Lisa the Greek

After being cheated by a premium rate betting advice hotline, a desperate Homer asks Lisa to pick a winner.

She forces him to try on unfashionable clothes and humiliates him by flinging open the fitting room door, causing Sherri and Terri and the other customers to laugh at him in his underwear.

Since Lisa is adept at picking winning teams, Homer declares every Sunday during football season Daddy-Daughter Day.

When Lisa asks Homer if they can go hiking the Sunday after the Super Bowl, he tells her that Daddy-Daughter Days are over until next football season.

Overjoyed that his daughter still loves him, Homer cancels his bowling date with Barney and goes hiking with Lisa the next weekend.

According to show runner Al Jean, it was designed to satirize the staff members' "love affair with gambling, particularly on football".

[1] Kogen, Wolodarsky, Jean, George Meyer, Sam Simon, and James L. Brooks were all frequent gamblers.

[1] Moore said they are his favorite episodes to direct, because "the two most opposite characters in the cast finding some kind of common ground [...] That was always interesting.

Yeardley Smith, the voice of Lisa, recalls that many people at the table-read thought Homer was "too harsh" in the scene, but it ended up being included in the episode anyway.

[6] The episode aired just days before Super Bowl XXVI and correctly predicted that the Washington Redskins would defeat the Buffalo Bills.

[1] As Lisa studies football at the Springfield library, she goes through the card catalog and finds an entry on Phyllis George, an American sportscaster.

[8] His new sitcom, Handle with Care (starring a retired cop who resides with a retired convict) is a sitcom patterned after the 1970s series Switch starring Eddie Albert and Robert Wagner, a detective series about an ex-police officer partnered with a reformed con artist.

Oddly, for a show relying on actual events like the Super Bowl to guide its plotline, it doesn't have [a] retread feeling.

[16] DVD Movie Guide's Colin Jacobson, however, did not think the episode developed Lisa's and Homer's relationship, but it "tosses in some good pokes at the NFL and the culture that surrounds the sport".

[17] Jacobson added that although the episode "echoes the neglectful father theme seen not long ago in 'Lisa's Pony', the show doesn't feel like just a retread.

The San Jose Mercury News's Daniel Brown said NFL gambling "seems to be a crew-wide addiction, which is why 'Lisa the Greek' is filled with sophisticated gags about point spreads and bookies".