Stream It Or Skip It?
Spy High is a 3-part docuseries, directed by Jody McVeigh-Schultz and produced by Mark Wahlberg’s Unrealistic Ideas production company, that reexamines the 2010 lawsuit filed by the Robbins family against the Lower Merion school district, in a wealthy suburb of Philadelphia. The suit was filed after Blake Robbins, then 15, discovered that the district was spying on him at home via the webcam on his school-issued MacBook.
SPY HIGH: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Shots of Harriton High School of Lower Merion, then we see webcam shots of a 15-year-old Blake Robbins.
The Gist: In the docuseries, McVeigh-Schultz interviews a now-31-year-old Blake Robbins, his parents Michael and Holly and older sister Paige, who was a senior at Harriton High School at the same time that Blake was a sophomore. He also talks to investigative reporters, friends of Blake and Paige, and the family’s lawyer Mark Haltzman. A fellow Harriton parent, who is well versed in class action suits, is also interviewed to discuss how quickly Haltzman leaned on the publicity for the suit, how fast he wanted to convert it to class action, and some of the legal issues the Robbins family had in the past.
The first episode sets up the scenario, where Robbins is called into the vice principal’s office and is told that they have evidence he’s selling pills. The evidence, a screenshot of him in his bedroom, immediately sets his parents alarms off for the invasion of privacy. As soon as Haltzman filed the suit, the story went viral. This led Haltzman and the Robbins family to numerous local and national media appearances, and at first the public was on their side, especially when a photo of Blake asleep in his room, collected by the district, was released.. But when the family’s litigious history and a record of their debts was unearthed, public opinion started to turn on them. However, the school district ended up admitting it had thousands of shots of students that it collected from the webcams of their school-issued laptops.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? We’ll compare Spy High to another high-school-centric documentary, My So-Called High School Rank.
Our Take: The story of Spy High isn’t particularly complex; in fact, it’s a story that could likely be told in a single one-hour episode, or perhaps an 80-minute documentary. Expanded to three 45-minute episodes, the seams start to show.
The first episode provides a lot of context, about both the Lower Merion school district and the Robbins family themselves. The upshot of those segments is that the Robbins family was certainly more brash and rough-around-the-edges than many families in the tony environs of Lower Merion. We also get a lot of friends describing what a fun, funny guy Blake was.
To be honest, though, none of that is really necessary. Again, it’s a simple story: A school used the laptops it issued to students to spy on them outside of school, using remote software designed to be activated if the laptop is lost or stolen. They never told students or parents that they might be subject to it. They were absolutely in the wrong here, invading their students’ privacy.
While the part about the Robbins’ litigious history has some relevance, especially given how quickly their attorney moved to convert the suit to class action status, all we really wanted to know is just what the district was thinking by remotely activating students’ webcams when there was no evidence they were lost or stolen. And while Blake, Paige, Holly and Michael are full of personality, that’s not what this particular story should be built around.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: It’s revealed that the district had more than 56,000 shots of students collected via the laptops’ webcams.
Sleeper Star: Bill Bender is one of two investigative reporters interviewed in the first episode, and we liked his take on the whole debacle, especially his view that the Robbins family felt more “Delco” (i.e. from Delaware County) like him than from Lower Merion.
Most Pilot-y Line: When Blake and his buddies talk about loading music on their school-issued MacBooks, a closeup of a Napster icon is shown. While the name had been resurrected by 2009, it was certainly not the popular way to listen to music online by the time this case happened.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Despite being stretched to the hilt, Spy High still tells a compelling story about a school district that went too far and a brash family that was not afraid to fight back.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
