose is what led to the current dilapidated state of Springfield’s ecology. So Lisa begins to self-induce more trips to the past, getting to know Monty B. a bit better– at this point in his life he’s fond of cultivating orchids that look like his mother– and attempting to save the moose from its fate. The two pals even perform a song together at the jazz club about the plight of the endangered animal, replacing the hit track “Mini Moose Mama, Let’s Kill You Tonight." Sadly no matter how hard she tries, her efforts only seem to change history for the worse.

Eventually Lisa makes the shocking discovery that she was actually the one who turned Mr. Burns evil, by spurring a stampede of the moose into his greenhouse, causing him to vow revenge on the town and become a ruthless billionaire tycoon. The climax of the episode sees both Lisa and Mr. Burns using the therapy device to travel back into the past simultaneously, resulting in Burns finally convincing his younger self to follow through on his selfish path, although Monty B. does have one final gift for Lisa, which he leaves in the basement of the jazz club / Moe’s Tavern (there’s a great bit here with Moe allowing Lisa access into the bar’s sublevel, followed by some very fun freeze-frame reference to the tavern’s more recent past). So Lisa uses the money she earns by selling Burns’s gift to create her own park in Springfield, and the old Mr. Burns wishes he could release the hounds on her, though unfortunately they must remain on their leashes. We get a hunt of Monty B. as Burns dances away, and over the end credits we hear the full version of “Mini Moose Mama." I thought this was a really fun episode that plays fast and loose with Springfield’s history, though it’s couched in the Wuhu “Alternate Reality" so I think it works. Really my only complaint comes from how the real-world Disney+ streaming service made it difficult to navigate to this exclusive episode from its main screen. I won’t go into the process here, but it was anything but intuitive and if I didn’t have to track it down to write this review I might have given up after a couple minutes. Hope they get around to fixing that soon!

The Simpsons - “The Past and the Furious" is now available to stream, exclusively via Disney+.