Blame It On The Regina Monologues

2 foreign vacation episodes from the Jean era, neither of which I think has a good reputation on the board, but which is better?

Blame It On Lisa - I can't explain why I enjoy this one, I just do. It follows the same formula as most other vacation episodes and is again little more than a quick trip around Brazillian stereotypes. So why do I think only it's the 3rd best vacation episode behind Bart Vs Australia and Itchy and Scratchy Land? I have no idea. (By the way I don't count Summer of 4 ft 2 as a vacation episode). Nevertheless B

The Regina Monologues - I quite enjoyed this the first time round, but subsequent viewings have revealed it to be grade A shit of the highest order. By the time Homer crashes into the Queen (how cartoonish can you get?) I have to literally force myself to carry on watching. The visuals are terrible, I don't think the digital animation has ever looked as cold, sterile, characterless washed out and empty as it does here. Lisa and Burns are characterised very oddly, the first act is awkward, Grandpa's subplot is useless, the guest stars are maybe the worst ever used with hideous introductory dialogue by Lisa. The Macbeth joke is predictable and ancient there is no plot to speak of.....and on and on it goes. The Trainspotting parody is ok and there are one or two bright spots here (I'm acting the way America acts best - unilaterally!) and there but on the whole this is woeful D

blame it on lisa. and i haven't even seen it, i just hated regina so much.

anyway, permit me to steal your idea

Blame It On Lisa isn't even half bad if you ask me. I'd probably give it a B- or C+. I like the pacing and there were several really funny jokes, especially the gay money.

Regina Monologues, on the other hand...the less said about it, the better. I give it an F; it's one of the worst

Originally Posted by FuzzyWuzzyWuzABear

Blame It On Lisa isn't even half bad if you ask me. I'd probably give it a B- or C+. I like the pacing and there were several really funny jokes, especially the gay money.

Regina Monologues, on the other hand...the less said about it, the better. I give it an F; it's one of the worst

Well I agree, I think Blame It On Lisa is pretty good although I find it hard to pin down why. I just remember in the R&R Regina Monologues thread when it first aired a lot of people were saying it was better than Blame It On Lisa which I have to very very strongly disagree with, so I was wondering if they had changed their mind on subsequent viewings. The Regina Monologues gets worse every time I see it

Blame it on Lisa: C+
The Regina Monologues: F

Both really don't favor themselves to repeat viewings, IMO. "The Regina Monologues" though has some of the most force-fed guest star appearances in the entire series of the show, on top off the standard wacky stereotype observations, skit formula, and Captain Wacky mayhem that plague the lesser vacation episodes. Plus "Blame it on Lisa", while wackier and having more offensive characterization problems by the end than "The Regina Monologues", also actually has more of a story to tie the skits together once they actually get to Brazil, for what it's worth. So I guess "Blame it on Lisa", just.

Edit:

Originally Posted by Veryjammy

So why do I think only it's the 3rd best vacation episode behind Bart Vs Australia and Itchy and Scratchy Land? I have no idea. (By the way I don't count Summer of 4 ft 2 as a vacation episode).

What about "Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington"? Or "Special Edna"?

I don't know about wackier. Of course the ending of Blame It On Lisa was very contrived and quite cartoony but I found so much of the Regina Monologues insulting to my intelligence. People paid a total of $3,000 to see a note? Being clumsily told by Lisa every guest person we were about to see? They crash through the gates of Buckingham Palace and bump into the Queen? Homer gets locked in the Tower of London and escapes through the fireplace? Maybe I'm overly critical because I'm British but I felt the episode lurched from one pathetic set piece and scene to another in search of a purpose before settling on a plot device I would expect from a crappy little kiddy cartoon.

Perhaps I'm over-generous to Blame It On Lisa but I felt it was more cohesive, better written, funnier and had much better pacing. It is still full of stereotypes and maybe because they aren't directly related to me I find them more acceptable.....and I'm running out of steam and not sure what my point is

Originally Posted by Channel Surfer

What about "Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington"? Or "Special Edna"?

Well yes. For some reason I don't class them as vacation episodes even though they are. I tend to look at episodes where they go abroad more as vacation episodes. Yes they're better than Blame It On Lisa, but Mr Lisa Goes To Washington in particular feels different, it feels like a regular episode that just happens to take place partly in Washington. I guess that's because the vacation 'formula' hadn't been established yet and they now seem unable to shake that formula off. Although Special Edna showed they can if they really want to.

Blame it on Lisa is better. I find Homer being kidnapped by thugs to be much more plausible than Homer having his head on a pike for accidentally read-ending the queen. My problem with Blame it on Lisa was the family's (mostly Bart's) apathy to Homer's kidnap; that pissed me off greatly. Also, there were too many wacky/hokey jokes involving the easiest Brazilian stereotypes (liking soccer, conga line) But there are a lot of funny-in-a-silly way moments (the phone company, the shot at the Malcolm in the Middle cast, Homer's "try and stop us" T-shirt, the "hostage" sign on the taxi, the kid's show).

The Regina Monologues has nearly nothing going for it at all. References to James Bond, Trainspotting, and Mary Poppins are not inherently funny simply because they're references! I don't think there was a single clever poke at Britain in the whole episode, just really tired stuff like Judi Dench beating up the teen, the gay Brits, and the queen being a bitch.

What I'd consider a vacation episode has a couple qualities:

-First act shows how OFF gets the opportunity to go on vacation
-Rest of the show has little cohesive plot if any, and mostly consists of jokes about the different culture. The plot is simply "the Simpsons are in (insert country here), and they run into some problems while there"

This is why I'm not sure if something like Goo Goo Gai Pan is a vacation episode, because it has a pretty strong plot with Selma.

