Table of Content
Homer sits the match out and when it is over, he hesitantly cuts his cable hookup, despite Bart's objection. He accidentally cuts the electricity to all of Springfield in his random wire-cutting, before finally cutting the cable wire, abruptly ending the episode with static showing onscreen. The first scene is Homer dreaming on the hammock that he is a Hebrew in the time of Moses, breaking one of the Ten Commandments by stealing.
I will say that it feels like this and a few others that would come later on, that it felt like it was playing up agenda and need to scare people into religion. There has always been this very naïve and straw man esque belief that people who are religious aren't in anyway morally sound or have any kind of ethics. That is very naive and far fetch thinking, since there are plenty of people who are indeed very religious, but they aren't ethical, kind, or morally sound, instead it becomes all about being egoistical, manipulative, selfish, and criminal. Point is, you can still be morally sound and have ethics, and concepts of right and wrong, without being religious, otherwise we still be living in that flashback sequence we saw at mount Sinai. But this episode feels like a very preachy, and strawman-based argument with really no nuance or the like.
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Seasons are the mainstream episodes, the seasons that were the best and the most comfortingly familiar and the funniest. This is a morality tale with Homer being comically guilt-tripped by Lisa over breaking the law in what feels like a trivial way most people in Springfield. In The Gospel According to The Simpsons, Mark I. Pinsky writes that the episode has "the structure of an exquisitely crafted twenty-two minute sermon". The episode won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program . Another is the Boxing promo where one of the boxers dramatically dedicates a fight to his late Manager. And then there is this Mike Tyson like character that does the same and of course it results in the cliched prefight roundness.
Eventually Homer's conscience bothers him and he begrudgingly chooses not to watch the fight, dragging Bart outside with him. When his friends leave, Homer hesitantly cuts the cable hookup over Bart's objections. This episode is not terrible as it is preachy, dated and systematic of a much bigger problem with the early seasons of The Simpsons. First off, it's ironic that Lisa would go on to become a Buddhist later in the shows run.
Storyline
Marge pleads with Homer to either cut the cable or pay for it, but he refuses to do either, saying that the cable will stay as long as he desires. Meanwhile, Bart sets up posters on the back door for his showing of an adult channel for 50 cents, but he is caught a few seconds later by Homer, who then forbids him from doing it. I found “Homer and Lisa Versus The Eighth Commandment” a little on the preachy side and methodically paced in a way that reminded me of the first season. Then again, it is an episode with one of the 10 Commandments in its title, so perhaps that shouldn’t come as a surprise. The authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, called the episode a "skilful demonstration of a moral dilemma that must have plagued millions since the inception of cable TV".
It was originally going to be named "Homer vs. the 8th Commandment", but the writers decided to include Lisa in the title because they wanted the cast to feel as if all their characters were equally represented on the show. The episode is based on the Eighth Commandment ("thou shall not steal"), which is one of the Ten Commandments. The episode marks the debut of Troy McClure who was voiced by Phil Hartman and based on the typical "washed up" Hollywood actor. What I also like about the Simpsons is their values about needing faith and believing in God and attending church sometimes. Homer may've had some moments where he didn't want to get all into church (such as episode "Homer the heretic"), but he wasn't trying to completely go athiest. Even in "Homer the heretic", he doesn't stop believing in God, he just doesn't want to go to church.
The Simpsons (Classic): "Homer Vs. Lisa And The 8th Commandment"
When he wakes up he sees Ned Flanders angrily reject an offer from a dim-witted man to get an illegal cable hook-up for $50, Homer chases after the cable man, who agrees to hook up the Simpsons' television for free. Homer likes the new channels and spends a lot of time watching the television along with his family. Following a Sunday School lesson regarding the existence and nature of Hell, Lisa becomes terrified of violations of the Ten Commandments, the adherence to which she is assured will keep one's soul safe from Hell. She fears that because Homer violated the Eighth Commandment, he will go to Hell when he dies.
The episode finished second in its timeslot to The Cosby Show, which aired at the same time on NBC and had a Nielsen rating of 16.8. Lisa additionally opposes other examples of common thievery all around her. She even convinces Marge to pay the cost on two grapes she sampled in a grocery store. Lisa pays a visit to Reverend Lovejoy at church, where he suggests that Lisa cannot turn her father in to the police for the illegal hook-up, since she must continue to "Honour Thy Father and Thy Mother", according to the Fifth Commandment. He instead encourages Lisa to not watch anything on Homer's cable hook-up, setting a good example that he hopes others will follow.
At Sunday school, Lisa and Bart learn of the unimaginable horrors of Hell. Bart seems pretty jazzed about the whole proposition, especially the part that involves pirates. He seems awfully jazzed about having free reign to say “hell” as well. Lisa disapproves when Homer has cable television installed illegally into their home.
The Simpsons like the new channels and spend hours watching them. However, Lisa is suspicious about the cable hookup, and after a Sunday school lesson about the existence and nature of Hell, she fears that Homer is violating the Eighth of the Ten Commandments — "thou shalt not steal" — and will go to Hell when he dies. But what really drives the episode is the slight arc with Homer. Homer is just about dead set in keeping the stolen cable completely disregarding the ethics/morals from Lisa and his religious practice; though despite Homer's defiance, his conscious soon starts to catch up to him.
The family begins to disintegrate, and our hero can't avoid overstepping his bounds. The best part of the show is a scene from Mt. Sanai as Moses brings down the Ten Commandments. The plotline is simple as the Simpsons inadvertently have Cable illegally. It's understandable as to how each of the Simpsons get seduced by Cable TV. You must realize way before the Streaming, in the 80's and 90's cable was a really big thing. The concept of just having more channels than the usual standard meant more decisions and access to programing you can't always get on your standard channels. Like this little montage we see as to how addictive cable truly is as we see the big dent Homer has made on the couch.
Homer sees a commercial for "The Bout to Knock the Other Guy Out!", a much-anticipated boxing match in which Drederick Tatum will fight for the World Heavyweight Championship. Homer decides to have a party and invites all of his friends to come over and watch the fight. Lisa tries to boycott the party, and this results in Homer making her stay outside on the lawn. Homer’s conscience eventually bothers him, more in the form of his daughter's distress than a moral objection to stealing cable due to a hallucination that he is in prison for stealing cable.
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