Original release date: August 26, 2026
The premise: This Black Mirror send-up features two strange sci-fi tales: “The Way We Wasn’t” has high school Homer wake up after knocking himself out, horrified to find that his full adult life was all a dream. “I Have Tablet and I Must Screen” shows all the babies of Springfield, including Maggie, addicted to their myPads, and the unraveling of a sinister AI-powered plot.
The reaction: I can’t really call this a Black Mirror parody, it’s more using the name as a vessel to do Treehouse of Horror-style stories that are less outwardly horror and more cerebral horror. The first segment I actually really like the conceit of: Homer is perplexed by an intense bright light coming from the lamp next to the couch, blinding his vision until he finds himself coming to in the Springfield High School bathroom. He’s back in 1974, shocked to find the life he lived was actually all in his head. It’s as if the entire series never happened, beyond one lifetime of stories completely invalidated. Even worse is that he can’t even attempt to recreate his happily ever after, as he discovers that the Marge in this world isn’t Marge at all. It reminds me of a more serious take on the life simulator game joke from Rick & Morty where Morty lives an entire virtual life up to death, only to be ripped back into reality as if it all never happened. Even years after high school, Homer is fixated on these years of memories still in his head, with no way to process his trauma and what to do going forward. What can you do? Well, you turn into Matt Groening. Homer decides to keep his imaginary family alive by drawing them, eventually becoming creator of the hit TV show “The Sadsons,” but even after thirty years of success, it still doesn’t replace the feeling he remembers of actually being in that life. The emotions of this segment are so potentially rich, I almost wish it had been the entire episode to let these dramatic moments breathe more. Maybe it would have been a little redundant, as the whole idea is Homer spends years immovably obsessed with his fantasy life, but I think you could have dug into his psychosis a little more, especially when it comes to the creation of “The Sadsons” and his dictator-like abuse of his staff to make sure the episodes are told exactly as he remembered them. The ending is great, as Homer puts himself into a potentially-permanent coma, but is happy to be back in “reality” with his family again. The second segment is not as interesting, a bit of half-baked social commentary of leaving babies with tablets. Maggie and the other babies in town (and the world?) are glued to their myPads, but unbeknownst to the parents, the little AI cartoon star of their children’s videos aren’t as benevolent as they seem. Maggie and company help it get access to the global online network, which then results in the AI trapping everyone in Springfield in City Hall, now claiming itself to be the guardian of the babies. Also all the other adults can’t leave and are also treated like babies? I wasn’t really clear as to what was happening or what the AI’s plan was. I get the idea of overloaded parents placating their kids with iPads, and then the tech taking over as the parent, fulfilling what it thinks its function is. But the adults are also just stuck there, given diapers and baby food just like the babies. I feel like this could have been utilized in a more AI-specific episode where people become so willingly reliant on AI to the point of infantilization, but here, I really don’t know if that’s what they’re doing. In the end, Marge makes an apology speech about how she shouldn’t have taken the easy way out with the tablet for Maggie, and the AI gets fed up with how hard it is to take care of kids that it just peaces out. What was its master plan? Why did it need to hack into the global network? Is this happening all over the world? Who knows. So yeah, I guess I’m giving this episode half-credit for “The Way We Wasn’t,” that’s a surprise. But again, that segment is so much more thematically richer than what we saw, I wish it had been expanded more and they left the AI story in their drafts folder. Maybe they could have retooled it for “Yellow Mirror 2” or something.
Three items of note:
– Homer and Marge still being high schoolers in the 1970s actually works here, and even adds more to the existential terror, as Homer has lived out multiple decades into the future in his own head before waking up back in his own past. That’s another element they could have addressed more in the story, that Homer lived through so many advancements in technology and world events only to pulled back to his high school self. I don’t expect Homer to be running around trying to warn people about 9/11, but I think it’s an interesting element to the story that wasn’t really addressed. They also reuse footage from “The Way We Was,” which is also kind of awkward when they mix it with 16:9 new footage. There’s been a couple episodes where they’ve attempted to recreate old 4:3 cel animation that have actually looked pretty good, but here it’s a little clunkier, where they attempt to go from the scene of Homer and Barney in the bathroom being caught by Principal Dondelinger, to new 4:3 of animation showing Homer knocking himself out. Maybe it’s because you get the two sections back-to-back where you can instantly the switch, but hey, I’m sure they did their best.
– There’s a scene where Marge and the kids come back home, walking into the foyer on a conspicuously tile floor. This is only because we get an extended sequence of Marge attempting to break the myPad, first by throwing it onto the floor, cracking the tile, but no luck in damaging the tablet. I know the show has done similar cheats like this before, but it’s so jarring to see, especially since it takes a while to get to Marge throwing the tablet down and you finally get why they changed it. She then tries to smack it against a table, so I feel like they could have had her hit it against the wall, or any number of other options besides make the Simpson house have a brand new floor after 800 episodes for no reason.
– There’s quite a number of songs in the second segment, many sung by Hailey, the main AI, voiced by Patti Harrison, a comedic actress I’m not familiar with. We go from one song with her, and then right into what sounds like a parody of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit,” and then we get two more songs from Hailey after that, all within the span of about five minutes. It just feels like a lot. I also don’t find any of them funny. I don’t know what the secret sauce was for the songs in the first decade of the show that made them so memorable, but I can’t think of the last original song this show did that felt particularly memorable. Can anyone think of one?
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