Simpsons Did It!: “Burger Kings”

Every so often, I get an episode of The Simpsons where I watch the full show and afterwards honestly think nothing really happened.  Like, it felt like there was no real momentum to, like, anything.

I’ve been feeling that more often of late.  This episode was another one of those…

See, Mr. Burns discovers, after a bad breakfast of an unwrinkled raisin, that he likes hamburgers after he steals Homer’s lunch.  He eats enough to triple his weight to 42 pounds and has a heart attack because his body can’t really handle meat.  Smithers then brings him a plant-based burger that tastes as good as the real thing.  So, Burns decides to sell it.

That’s, like, the whole crux of the plot.  Burns, upset that everyone hated him, did something good that made him beloved enough to join the Beloved Billionaires Club, a club whose membership included Bill Gates and Warren Buffett..and no one else.  Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t reduced to throwing rocks at the windows.

Naturally, this involves most of the Simpsons.  Lisa actually loves the taste as it tastes just like meat.  So does Homer, but he becomes the company’s mascot for commercials.  Marge accidentally orders stock in the company and makes a profit by the end of the episode.  And Bart, well, he plays a prank where he tells Lisa the burgers are really made of meat because evil people never become good, enough for Lisa to investigate the factory where the patties are made.

Bart was wrong.  The burgers are not made out of meat.  They are 100% plant based.  The problem is, they’re all endangered plants from the Amazon rain forest, and Burns doesn’t want to listen to Lisa when she comes to tell him.  Marge won’t either because she’s making money off dividends or something.  Homer won’t at first, but then at a press conference, he uses his pre-approved answers to answer very specific questions informing everyone what was going on from a reporter who looked an awful lot like Lisa in a disguise.

Anyway, the burger plans are ruined, Burns is hated again and happier as a result, and Lisa saved the planet or something.  I dunno.  It never felt like anything actually happened.