The moral of the episode was seriously ”it's wrong to lie to get lots of money from an evil rich guy”? They should've taken Burns to the cleaners, Marge was totally the villain of the episode with her whining about how wrong it was to lie.
They've done this recently with their media piracy episode. They set up a whole community theater in their backyard, and Marge sends some money to the production company when she finds out how they got the movies. She frequently ruins some of the less than legal fun they get up to
They even did an early ”anti-piracy” episode with Lisa agonizing over the family going to hell because of free cable.
Unless I'm misremembering, even Always Sunny had an anti piracy episode where the moral of the story is that Hollywood makes shit films because of piracy.
That was a super early episode though. Before the Simpsons was really solidified as a show, and before they shifted away from religiosity
Wasn’t that episode supposed to be ironic? Inside the FBI building, most of the departments were shown to be small and empty, but then it pans to the anti piracy department which had the largest budget, all the agents had rifles and helicopters, and they had to use advanced biometrics just to open their doors. Homer is then put in prison alongside murderers and burglars who considered his crime of piracy to be the worst.
I'm kinda wondering if the shows have to layer it in irony, because the studios won't allow them to be explicitly pro-piracy? The closest thing to pro-piracy in a mainstream TV show I can think of is jokes about Lars Ulrich, along the lines of "Because of piracy, he can only afford a gold-plated swimming pool without diamonds all over it".
Cant say for newer simpsons, but older episodes had more nuanced episodes
If you haven't watched it cuck philosophy has a good video the Simpsons
it's going to be more Adorno shit isn't it
It's definitely ironic overall, with homer yelling at everyone for pirating the film the made off the events, but the point remains that if the simpson family is having semi illegal or moral fun, Marge is the one to narc
Lisa befriending Burns and then throwing away his money as a moral act similarly bothered me. It's peak liberalism and fetishizing poverty.
Like 12 million dollars couldn't be used to good for your family or the world? Ensuring she gets the best education she could. Hell, she could have donated the money and at least that way, it would do some good.
But no, it's noble to ignore the rules employed by the ruling class. Like what the hell?
It's narrative brainworms. Having access to powerful and refusing to use it because you personally aren't desperate enough to use it doesn't make you the hero. It makes you naive at best.
It also didn't change anything, she was already complicit in whitewashing Mr. Burns by being the face of his fake environmentally friendly company. Not taking the money doesn't make her a hero.
Noting is allowed to change all that much in The Simpsons, having 12 million bucks given to them in an episode but then having to completely forget about it in the next episode might have been too much to attempt.
Nah, she could've just donated to charity. Plus, Homer owns the Denver Broncos, but nobody cares.
Homer's disappointedly exasperated "Aw, the Denver Broncos?!" lives rent-free in my mind.
He actually lost them gambling at Moe's. It's in one of the comics
The example of this that hit me the hardest was the "Planetina" episode of Rick and Morty. This is a show where Morty remains loyal and complicit in hundreds of capers Rick orchestrates where people are constantly getting killed, entire planets destroyed, lives ruined, all of the benefit of this old egomaniac's ego. Morty complains but never abandons Rick.
But Planetina starts doing the same shit in the service of actually improving the world and he suddenly has a crisis of mortality and tearfully abandons her.
