"Lisa's Sax" is the first episode to be written by Al Jean without someone else. Before this, he would write with Mike Reiss. Jean, Reiss, and David Stern made small changes to the screenplay. This is the 6th episode to be about flashbacks. The first episode that does this is "The Way We Was". In that episode, Homer graduates from high school in 1974. This made it not easy to write the time of "Lisa's Sax" because the episode is in 1990. Jean thought that the episode was short, so they made Lisa play her new saxophone at the end of the episode.