Original airdate: February 16, 2020
The premise: A new financial windfall in Springfield’s economy leads to the opening of a brand new STEM Academy. Lisa is initially thrilled to receive an accelerated education in the gifted class, but soon grows suspicious to the true motives behind the school’s operation.
The reaction: It feels like it’s been a while since we’ve had a “big topic” episode this vacuous. For a plot that’s ostensibly supposed to be satirizing STEM education, job automation, the future job market, and so forth, there’s very, very little in the way of actual commentary here. Springfield’s new STEM Academy is a technological wonderland where Bart is thrilled to indulge in VR simulations for the cosmetic rewards and achievements, while Lisa revels in being singled out for the gifted class, where she learns about… stuff. We’re never really shown what exactly her education is, save one mention of her at the dinner table talking about computer science. Things start to unravel when Lisa discovers the rest of the children at the school are being trained to perform menial tasks for side hustles like ride sharing and food delivery. The big reveal is that the school is only gearing these kids up to get ready for a world of minimum wage, low-level jobs? That’s basically all that Springfield Elementary has been doing for over thirty years, so no new satire there. And at this point we’re almost to the end of the episode, and this is all we’ve gained so far. So much of the episode is just repeating the same bullet points and throwing around buzz phrases like “gig economy” rather than actually build a purpose around them. Ultimately, the head of the academy consults the almighty algorithm regarding what viable careers the future holds, and they are shocked to find there’s only one job left that hasn’t been assumed by machines: elder care. And that’s the big punchline, I guess. Funny? The school is quickly destroyed, and the episode ends with Bart and Lisa feeling crestfallen by their hopeless future prospects. Actually, it really ends with future Bart and Lisa being abused by robot drink machines forcing them to pour their own sodas. What an absolutely pointless exercise.
Three items of note:
– The opening features an extended look at the life of Springfield’s resident grizzled old sea captain, Captain McAllister, starting with his past, discovering a Springfield treasure map with his future wife, transitioning forward forty years and his fruitless attempts to unearth the booty. This show has previously seen surprisingly success in highlighting the never-before-seen private life of secondary and tertiary characters in recent past, particularly Mr. Largo on more than one occasion. I wish I could say this was a similar situation, but the glimpses at McAllister as a character we get are either too fleeting (apologizing to his wife for not having children) or too meta (admitting he pretended to be a “flimsy, one-note character” to keep people off the scent of the treasure) to really be satisfying. Also they repeatedly use the Pirates of the Caribbean score, which gets annoying real fast, and distracts from any attempts to humanize this goofy side character. In the end, McAllister’s wife betrays him by tipping off Quimby about their find, and altering the border of the town so that he can claim the treasure. What is she getting out of this? Just a big fuck you to her awful husband? Whatever. Outside the Town Hall meeting to discuss what to do with the town’s new ill-gotten gains, we see McAllister passed out drunk in a ditch. Might as well leave him there to die if this is the best they got for him.
– Marge is the one who proposes a new STEM school (I don’t mean to repeat this point so often, but Julie Kavner’s voice just sounds so, so tired here) and to drive her point home, she’s invited her friend John Legend to sing a not-funny song about it! And his wife Chrissy Teigen is here too, and they talk about her Instagram and stuff! I know it’s pointless to complain about random celebrity appearances at this stage, but it feels like it’s been a while since we’ve seen one this egregious, that Marge just randomly got two mega celebrities to come to Springfield on a whim to help her out. And what great jokes they have for them, talking about the launch party for their couple’s perfume and how Teigen posts pictures of her kids every fucking day. I don’t even follow her on Twitter and I see her posts all the time, how is that possible? Just completely awful and pointless. One of the worst instances of stunt-casting this show has done in a while.
