Wow. The Simpsons decided to parody viral video content and YouTube celebrities. That’s…difficult. Mostly because viral content is so short-lived that any parody that a hand-drawn animated series that takes months to produce a single episode couldn’t possibly do so in a timely manner. So, let’s see how badly they screwed that up!
Besides, these references will be even more dated by the time Jimmy gets here.
So, apparently, the Simpson family are now famous YouTubers thanks to Homer’s going viral encouraging Maggie at a dance recital, catching her when she fell off the stage, and then catching the other three or four babies that followed her, and then having all of them throw up on him.
Sounds about right.
That led to endorsement deals, and the whole family picked up Internet fame with their own channels where Bart and a crew dump yogurt on people, Lisa does environmental clean-ups of beaches and saves trapped seals, and Marge interviews famous people while feeding them deep fried foods.
Yes, those sound like things that could happen.
Mostly because some of them have,
But this is The Simpsons, and an unseen Internet user is clicking between videos, finding Lenny and Carl have a Joe Rogan-style talk show with Moe as a frequent guest to trash Homer, Patty and Selma doing A.S.M.R., Martin Prince has a news channel that includes Simpsons backstory, and Milhouse as the “Truth Wizard” reveals he’s their cameraman and the Simpsons are all heavily-edited phonies with Homer doing things for endorsement deals against even his better judgement at times, Bart paying some Spuckler kids to be his crew, and even Lisa’s environmental work being all a sham as she dirties the beaches before she cleans them and even rents the seals she rescues. And then guest star Michael Rapaport’s Mike Wegman shows up to tell everyone to leave Homer Simpsons alone.
They’re really trying to make Mike Wegman a thing, aren’t they? Why?
Never mind. When the Simpsons promise a big announcement and then don’t deliver, it leads everyone to track them down to their hidden house, and everyone arrives at once to find…they’d accidentally locked themselves in their panic room and got to know what being a family is all about again, playing board games, bonding, and deciding to give up Internet fame as explained to Oprah I mean Opal.
Well, that was timely. Say, who was watching these videos?
George RR Martin? Not playing himself? And mostly to waste time rather than write certain books? Oooh! Timely! Can they do something that probably seemed like a good idea at the time they wrote the episode and has taken on a much darker connotation in more recent days?
Oh, George opts for a video with some drag queens, guest stars Bob the Drag Queen and Monet X Change, are ordering food at a fast food joint?
Drag queens? Man, The Simpsons managed to get more relevant for an episode that would have been dated otherwise with something that got pretty darn controversial in recent weeks by bringing in some drag queens.
Man, between this and the “cut scenes” episode, this has been one slapdash season so far.
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