About

Dental Plan / Lisa Needs Braces is a commonly used call-and-response template, usually featuring a repeated series of images of Lenny and Lisa from the animated sitcom The Simpsons. A fan favorite, the scene has become the subject of numerous YouTube remixes.

Origin

Dental Plan/Lisa Needs Braces comes from a scene in the season four episode of The Simpsons "Last Exit to Springfield," which originally aired on March 11th, 1993. In the episode, Mr. Burns introduces a new contract to his workers that eliminates their dental plan in exchange for a keg of beer. This creates a conflict for Homer, one of Burns' employees, because his daughter Lisa needs braces. As Homer waits for his beer, he overhears the character Lenny say, "So long dental plan." This triggers two thoughts for Homer: Lenny saying "dental plan," and his wife, Marge, informing him that "Lisa needs braces." The phrase plays repeatedly in Homer's mind while his brain tries to make the connection between loss of his dental insurance and having to pay out-of-pocket for Lisa's braces, i.e. "Dental Plan" and "Lisa needs braces."^[1]

On June 19th, 2005, Urban Dictionary user Olly J defined "dental plan, Lisa needs braces":

"A timeless phrase, used with great versatility. you can say this at pretty much any time or situation but definitely works best when said during one of those long awkward pauses in a conversation. Sometimes shortened to simply "dental plan…" let open to completion by others present, or simply left abbreviated."

Spread

According to Encyclopedia Dramatica, 4chan users used the expression from the early-00s to 2008^[2] in copypasta format and as an interrupter, in which users would interrupt their own posts using the "Dental plan" portion of the meme.

On November 19th, 2007, YouTuber DentalPlanWins posted a Ventrilo Harassment variation of the original Simpsons clip. The video has more than 997,000 views.

The clip is a frequent subject of replacement remixes on YouTube.

Australian TV Loop

On April 12th, 2017, Mashable^[4] reported that the Australian TV station Eleven played the clip of "Dental Plan/Lisa Needs Braces" on a continuous loop for nearly four hours. The network then posted the loop to Facebook, where it received more than 578,000 views, 13,000 reactions, and 3,800 shares.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References