YMMV / The Simpsons S2 E13 "Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment"

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Yes, younger tropers, not only was cable television something you could steal, but in the 80's and early 90's, cable theft was so common and profitable, even the FBI had task forces that targeted it specifically!
• Franchise Original Sin: While Lisa isn't exactly wrong about her scruples in this instance, her pious melodrama and guilt tripping over even the most petty of slights marks the start of her pushy Rightly Self-Righteous Soapbox Sadie attitude that would make her a lot more polarizing by the Turn of the Millennium.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: This episode shows the Digital Piracy Is Evil attitude that the show itself would later go on to mock in "Steal This Episode"
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • At the end of the episode, Bart tries to convince Homer to keep the pirated cable by citing, among other things, "Atlanta Braves baseball". The joke was poking fun at TBS constantly airing Braves baseball games since the team had come off a last-place finish in 1990. The Braves won the pennant in 1991 and became one of the most successful baseball teams in the 1990s, including winning 14 consecutive division titles. The ability to watch their games really took off in that era.
  • He also cites Joe Franklin, whose talk show was an institution on WOR in New York, another local station that was a staple of basic cable at the time. Franklin's show was cancelled after 41 years on the air in 1993, two years after this episode's debut.
  • The entire concept of stealing cable is now approaching this, both because it would be extremely difficult to steal it as shown and because people these days can just download (legally or illegally) their favorite TV shows rather than pay for cable. The show's unambiguous and fairly heavy-handed Digital Piracy Is Evil stance also sticks out like a bit of a sore thumb to modern audiences (most of whom pirated things extensively themselves growing up); even if you agree with the message, it's odd for a show that is usually much more cynical to suddenly view something that most modern viewers would see as trivial as an important moral stand. In 1991, digital piracy was still in its infancy and few viewers would have done much copyright infringement themselves.
  • A lot of the jokes about how cable isn't actually all that great (i.e. most of the movies that get shown on cable TV are B-movies and box-office bombs) are also clearly rooted in the era, as later on, cable TV would improve and become better than network/free-to-air TV.
  • Bart could also go online to watch pornography with more privacy than watching Top Hat Entertainment on his living room.

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