Originally Posted by Veryjammy

I don't know about wackier. Of course the ending of Blame It On Lisa was very contrived and quite cartoony but I found so much of the Regina Monologues insulting to my intelligence. People paid a total of $3,000 to see a note? Being clumsily told by Lisa every guest person we were about to see? They crash through the gates of Buckingham Palace and bump into the Queen? Homer gets locked in the Tower of London and escapes through the fireplace? Maybe I'm overly critical because I'm British but I felt the episode lurched from one pathetic set piece and scene to another in search of a purpose before settling on a plot device I would expect from a crappy little kiddy cartoon.

Perhaps I'm over-generous to Blame It On Lisa but I felt it was more cohesive, better written, funnier and had much better pacing. It is still full of stereotypes and maybe because they aren't directly related to me I find them more acceptable.....and I'm running out of steam and not sure what my point is

Bart dancing while swallowed by a snake, robots working at a phone company, Bart learning Spanish on an airplane and later banging his head to forget it all, travel by conga line, people on fire dancing. As far as just outright cartoony, wacky happenings, scenes, jokes, whatever (and not just intelligence insulting material, which I do agree "Regina" is worse there), I think "Blame it on Lisa" has "The Regina Monologues" (and hell, perhaps "Kill the Alligator and Run") beat by quite a bit.

Back on the quality, Mike Scully articulated the differences better than I did. Though I'll add too that searching for a lost orphan boy is a more focused, interesting reason to go to Brazil and thread the various skits together than (at least in its jokey execution) Bart taking Marge on a vacation because she does so much for the family and Grampa wanting to reunite with an old girlfriend from during WWII. Especially since the former once they actually get to England is seemingly only brought up to set up Captain Wacky punchlines and the latter is buried and forgotten until the last minute of the episode - with a lousy if somewhat creepy payoff too I might add. With that said, I might think less of "Blame it on Lisa" than you do (it's not better than "Lisa the Iconoclast", even at my most generous view of it ), and I will add I used to like it, and "The Regina Monologues", more before repeat viewings soured my views of them. But overall I think our general impressions really aren't all that different as far as how these episodes compare to one another.

Blame it on Lisa is just so much better;

- No pointless guest stars
- A feasible plot

And many other things.

In other words, those were the only two you could think of.

Blame It On Lisa - C
The Regina Monologues - D+

I like both, but Blame It On Lisa is better all-round, not that Monologues is bad though - it's still very enjoyable.

Blame It On Lisa 10/10
The Regina Monologues 9/10

Blame it on Lisa, without doubt.

Blame It On Lisa sucks. I might need to rewatch it, but from what I remember I hated it.

Regina isn't great, or even good, but I voted for it.

They both sucked ass but I guess Regina is a little better.

Blame It On Lisa = B+/A-

The Regina Monologues = C+/B-

Regina Monologues is extremely underrated, but I'd still say Blame It On Lisa is a little better.

i liked regina monologues better,perhaps because i'm british.blame it on lisa is still good though

blame it on lisa-b-
regina monologues-b+

Blame it on Lisa is (in my opinion) the much better episode. The Regina Monologues is a disgusting episode, first time i saw it i found it acceptable but i saw it again recently and i finally saw its faults. Great guest voices where completley wasted and the script had lots of cringing moments (two men kissing in the street for no reason, the ending where we were introduced to a female equiverlent of Homer etc). The worst episode of the great season 15, yes even worse than Bart Mangled Banner.

I haven't watched The Regina Monlogues but I did like Blame It On Lisa and I still kind of like it when I rewatch it. I think characterizations were quite good in that one, even with all the crazy and cartoony stuff. I agree with Veryjammy that it's one of the best vacation formula episodes, even though the less formula-ic, Lisa Goes To Washington is much better. In fact I only find Special Edna better than Blame It On Lisa for a sligth margin. While Special Edna was very funny and have an interesting story idea, some characterizations were a little off. I mean, Bart and Edna haven't been so dull ever before and Skinner wasn't hilarious in that one. I think Homer was the funniest one in that episode, acting similar to himself in crazy Mirkin episodes. Which means even now he can do some silly and crazy stuff and still being likeable.

But all that was very off-topic. Well, Blame It on Lisa had funny and I think good characterizations of both Homer and Bart. I liked, for example, little details like the two of them singing Chiquita Banana in the hotel with Bart putting the fruit in his head. That kind of behaviour seems natural and funny.

And some of the cartoony jokes worked. For some reason Bart dancing inside the snake was much funnier for me than any surreal ending during Scully era. Perhaps because it had more relation with Bart's happy attitude during the episode instead of being some crazy thing that come out of nowhere, like it happened usually in season 12 endings.

Originally Posted by Jayrayman

The Regina Monologues is a disgusting episode, first time i saw it i found it acceptable but i saw it again recently and i finally saw its faults. Great guest voices where completley wasted and the script had lots of cringing moments (two men kissing in the street for no reason, the ending where we were introduced to a female equiverlent of Homer etc). The worst episode of the great season 15, yes even worse than Bart Mangled Banner.

I'll agree. I didn't quite get the hate for EABF22 until I saw it last Friday, and now I see entirely. Worst episode of Season 15, including FABF17 (which, coincidentally, I saw 90 minutes later).

Blame it on Lisa is one of Season 13's worser episodes, but it's not as bad as, say, Homer the Moe. It wins.

The Regina Monologues

I think the only part that had me laughing out loud was when Abe Simpson said:

Abe: Sorry I never saw you again. I just felt the cultural differences between us were too great. Plus as the boat pulled away from the dock, I thought you looked fat.