The Social Network was released in 2010, so it naturally took The Simpsons over a year to finally get around to parodying it. Fortunately, the social networking craze is still very relevant, enough for Lisa to finally make friends (four digits' worth). But Springfield is not a place for everybody to be connected, and it's not long before anarchy and chaos run wild - all thanks to "The D'oh-cial Network."
The Springfield Network
Lisa, tired of always being unpopular, strikes up an unlikely friendship with Homer's new Mapple ("the lightest, most desirable computer in the world...for the next three weeks"). Cursory online chats with the kids of Springfield reveal some common passions: ice cream and Saturdays. It gives her the idea of starting "an online meeting place, where all are equal and I am the undisputed center". The SpringFace experiment is a success - until the adults join the network, bringing Springfield to its knees and Lisa to the witness stand, where she is blamed for the havoc and pandemonium caused by her "D'oh-cial Network".
Low-Hanging Fruit
Mocking Facebook is like making fun of Microsoft, or the New York Yankees. Well-deserving of the ire, but easy targets. Writer J. Stewart Burns gets no points for going after juggernauts like Facebook or The Social Network. True, these are not the days of The Simpsons at the cutting edge of popular culture, but it's disappointing to see the show try to jump a pretty unimaginative bandwagon.
Good Passengers, Bad Vehicle
That said, the jokes still manage to be funny. The riffs on the addictiveness of social networking are more or less spot on: Marge tells Homer to watch the road as he's driving and Homer responds by updating his status ("Status update: Homer - is - watching - the - AAH!"); Reverend Lovejoy wonders why he made the church a Wi-Fi hotspot; Lisa has "a thousand friends, and only eight of them are Milhouse!".
The jokes work, but that's not the problem. The issue is that "The D'oh-cial Network" draws half of its story from a movie that came out over a year ago, and the other half from an entity so ubiquitous that any show could have made these jokes. That's not to say that they're not funny, but this very much feels like the obligatory "Simpsons makes fun of Facebook" episode. I'm surprised they didn't get Mark Zuckerberg as a guest voice.
Verdict: Guilty
Still, the episode isn’t without its merits. Even though Lisa is ostensibly at the center of "The D'oh-cial Network", it's Homer who has the funniest lines, downloading - and then triumphantly deleting - The Complete Works of Shakespeare ("Now who's the greatest writer of all time?"), and arguing with Abe over the alcoholic hippo ("I DON'T HAVE A HIPPO!").
It's telling when the funniest lines from your episode don't really have anything to do with your story, but that's what you get for parodying a movie that came out the same year everybody was blowing vuvuzelas. Remember that? 2010.
The Simpsons, "The D'oh-cial Network": 7/10. Decent and amusing, but relying on year-old movies and easy jokes makes for a run-of-the-mill episode.
Michael Perera - The only rule in writing is honesty. If you're honest, the words will write themselves.
