Thread:Gumball2/@comment-30953185-20171226202550/@comment-4618045-20171228212722

Okay.

Lisa is ranked tenth on my list. Given who she is, I would like to put her higher. She has a drive for learning, she can be precocious, and is socially awkward. Those are things I can relate to, which in theory should make me like her more. Unfortunately, she succumbs to the typical “child prodigy” trope I have grown weary of due to overexposure. It seems like whenever we have a child prodigy character in cartoons, the only subject they can like is the natural sciences (physics, chemistry, astronomy, etc) while laughing off other fields (such as economics or English) as “soft” or “dummy” Science. Lisa does infuse references to other fields, but it’s clear her only passion is natural science. The only cartoon child prodigy I can think of that is not a science geek is, funnily enough, also named Lisa (but that’s another story). But what I’ve come to notice is that the main reason why Science is so heavily used is that it lends itself to wacky inventions and experiments, which leads me to my major problem with Lisa.

I don’t think the experiments are funny. They always follow the same trend; they’re either conducted on unsuspecting people, cause bodily harm to them, or have a “tiny” defect that ultimately causes everything to go wrong (kinda like a corollary to Murphy’s Law). Similar to Luan in April Fools Day episodes, I don’t enjoy watching characters I like suffering for “comedy”. It’d be one thing if time was taken to seriously examine how this affects Lisa’s relationships with other people, but they’re usually just brushed aside.

Luckily, Lisa has had some gains from Season 2. The experiments have been toned down (somewhat) and more time has been taken to explore her character (“Friend or Faux”). But I feel like she hasn’t gone as far as Lola in this regard. I hope that more episodes are taken to examine challenges that can come from being a child prodigy.