User blog:DandyAndy1989/Honest Opinion: Making the Grade

Okay, so the last time I brought up my honest opinion about an episode, I talked about Undie Pressure, which is often considered one of the show's best episodes...and how I felt it was a little overrated with some flaws I couldn't see past. So, now, I'm gonna talk about an episode of the show that I actually like and think gets a little too much flack just because of one key element that I'll get into. And today's episode is Making the Grade.

Much like AnimationFan15, I find a lot of people not liking this episode and I'll explain why when I get there. But if you ask me, it is a rather fun thing to see Lisa participating in. She decides to transfer to Mrs. Johnson's class, the class Lincoln is in, because she isn't being challenged enough in kindergarten. And being the bite-size brainiac she is, I can see why.

Now, there is one particular problem I have with this episode, but not one that kills it for me. You see, back when the show was still being made, it was said that Lisa was so smart that she actually graduated college at her young age with PhD in physics. And it does seem odd that if they went with that, she still has to attend kindergarten. Hey, maybe the system doesn't allow her to skip school even with that early age degree, so she may have to attend the proper levels from kindergarten all the way up to the 12th grade like everyone else. And no, the retcon is not the reason people dislike this episode.

When Mrs. Johnson sees how astoundingly Lisa's doing ahead of the grass with her Ms. Know-It-All brain, she decides that the class should do the same, much to their chagrin, such as easily catching up on a history assignment and reading ahead of them and building a robot project that decimates the others'. And for some reason, the class takes their frustration out on Lincoln and not his smartypants sister.

Now, this is where we get into the problem I see a lot of people having with this episode: the characters taking their frustration out on Lincoln and not Lisa. There's the matter of Lincoln's classmates doing this. And I can see why some viewers don't like this. They're shunning and taking their anger out on Lincoln for something he couldn't help. He didn't know Lisa was gonna transfer to their class and show off like that. They even go so far as to send him to the sticky table, the most infamous table in the cafeteria. So, I can see why people have a problem with this part of the episode, but not why they have one with something similar I'll explain later.

So, in order to save his rep, Lincoln tells Lisa about how everyone is taking it out on him(yes, he actually addresses the issue of them doing so and how it's unfair to him to her), and Lisa doesn't seem to understand his plight until he asks her to act average for a change, which she decides to give a try for a change.

The next day, she has had self laser surgery, which I think no one in reality should attempt, redoes her hair, and puts on a collar that will spray her with water if she tries to act like herself. And soon enough, she starts going from her actually smartypants self to a normal kid who wants to have fun and be cool. However, it goes a little too far where she finds out that being average is way more fun than her old genius lifestyle. She gets rid of all of her science equipment and becomes a Boyz Will Be Boyz fan like Lori.

And this is where I begin to talk about the other reason people don't like this episode very much and why I have to disagree. So, with Lisa's new average lifestyle, she doesn't help out her family with the tasks that require her high IQ in order to complete. Luna needs her help studying for a test tomorrow, but she doesn't tutor anymore. Her dad needs him cooking a recipe with the measurements in metric, but she gave up on that. The sisters have a chance of winning tickets to a spa in a radio contest, but Lisa gives the wrong answer on purpose. Rita needs to know the time Pop-Pop's train will arrive at the station based on a famous math question, but Lisa quit that cold turkey. And every time, she mentions that it's thanks to Lincoln, and the other sisters get mad at him for it.

Now, let me explain why I don't agree with people getting upset with this scene. You see, unlike Lincoln's classmates getting mad at him for Lisa's show-off genius which he didn't have any involvement with, I actually believe his sisters getting mad at him for what has happened to Lisa. If you recall, Lincoln told her why he wants her to act normal: to save his reputation before he would be an outcast for being blamed for her IQ, which wasn't his fault. While influencing her to be normal at school has saved his rep, and given her a good one to boot, things at home are a little different. The parents and other sisters find Lisa's knowledge very helpful in taking care of things that would be hard to figure out without it. And every time Lisa brought out she was out of a certain knowledge game, she would mention that it was because Lincoln influenced her to be normal. It was his fault that it was happening to them, so they had more of a right to be angry at him than his classmates. I mean, sure, maybe the others kicking Lincoln out of Vanzilla after they lost the radio contest was a bit harsh, but he didn't seem too bothered by it. As AnimationFan15 said, if Lincoln isn't bothered by it, why should I be? Besides, it's not like they're shunning and rejecting him like his classmates earlier. They're just not happy with what he did to Lisa. So, because he didn't think Lisa would take this being average thing too far, it was his fault for saving his rep at the cost of her knowledge not being beneficial to the family anymore. That's the part I don't agree with people getting mad at. We now return to my blog entry, still in progress.

While Lisa is now the coolest kid in school, her former kindergarten teacher tells her that the class is hit with an epidemic of strep throat. Before Lisa requested the transfer, she was working on a strep throat antidote that would rid those of the virus, and this is what causes Lincoln to realize what he had done. He feels that the kindergarteners suffering because Lisa isn't a genius anymore because he influenced her to be average would be a heavy burden on him and convinces Lisa to go back to being a genius, which she does. She thus finishes the antidote and cures the kindergarteners of the epidemic. And the other kids decide that since she saved them and the virus could have spread all over the school, they welcome her and Lincoln to join them as thanks. So, they don't mind her being a genius anymore, but she decides to go back to kindergarten because it has one thing 5th grade doesn't: naps.

Now, I will say one more thing. This does seem like the third time they did the be yourself moral in the show, the first being from Toads and Tiaras, which is the best example, and the second being Back in Black, but I can forgive this one.

You see, this episode has one similarity to another Lisa episode: Snow Bored. Both episodes have Lisa indulging in something she never tried before. Snow Bored had a snow day, and this episode had her being average. However, there is one difference between the two of them. In Snow Bored, Lisa only pretended to be influenced by the snowball fights and acted like she was going berserk with the frosty wrath just to get her siblings to wanna go back to school. She set it up, not really showing any genuine joy to snow days at all. Here, her sudden change from genius to average is actually genuine because she doesn't mention anything about a plan of getting her siblings to learn a lesson that they didn't need to and she was actually happy fitting in and was a little reluctant to going back to a genius at first until she realized what she had to do. It was very believable and authentic. And that's why, even if it's a moral they already used, I can forgive it.

So, I personally think Making the Grade gets too much of a bad rep and shouldn't be criticized just because of what Lincoln gets put through. I can believe why people are upset with his classmates doing it, but his sisters doing it I can give a pass. And Lisa actually felt the change in her rather than pretending like she did in the snow episode.

In closing, if you still don't like this episode even after I explained it, I'll respect your opinion on it. But I do think that it's nowhere near one of the worst episodes of the series.