– There’s a kind of B-plot where Homer is terrified that his and everyone else’s jobs at the power plant are going to be taken over by robots. But I seem to remember an episode where that did happen. Season 23’s “Them, Robot” featured the entire staff getting replaced by automatons, leaving Homer the sole human employee left. I know it was eight years ago, but did everyone on staff just forget that this thing that Homer’s paranoid about happening and no one believes him… already happened? Homer’s main target of scorn is the break room’s new automated soda machine, and he tries to one-up it by pouring soda himself, and fuck, it’s so boring and stupid. Even though he passes out in his attempts, he’s quickly revived and announces that everyone’s jobs are safe, and everyone cheers for some reason. Then we pan over and see Burns is unleashing new robot workers into the plant. And that’s the end. What the hell is this? Again, we already did that episode, and it was a piece of shit.
One good line/moment: Nothing to speak of here. Total snooze fest, this one.
Me Blog Write Good 
I want my five ZS-free Sundays back
I want Marge to retire already. Bring on Robot Marge, they clearly have her stored in the back utility closet.
Wow. What a waste of a Sunday timeslot. The school being a front for what the elementary used to do for the past 30 years? B-O-R-I-N-G. Are the monkeys who write the scripts fed enough peanuts?
Bartender: I think you’re taking unfair advantage of my generous offer.
Al Jean: Shut up!
If I was head of the marketing team for Modern Simpsons, the tagline would be, “It’s a show about nothing.”
Fuck this episode. Fuck it up its fucking ass.
Never before have I felt compelled to say something so coarse about even a Zombie episode. It feels pretty good, though…
Now I’m going to watch “Last Exit to Springfield” – including, of course, the sequence where Burns and Smithers try to run the plant themselves, ending with robot workers turning against them.
I actually think the idea of the STEM school merely training the kids for menial, low-skilled jobs that happen to have a small tech-element (e.g., Uber driver, etc.) could have been a funny twist, if executed properly. The students at Springfield Elementary “have no futures,” as Skinner put it. A fancy new school won’t make them or their families any less apathetic, lazy, or dumb.
Unfortunately, I expect that your one-sentence description of that twist was much funnier than what eventually found its way on screen.
One of the main problems with Zombie Simpsons in general is their inability to stick the landing largely out of a need to make a funny. This applies to both minor jokes as well as episode ideas; the need to add in something stupid or silly nullifies any attempt at wit or commentary that was attempted, and is akin to someone ruining a choreographed scene because he has to improvise a skit he kept pushing but was turned down repeatedly beforehand.
The reality of moving away from an industrialized age where you knew people would be forced into shitty jobs into a new, fancier age of technology should come with a sobering reminder that, yes, people will be forced into shitty jobs. After all, while we as Americans will not be building computer chips or automobiles (other countries, especially China, will be doing that), we will have Americans recycle unwanted computers and driving those automobiles for low wages, so inevitably, there will be those at the bottom of the totem pole of life, regardless of what happens. The real issues that need to be addressed, such as making sure those people aren’t being abused and exploited, is way out of the thought processes for our Harvard country club. Twenty years ago, the Simpsons would likely tackle this with aplomb, such as how the B-story of “Team Homer” focused on the subject of school uniforms being used to remove individuality in children so they’ll be processed for the assembly line punch clock mentality. Now? It’s a wacky set of hi-jinks that ends with a jab about how machines won’t be able to help old farts like Al Jean and Pross & Gammil so the future will just be young people being bossed around by old folks.
Oh, by the way… tonight’s episode was another weak one.
Yep, here we have another episode that doesn’t even have a proper introduction, it just jumps right into the action with a piss poor Indiana Jones ripoff and then goes nothing interesting with it. Also, while I understand Hans Zimmer is now the composer of the show, did we really need him to reuse his Pirates theme AGAIN?
Given that I have worked in a STEM school (in fact, the one that had the shooting occur at last year in Colorado), I expected this show to do something interesting with the concept. There are A LOT of entitled students at STEM schools because they feel they are better than everyone else, and this could have been a great opportunity to do something with that aspect, but nope, they played everything safe. I don’t even get what the joke was supposed to be since there was nothing funny about it.
Also, the elder care bit seemed quite tasteless.
As for the Homer subplot, god damn that was dumb.