I don�t have time to write a really detailled review this weekend but I noticed some discussion about 3F03 "Lisa The Vegetarian" so here�s my personal opinion. Sorry for mistakes, written in a hurry.
It�s a pretty controversial episode, so just a few words to make my point clear (3F03 would deserve a 2-page-review like most classic episodes.)
"Lisa The Vegetarian" is mainly an episode about tolerance (as so often) but it�s also an episode that tries to satirize the social fight between vegetarians and non-vegetarians. Of course, they made fun about overdone vegetarism (mostly through Lisa�s behaviour), but the non-vegetarians were shown as people with very little ability to reason independently and to accept other ways of life. The kids in school are quite similar to the kid in the "educational" Troy McClure film, they laugh about Lisa and vegetarians, yet it�s clear that they don�t know anything about the topic at all. Like every good classic OFF episode, 3F03 shows both sides of the problem and leaves the interpretation to the viewer.
Finally, Lisa (the stubborn vegetarian) understood the meaning of tolerance and even Homer tried to understand and to accept, so in a certain way the episode is maybe not really pro vegetarism but pro tolerance and pro new ways of life and once again (I say it too often) pro non-conformism. Many S7 episodes deal with individuals breaking out from social conformity, but it would go too far to explain them all now. Let�s just say 3F03 fits pretty well into the season.
The show satirized social conformity but it also satirized the inability of (too many) people to respect other opinions than their own. That was a main concept of many classic episodes. To sum it up:
"You don�t have to be like other people and their society, but you have to tolerate them."
However, I agree that there are some problems in 3F03, mostly concerning Lisa�s behaviour. She�s too selfish and self-righteous in too many scenes. That�s somehow necessary for the plot, as it makes fun about overdone vegetarism (Lisa tries to force other people to believe in her *own* new values) to show both sides of the story, but it makes Lisa pretty unlikeable and is a first trace of the coming character degradation that destroyed much of Lisa�s depth and turned her from an 8-year-old child with a big sense of moral into a whiny and stereotypical mini-adult.
The main problem of 3F03 is IMO a balance problem - the balance between self-righteousness and learning isn�t as good as it was in earlier years and that�s a somehow bad foretaste of things to come in later Lisa episodes. There are better Lisa episodes than 3F03 (e.g. 3F13 "Lisa the Iconoclast") but it�s still good and enjoyable. I�d give it a grade B+ which is a little below the quality level of season 7.
Some 52 seconds are cut in syndication, but no important scenes are missing.
Any comments?
Chris