According to IMDb user ratings, the Season 23 finale of The Simpsons, “Lisa Goes Gaga,” holds the lowest score of 4.0 out of 10 stars from 3,700 viewers. The episode features guest star Lady Gaga helping Lisa Simpson amid criticism for prioritizing the celebrity over the show's story. The series later referenced it in self-mockery.
The Simpsons, with 856 episodes and 37 Emmy Awards from over 100 nominations, surpassed Gunsmoke in 2018 as the longest-running scripted TV show. IMDb data identifies Season 23's “Lisa Goes Gaga” as its lowest-rated installment, averaging 4.0/10 from 3,700 ratings, where one-star votes outnumber perfect 10s nearly 2-to-1. Published on March 22, 2026, the TVLine analysis highlights viewer complaints that the episode serves as a showcase for Lady Gaga rather than advancing Springfield's narrative. Key scenes include Gaga kissing Marge on the sofa and Homer eating her meat dress. The plot centers on Gaga halting her tour train to aid Lisa (voiced by Yeardley Smith) during a self-esteem crisis, a premise some deem implausible even for animation. One IMDb reviewer gave it 3/10, calling it “a fawning, twenty-two minute commercial for Lady Gaga? Yuck.” Others noted hypocrisy, as Lisa shifts from being bullied at school to bullying Gaga out of town. Many described it as an extended promo for the 16-time Grammy winner. In Season 34, Episode 16 “Hostile Kirk Place,” the show self-references the episode alongside “Marge vs. the Monorail”—the latter ranked sixth-best on IMDb—as Springfield's darkest days, per character Gloria Prince. A Reddit thread user remarked that it “played it super safe with the Lady Gaga episode, having basically zero conflict, putting their guest star on a massive pedestal, and going with easy zingers.” Another two-star IMDb review criticized: “The storytelling is very annoying and lays on so heavily with the sugar that it'll make your teeth ache. All the regular characters featured are either bland or out of type in the most bizarre of ways.”
