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"The Dad Who Knew Too Little" is an episode of the animated television series The Simpsons.

Plot

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Bart and Lisa are watching a TV programme, "Padz" (a parody of MTV Cribs). They see a commercial for a new kind of personal diary, which does not allow anyone else to read it and shocks them if they try. Lisa, tired of Bart reading her diary, asks Homer and Marge to get her the diary for her birthday, to which they agree. The next day, Homer and Bart go to the mall to get the diary for Lisa. But Homer is sidetracked when he sees that the food court is handing out free samples. Bart tells him that they have to get Lisa's gift, but Homer ignores him and pigs out on all the free food (and when that runs out, he starts chewing up some pants in the mens' department). Fianlly, they go to the toy store to get the diary for Lisa. However, all copies of the diary are sold out (the last one was bought by Mr. Burns minutes ago, to make a list of his enemies). Clueless about what to get for Lisa, Homer roams about the mall, until he encounters Ned Flanders, who informs him that he can make a personalized movie about Lisa, just like the one Flanders made for Rod. Homer, short of ideas like he always is, decides to go for Ned's idea, for once.

On Lisa's birthday, Bart gives her a laser pointer and demonstrates its power, by flashing it at Principal Skinner's crotch, prompting him to examine closely what that "red dot" is. Homer gives Lisa her present — the personalised movie he made for her. She is disappointed that she didn't get the diary she wanted, nevertheless she watches the movie. It's a story about Lisa as a sheriff in a Western movie. As she watches the movie, from the dialogue, she realises that Homer knows absolutely nothing about her. She runs upstairs crying, making Homer feel bad.

The next day, he tries to make it up to her by asking her about herself, but she blows him off, saying that he had 8 years to get to know her and now it's too late. Later that day, feeling dejected, he goes to Moe's. When he tells the barflies there his problem, Moe tells him to have Lisa followed by a private detective and gives him a card for one,a Dexter Colt. That night, Homer goes to a rather seedy part of town to meet Dexter Colt. He wants Colt to follow Lisa and find out as much as he can, so that he can at least act as the perfect father. The shady detective takes the case.

He starts following Lisa and going through her locker. He even muscles Skinner into showing him Lisa's permanent record. He blackmails Nelson to get him a book report of "The Secret Garden", wriiten by Lisa. Finally, one day, as Homer leaves the power plant, he sees an large envelope on his car hood. It's the report by the detective about Lisa.

Using the report, he starts to bond with Lisa, by playing the songs that she likes and going to protest (on behalf of "Pre-Teens for Ethical Treatment of Animals" or PTETA) against animal testing at a research lab, where monkeys are made to smoke cigarettes and pigs are smothered with make-up. Later that night, Homer tucks her into bed, happy that he's getting to know her, although he almost lets slip about the report he has about her.

Homer goes to see Dexter Colt and thank him for all his work. But when Colt gives him a bill for $1000 (which includes a lot of superficial and unrelated costs, like a $40 steak and silver bullets, when he thought Lisa could be a werewolf). Homer refuses to pay for all that. Colt pulls out his handgun and grabs Homer by his shirt, but Homer wriggles out of his shirt and jumps out of the window. Colt swears revenge as Homer runs off into the night.

The next morning, Lisa, Homer and Bart are watching the news. They see that someone has vandalised the research lab and stolen all the animals. Chief Wiggum says that, based on the clues collected (such as a Malibu Stacy scrunchy, a saxophone reed and the book report for "The Secret Garden"), Lisa Simpson is the main suspect. Lisa says she is innocent and Homer knows she has been framed by Dexter Colt. The cops come to arrest Lisa, but Homer and Lisa take off in the car, with the cops in pursuit. Finally, they manage to escape and disguise themselves with black paint (to colour their hair). They check into a motel and call Marge, but the cops have tapped the phone and zero in on their location. Homer, meanwhile, tells Lisa the truth about the detective and she gets angry with him again.

When the cops arrive, they escape through the window. After running for a while, they come across a circus, where they see the stolen animals from the research lab. They are about to call the cops, when Dexter Colt shows up, aiming a cannon (with a human cannonball inside) at them. He fires it and Homer pushes Lisa out of the way and gets hit by the human cannonball, but he's okay ("Homerpalooza", anyone?). Holt pulls out his handgun and Humer takes off into a hall of mirrors. Many relections of Homer show up, but Colt shoots Homer in the arm. As Colt is about to shoot Homer, Lisa shows up. Colt wonders how she heard them,and Homer says that Lisa's hearing is very good and that, one day when she was very young, she had heard him quietly sobbing in the closet. Lisa, impressed that Homer actually remembered something about her, flashes Holt in the eye with the laser pointer that Bart gave her.

Later, Colt is arrested and Lisa is exonerated. Homer tells her that he released all the lab animals into the wild. We see that he gave them to the Spunkler family, where Brandine Spuckler is suspicious of Cletus' intentions with the pigs.

Trivia

• For the first time ever, we see what Lisa's hairline looks like in this episode when she colors it black. (Not counting 'Lisa The Beauty Queen' because she gets different hairstyles).
• Homer's gives his e-mail address as ChunkyLover53@aol.com, which is also writer Matt Selman's e-mail address. Matt wrote back to fans as Homer. About a month after this episode aired, however, his address was disabled due to too many sent messages.
• Lisa ages, or at least has a birthday.
• The Couch gag is Groening's version of the famous 1932 photograph "Lunch on a skyscraper".
• Police officer Lou indicates that his ex-wife's name is Amy.
• The FOX promo showed Homer saying "You have enough blame to be on Oz Jr.", then he said "Idea. Make a show called Oz Jr, but don't show it to ABC, they're IDIOTS!" The scene wasn't shown in the episode.
• Similar to "Homerpalooza", where Homer gets hit in the stomach with a cannonball, here he gets hit again, this time with a human cannonball.

Quotes

• (in the living room, Homer is showing Lisa her birthday present: a cartoon with a crudely-drawn Lisa as the "Sheriff")
  Bartender: Bad news sheriff...
  Homer voiceover: Lisa Simpson!
  Bartender: Some Indians took all the...
  Homer voiceover: McNuggets! Mmmm McNuggets... (drooling noise)

• Simpsons episodes