There Aren't Enough Robots To Make Homer A Good Employee

The Simpsons, S23E17

Old Man Burns finally "cuts out the fat" (not literally because Homer isn't eliminated) from his power plant by firing everyone at the plant, basically, and implementing robots.  This is brought on by all the costs Burns will have to pay to cover all the health issues his employees have after their last checkup.  I will say that I'm amazed that the plant lasted a day with only robots and Homer Simpson around.  Homer isn't the best person to be left by himself.  Have you learned nothing from the time you let him house sit, Mr. Burns??

 I liked a lot of the jokes in this episode.  I won't really detail each of them.  It was pretty funny when Homer tried to get off alcohol and was unintentionally drinking and eating things that contained it including mimosas, Mike's Hard Lemonade, and cherries jubilee.  I'm kinda glad they took it down that road, rather than him going murderously deranged (like in the The Shining Halloween parody) after going a few days (minutes, really) without his favorite beverage.

Probably what I liked the best was when Homer was trying to chat up the robots as if they were humans with office humor like "Working hard, or hardly working?" but was getting no response.  His anger and increasingly loud voice had me chuckling.  I love how mad Homer sometimes gets over his inability to notice that he is pretty much angry at nothing (or just his own stupidity). 

Besides the laughs, I had quite a few moments of surprise and wonder.  One of such was when it was revealed that Moe is so ugly ("pug fugly"--haha) because he got stomped on by an elephant Mr. Burns was riding the first day he came into town (isn't he originally from Springfield?  Never knew he moved there).  It was also nice how Moe said he would have to grow to be beautiful on the inside, but Marge remarks that he never did, and they return to the present where Moe is being his usual unpleasant self.  Gotta love Moe.

I was surprised, too, that Homer could actually get the robots to communicate.  Of course, he did mess up several times before he had success, but I would imagine that he would just give up after a while, despite having a manual right in front of him.  I guess Homer isn't as useless as he appears.  I was further surprised that he chose to play a baseball game with the robots when he changed their movement paths.  I really thought he was going to send them all to Moe's so they could be his drinking buddies (since all of his unemployed friends wanted nothing to do with him anymore).   Huh.  We haven't really seen Homer care about baseball in a while.  We certainly haven't seen him play in a while (remember that classic episode where all those famous players guest starred?).

It was classic Homer when he decided to drill holes into the robots heads, in order to make them a little more human-like.  Now, I would have figured he would have done that in the beginning to get them to communicate, rather than read a book.  Homer threw me for a loop again when he ran to Mr. Burns for help when the robots revolted.  Granted that Mr. Burns, as the owner of the robots, might have had the information to stop them from destroying Homer, Mr. Burns has never really come to anyone's rescue when his doorbell has been randomly rung.  Despite me thinking that Homer was crazy for thinking Mr. Burns would help, I liked this scene for one reason:  the hounds.  When one of them came charging at the army of the robots, they sent that little animal flying!  I'm not one who enjoys animal cruelty, but nothing tickles my funny bone more than seeing a animal getting flung or thrown someplace like that hound.  He was just smacked away like he was some kind of bug.  Good stuff.

I think this was a rather good episode that sort of echoes the unemployment problem in the United States.  I can't say that it's because everyone's jobs are being replaced by robots (such a freaky future where there are nothing but robot workers sounds frightening), but definitely there are more people fighting to get the lowest of jobs after being laid off nowadays.  If only this was a world where Homer Simpson-like employees could show the company or boss that it's more costly to get rid of your employees than replace them (if you're going to leave it up to technology for the most part), we Americans would be better suited to turn the economy around.  Get to work, Homer Simpsons of all parts!!