Never got why this character was so popular with Simpsons fans

IDK, let's ask Killbot and WDJ why she's a good character.

Agreed about the guest star voice. I'm also not a fan of the joke in Lisa's Belly that reveals that she only acted bad because she wasn't on meds. Doesn't really matter just a throwaway joke, I just don't like that it implies that she wasn't in control of her bad actions.

like a lot of guest characters Jessica Lovejoy seems out of place and comes across as slightly jarring.

However I voted Wasted Potential as Bart's Girlfriend is an overall solid episode and there is definitely more that could be done with the Bart/Jessica dynamic.

never got why this scene was so funny with Simpsons fans

because they put the word FUCK into a broadcast television show.

ah yes Cordless and his asshurt rants about Jessica Lovejoy on NoHomers

Yeah fuck that literal tranny and his gay muscle Maggie fancomic.

Jessica is pretty much the only Bart girlfriend/love interest worth noting since the rest are all in bad Zombie Simpsons episodes and Laura...yeah is lame. Jessica had a great personality though. She was morally terrible of course, just like some of Bart's later zombie era girlfriends, but Maryl Streep's performance and the writing of the episode she appears in makes her more than just someone for the audience to be horrified or repulsed by. She doesn't grate on me the way Gina and Nikki does (the two other Bart love interests that were awful people).

Really the only thing that sucks about Jessica is that as with so many other one-time characters on the show they couldn't use her again due to her celebrity VA. Then again if they brought her back in a Zombie Simpsons episode...it would be as bad as when they brought Lurleen back so maybe for the best.

She's a good antagonist for the episode she featured in. If there was too much focus on her, she'd start to get grating, so I'm glad they only used her once aside from cameos.

"And that's why we put you on those mind-bending drugs."

Cold, Helen, cold.

Wasn't she an example of stunt casting, as in they got Meryl fucking Streep to do her voice?

Streep did a pretty good loli voice. Kimmy Robertson was one of the only others to do a good job of that. Lisa Kudrow was awful.

Fuck and suck are a funny combination of words

Streep did a pretty good loli voice

I don't really agree on that she doesn't sound like a 10 year old to me but...

My issue with these conversations is that a lot of them seem to have an odd double-standard holding for the classic season guest characters to frame them as "less significant" to the show than the general secondary cast despite the majority of them being one-dimensional joke characters with zero development or relevance to stories and the others being effectively just as theoretically "limited." Jessica is defined as a foil to Bart? The same can be said for Ned to Homer yet I see no one holding the argument that he shouldn't have been a part of the secondary cast. It feels like a very limiting way of viewing the classic series overall and this holds for all the significant/noteworthy guest characters like Lurleen, Laura, Ruth, Allison, Jessica, Hank, and others (notice that most of these are female, probably not a coincidence).

Yeah just because they were a guest character doesn't mean they need to throw them out and never touch them again. It’s down to being creative and thinking outside the box.

Again, I'm using Streep and Robertson relative to a guest star like Lisa Kudrow. Second graders aren't supposed to sound like a 35 year old woman.

Anyway, I do agree that most of the one-time guest characters of classic season Simpsons really aren't more one-note than most of the recurring cast. Not like Disco Stu or Duffman are any less one-note than Jessica.

Of course what's so special about so many of those golden age one-off characters (and the same can be said for many modern age one-off characters as well) is that their not as inherently comedic as nearly all of the reccuring characters. Jessica is an exception because her "acts like an angel around adults but is really a sociopath" shtick is ripe for comedy, but many other characters like Allison and Samantha and Laura are not obviously comedic creations. They're really mostly "straight" and their respective comedic moments comes from the situations that they end up being a part of in their respective episodes, not from them being inherently funny characters. That makes me wonder what their continued roles would have been in the show if they had stuck around (presumably voice by regulars instead of their inital celebrities). Maybe this is why the writers were seemingly so completely chill with leaving them behind after their inital episodes instead of recasting and them and continue to use them.

tbqh Alex sounding like an adult fit her character in a way

Didn't they have to pitch-up her voice in post-production?

But Ned is a foil to Homer in that they're opposites in many ways. Jessica was a foil in being more purely what Bart seems to be (she's legit evil)

No you're thinking of Winona Ryder and Allison. Her voice was definitely pitch-shifted.

Nerds jerked off to her and self-inserted as Bort.

It's honestly quite rare that I find it annoying when an adult does the voice of a kid as long as that person is female. It's only adult males trying to do kid voices that I dislike *cough*DipperPines*cough*. I mean it's one thing when they do teenagers, that's perfectly ok, but I'm talking grade schoolers. It always sound horrible and it annoys me that the Simpsons staff seemingly realized this in the golden age as they never did it back then unless it was for intentionaly comedic purposes, but then sometime in the early Jean era they started believing that it's fine to have adult male celebrities play 8 year olds. Hell fucking no, I don't want to hear obviously grown men trying to put the moves on Lisa.

LOL SNEED LMAO

Jessica will end up as a white trash teen mom.

IDK about you but I had a harder time buying Jessica sounding like a kid than Alex maybe because she sounded rather deep-voiced.

(notice that most of these are female, probably not a coincidence).

I think it falls into two categories, writer design intent, and casting.

I really like Ms. Peyton in all of her appearances because she's designed to be a new recurring character and is casted by someone who can be available to recur.

Jessica is designed to be a one-off to serve the purpose of a specific episode and is voiced by an A-list guest star, and so by her nature they couldn't use her again. Meryl Streep is not like Joe Mantegna or Kelsey Grammar whom they can call back any time.

I wouldn't object at all to a new recurring girl or indeed adult woman, character at all, but I'd prefer one who is designed and casted to reflect that.

They tried bringing back Krusty's daughter and the results were meh, she did nothing that any other character couldn't have done.

I'm saying those characters actually have fans even if they're one-offs which stands in contrast to assorted recurring gag characters that nobody likes and which exist and continue to be used in episodes only because Hank Azaria made the writers laugh at a table read.

IDK about you but I never could find Hank Azaria funny at all, believe me he doesn't touch Harry Shearer and Dan Castallaneta for comedic skill.

After causing anon to go to prison for statutory rape of course

It's a bit funny that Jessica is rather overwhelmingly the most popular one-off character with Simpsons fans. Well, she was a really good, well-voiced antagonist character and served her role well in 'Bart's Girlfriend'. While she never was a character I felt the show desperatedly needed to bring back, I do think that they could have gotten some real utilization of having her being a semi-reoccuring character with speaking roles and parts to play, so I do think she should have come back (and I don't think she necessarily needed to have Meryl Streep voice her going forward: In the case of her being a recurring character showing up every once in a while, I would have been ok with a recast of someone who's not an A-list celebrity if Streep wasn't available.

I thought Hank Scorpio was the most popular guest voice character.

Depends on who you ask, it seems that on Anon Babble Jessica and Allison are more popular.