2x13 Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment

[7.6/10] In some ways, “Homer vs. Lisa and the Eighth Commandment” is one of The Simpsons’’s most dated episodes. Its main plot centers on stealing cable through adjusting the hook-up between your T.V. set and the bundle of wires that connects it to the outside world. For one thing, it rests on a schism between over-the-air television and “pay T.V.” that doesn't really exist in the same way given the multitude of entertainment options and avenues. The very idea of “getting cable” is a bit outmoded given the variety of ways people consume T.V., movies, and other entertainment. And the simple notion of a shady guy making it all happen through a few misplaced wires is downright quaint.

But in others, the episode is timeless. While the sources and methods of obtaining premium content have varied considerably since 1991, when it originally aired, we live in an age of an increasing number of cord-cutters and cord-shavers and others tired of subsisting on traditional entertainment offerings. And while rewiring one’s cable box has gone the way of fixing the tracking on your VCR, piracy, illegal streams, and bootleg DVDs are still the province of average joes galled by pricey packages and an increasing number of walled gardens.

And even more universal is the moral dilemma at the core of “Homer vs. Lisa and the Eighth Commandment.” The episode is anchored around the biblical admonition “Thou Shalt Not Steal.” And whether that means swiping a graven idol from a shop in ancient Sinai, using an illegal cable hook-up in the Springfield of the 1990s, or running a shady bitcoin scam today, the ethical conundrums of what constitutes theft, immorality, and upstanding principles in the life of the nuclear family are just as compelling and applicable.

What’s funny is that when the episode aired, America’s moral guardians were wringing their hands about The Simpsons as a bad influence, and yet, Homer’s part of this episode reads almost like a Chick tract. Homer is the instigator of the cable-stealing (recreating North by Northwest to get it), and at first, everything’s good. He’s thoroughly seduced by his drug of choice, glued to the T.V. set 24/7, and everything from being able to entertain his family to being the toast of the town for hosting the big prize fight suggests a big win for the lovable oaf.

But then things start to crumble. The normally immovable object of television’s affections grows disillusioned and disinterested even with cable television’s cavalcade of offerings. He starts to grow increasingly panicked about everyone from his boss to his bartender finding out the various ways he’s bent or broken the rules over the years. And after a well-done sequence where he imagines a fanciful, if more secular-than-divine punishment for his ill deeds, has a change of heart, and desperate to escape his guilt and paranoia, he begrudgingly becomes a pioneering cord-cutter once more.

And he does so at the behest of an earnest voice encouraging him to save his soul. One of the unique things about “Homer vs. Lisa and the Eighth Commandment” is that, in contrast to some of the other “versus” episodes in The Simpsons catalogue, there’s not really much antagonism between the two title characters in this one. It’s more that Homer is on the highway to hell, and Lisa is the Jiminy Cricket on his shoulder, calmly but firmly encouraging to be a more moral man, but in a way founded more on childlike protest than direct confrontation.

There is, as was even more potent in the show’s early seasons, some subtle social commentary in that. There’s something well-observed about the way the show presents Lisa’s position in relation to the adults in her life. She’s taught that the Ten Commandments are absolute hard and fast rules, where the punishment for violations is eternal damnation. Her parents seem to care enough about these core precepts to take her to church, but then they do things like steal cable, or sample a pair of grapes without paying for them. Sure, the latter at least may seem too minimal, but if it’s a biblical stricture, and the risk is going to hell, why wouldn’t you be extraordinarily wary of even the slightest misstep?

Lisa, then, is the conduit for the show pointing out that however much folks believe in the basic moral principles behind the Ten Commandments, people’s devotion and belief only runs so deep, otherwise we’d all be acting like Lisa. There’s an innocence and willingness to take things at face value in childhood, and as usual, The Simpsons points out how, in American society at least, the way that people bend the rules suggests they don’t always practice what they preach.

As is typical for the show in its early going, the humor derived from that idea is softer. Lisa shouting at the supermarket, Homer freaking out about office supplies he swiped from work, and Marge being excited to make her own band-aids is all pretty mild, but its rooted in wry observations about how we compartmentalize our religious tenets rather than let them interfere with our daily lives. The bulk of the straighter comedy is picked up more by a cavalcade of wide-ranging cable T.V. spoofs, and with Bart up to his traditional hellraiser tricks. But as usual, early season Simpsons is content to pull humor from the shape of whatever situation its deposited its characters in rather than setups and punchlines.

For the most part though, the show gives us morality tale. There’s a goofus and gallant routine between Homer and Lisa, the simple oaf lured by the glow of the television, contrasted with the principled young woman worried for her mortal soul. It wasn’t the first time that Lisa led her father to be his best self, and it wouldn’t be the last. But there’s still something unique about this one, where Lisa is still definitively a kid, Homer is less idiotic and more easily seduced than usual, and when the pair’s trajectories crash into one another, Lisa brings her father to the side of the angels.

The specifics of the story may be rooted in the particulars of 1990, but the ideas at the core of this one -- bent and broken morality, the situational malleability of religious beliefs for most people, and the way good influences in our lives can remind us of our better selves -- are timeless.