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| Only the ability to stop people from doing most things can elicit this gleeful reaction. |
Lisa gets invited to a debate team, but in the debate Lisa's viewpoints are pushed aside by both competitors and judges because she's blonde, much to Lisa's anger. Meanwhile, Homer wins a lot of free Duff stuff for some reason, some of which includes t-shirts and a duffel bag (no pun intended, I swear!), and wears whatever Duff gear he can proudly. One day at work, Mr. Burns runs out of places to hide his nuclear waste, and has Smithers dump some plutonium in some dumb guy's bag: Homer's. Homer goes to the train station to try out some mac & cheese Lenny was boasting about, then leaves upon hearing of better mac & cheese elsewhere, but leaves his bag behind. The unattended bag causes mass panic, and in a scene which probably wouldn't air today given recent events, a bomb squad decides to blow up the bag unaware of its contents, causing a massive explosion.
The blast is considered a terrorist attack, and the mayor reactively decides to call upon a British guy to do something about it. The man suggests placing cameras everywhere to ensure safety but at the cost of privacy. Lisa attempts to protest this, but again is dismissed because of her hair color, and the motion passes. Quickly, cameras are installed nearly everywhere, and the police get to see just about everything. Of course, its only Chief Wiggum doing the surveillance, and he gets tired of it pretty quickly, so he brings in a group of people to do the snooping for him. The group mostly gets tired of it and leaves save for one person: Ned Flanders. Ned learns that he can use the microphone to talk to people directly as well and he literally turns Springfield into a nanny state, making sure nobody can do anything the least bit offensive. Bart tires of this and tries to moon the camera, but upon gaining no reaction, Bart realizes he's in a blind spot and it just so happens to be in his own backyard. Bart quickly sets up a boundary and he along with Homer figure out the blind spot takes up most of the backyard.
Lisa maniacally dyes her hair one night, and later shows up at a debate final as a brunette, trying to argue how kids should just fit in. However, it doesn't take long for Lisa to reconsider, and tries to convince people to shove away tired old stereotypes, though Grampa ramming a car into the building doesn't help Lisa's argument much. Meanwhile, Homer and Bart let people do whatever they want in the blind spot for a fee, which Marge eventually finds out about. Unable to convince Homer to stop, she walks into Flanders' eye to complain openly about the spot, and Flanders gets Rod to confirm that the spot exists. He goes himself to the spot to get people to stop, but Homer criticises Ned for what he's done, stating that because he's been forcing people to bottle up their secrets, those secrets get released within the blind spot in sick, twisted ways. Ned realizes his error and to make up for it, he and Homer take out the cameras together. Its then learned that the cameras were also used to make a popular reality show in Britain, popular even with the Queen.
Quick Review
First off, this episode uses a different opening sequence. At the time, FOX was trying to draw in some kind of demographic by having musical numbers in every show for a week, and the Simpsons were not exempt. So, boo to FOX for doing that, however the Simpsons have done fine with musical numbers in the past. Not so, here. Its basically characters lip-synching to a Kesha song. Its as bad as it sounds, it really seems like a mail-it-in effort for something that was dumb in the first place on FOX's part.
Apart from that, the episode turns out pretty decently. The Lisa subplot had little comedy going for it though the joke at the end of it with Grampa was appreciated. The main story has its moments as well, enough to salvage it from the disastrous opening sequence.
Final Score: 7.2
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