Episode 20 - To Surveil With Love
3 May 2010
Review
Synopsis: An accidental plutonium explosion leads Springfield to feel under terrorist threat. Mayor Quimby brings in British expert Nigel Bakerbutcher who suggests putting surveillance cameras across the town. Once installed Ned Flanders ends up operating them and nagging everyone to distraction. Bart finds a blind spot in his garden and begins renting out to the townsfolk so that they can sin outside of the cameras view. Meanwhile Lisa discovers that being blonde means people take her debating skills less seriously.
The Good: It's faint praise but this was almost like a Simpsons episode of old, where an issue was raised which affected the town and then by episodes end the status quo had been restored. The issue of surveillance and civil liberties is a good one to bring up and it's certainly true that the UK is covered in such cameras.
The idea of the town going underground to have its fun has been explored before (818) but that's fine. The same message about what is a healthy level of personal freedom was being addressed. Lisa exploring the prejudice against blondes felt fresh for her character. She has so often been ridiculed for being too smart that it was nice to see her attributes used to imply otherwise.
Replacing the opening credits with Kesha's "Tik Tok" was an odd choice but a nice change of pace.
The Bad: There was only room for one plot here, not two. The issue of surveillance should have taken the whole episode and similarly Lisa's struggle with her blonde hair needed a lot more time. In the end Lisa literally got out two sentences with her new brown hair before giving up and jumping straight to the moral of the story. It was a real waste of a good idea. And in irritating modern Simpsons fashion they went straight to several jokes about people reacting with inappropriate amounts of shock to the far-from-shocking development.
Again though these plots raise the question of why the Simpsons' writers have forgotten how to structure a good plot. The key to Lisa's story would be showing how her brown hair suddenly got her advantages and to see her first accept and justify it and then slowly come to realise the underlying truth.
Meanwhile over on the surveillance issue the focus became very muddled. Handing power to an ordinary citizen like Flanders and giving him a speaker to actually verbally scold people aren't real life issues. Even the presence of cameras in a private bar like Moe's doesn't conform to the issue of civil liberties. So instead of addressing the real issues of those cameras being misused the plot became another dig at Flanders' moralising. Which again is a real shame because there is an intelligent debate to be had and plenty more jokes to be made by not going in that unrealistic direction.
The jokes themselves were typically underwhelming including a few montages, which have become a lazy crutch at this point. I'm also not happy with Mr Burns putting plutonium into Homer's backpack. There have been many jokes about him hiding his nuclear waste in unwise places but at least he was attempting to hide it in those cases. By putting it in Homer's bag the most logical thing was that Homer would find it and return it or report it or indeed lose it and have someone else point the finger back at Mr Burns. It's low IQ writing.
Best Joke: Marge gives Lisa a book to help her cope with being ridiculed for her blonde hair. It's called "Sally Circle in Rectanguland" and tells of how Sally Circle was ostracised by all the rectangle children once she had moved to their town. The book just ends there without showing how she might overcome these challenges. "That's a rather unambitious book" Lisa comments sadly.
The Bottom Line: Yet another missed opportunity, poorly written and overcrowded.
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