Fourth grader Clyde Donovan unintentionally leaves the toilet seat up, leading his mother, Betsy, to scold him in front of his friends Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman and Kenny McCormick after she nearly falls in.
Meanwhile, Stan, Kyle, Clyde and Jimmy Valmer seek legal recourse with an unscrupulous lawyer who says he specializes in suing dead people, and decides to conduct a "sue-ance" that will contact the spirit of John Harington, the inventor of the flush toilet, in order to sue him for Betsy's death.
Randy Marsh leads the public in speaking out against the TSA and the fact that it allowed a terrorist with a gun and a baby past a security checkpoint.
Max Nicholson of IGN gave the episode a "Good" score of 7.5 out of 10, noting the "double whammy" of the tackling both the social etiquette of toilet seats and the Transportation Security Administration.
Nicholson opined that while the former topic was not necessarily hilarious, it was nonetheless funny, and that Eric was well-used to pace what would have otherwise been a difficult joke to mine for an entire episode.
[4] Eric Hochberger of TV Fanatic gave the episode 4 out of 5 stars, finding its gags at the expense of the TSA "hilarious", and the "sueance" scenes "clever", remarking that lawyer jokes never get old.
Hochberger singled out the convergence of the two storylines in the episode's climax as his favorite part, and enjoying the fact that Butters' ideas for using the toilet turned out to be correct.