the skeleton silences her and announces, "The End... of high prices!" The skeleton is then hoisted over to the entrance of the new Heavenly Hills Mall. Lisa realizes the whole event was a publicity stunt for the mall, and criticizes management for taking advantage of peoples' beliefs. She attempts to boycott them, but the bargain-loving public shrugs off the exploitation and goes shopping, while Dr. Gould confesses that he never actually tested the sample. Marge observes that while it was talking, Lisa believed the angel was real. She denies this, but admits she was frightened, and thanks her mother for her support. Production "Lisa the Skeptic" was written by David X. Cohen, and directed by Neil Affleck. Cohen was inspired to write the episode after a trip to Manhattan's American Museum of Natural History, where he decided to turn the visit into a "business trip", and think of a possible episode connection to the museum. He initially wanted Lisa to find a "missing link" skeleton, and do an episode reminiscent of the Scopes Monkey Trial. Writer George Meyer convinced him instead to have the focus be on an angel skeleton, while keeping an emphasis on the conflict between religion and science. Both Cohen and Meyer acknowledged how silly the "angel skeleton" idea was owing to simple questions raised such as why an angel died and why bones were left behind, but they went forward with the idea anyway. In an early draft of the script, the skeleton was made of pastry dough baked by the mall's window dresser. Cohen had initially written the Stephen Jay Gould role as a generic scientist or paleontologist, not knowing that they would eventually get Gould. He had taken Gould's Introduction to Paleontology class at Harvard University. The only phrase Gould had objected to in the script was a line that introduced him as the "world's most brilliant paleontologist". His original final line was "I didn't do the test. I had more important work to do", but it was cut because the writers felt it would be funnier to give him a short final line. In an earlier version of the episode, Marge would have ended up apologizing to Lisa for not supporting her, letting the ending be more of a nod to Lisa's correct assumptions all along. Themes Author Joley Wood compared "Lisa the Skeptic" to an alternate reality game, in analyzing the effects