While the weather is rainy, with Ralph gulping down water from the rain gutter, the family is enjoying some board games. Homer is getting along with Patty and Selma which they all find weird till they notice the only reason it's happening is because there's no Bart, because he punished him by buying him a computer gaming rig.
Bart is playing Conflict of Enemies with Milhouse, Sophie, Nelson and Martin and wins. Next he's in the shower for too long, and was playing with the game in the shower, and when Homer, on Marge's insistence, tries to stop him, he announces the first prize in the tournament is $1000, which they play at Springfield Elementary School, The Evergreen Terrors vs. The Ogdenvillains, which they win and qualify for a $500.000 tournament.
Homer airs The Detonator to train the kids for world tournaments, but due to a miscalculation on his pee break, he dies and says he's out of business, so Homer starts coaching them. While sleeping he visits the club of dads that lived through their glorious athletic children where dads of famous children coaches him to be a good coach.
At the Capital City Civic Center, they go against Calgary Lames, where despite their deaths, they win, going to the World Championship in Seoul, South Korea. Back at home, Lisa wants to go to the Jogyesa Temple in South Korea, and sees the world championship as an opportunity to fulfill her desire, so Marge agrees to take her too.
In Seoul, Homer tells Milhouse that they've the chance to swap one player, and it has to be him cause of rejection muscle. Lisa then takes the family to the monastery, achieving Zen.
During the championships, Evergreen Terrors, strong of a new kid, a Faker-look alike, battle against the Brazilian Blowouts. Homer seems to reach illumination, when instead of staying with the kids as coach, he does the same thing as reaching Zen, destroys the competition, switching off all electricity in the stadium. The match is cancelled and chaos started in the arena.
In the flight back, the kids are throwing chips at Bart for having his dad ruin their competition, while Homer dreams again of the club, but gets refused due to blowing up Bart's opportunity during The Stinger.
NOTE: This is the final episode of the series released by 20th Century Fox Television under the stewardship of Rupert Murdoch, as Disney's purchase took effect two days after it aired.
Tropes
- Bait-and-Switch: Homer wakes up from a dream or so it seems. The people he met in the dream are next to him and one of them says he's still dreaming.
- Bland-Name Product: "Conflict of Enemies" is a loose approximation of League of Legends, complete with the central crystal on the enemy side they need to destroy.
- Clueless Aesop: Homer's flaw in this episode is that he wants to live vicariously through Bart in his potential success at gaming. Yet despite the emphasis on Homer's flawed plan to live through Bart's success, Homer does not actually behave that badly. He effectively trains Bart and his friends and gets them ready for the tournament (unlike, say, "A Star is Torn", where Homer behaves like a horrible stage mother making Lisa uncomfortable with his behavior). Bart even admits that Homer's coaching worked, and other than Homer kicking Milhouse off the team and telling Nelson "Pringles are for champions!", Homer hasn't really gone too far here as a coach. It's mostly what we learn from his dream sequence/song that tells us this is leading somewhere bad, i.e. to Bart eventually resenting him and their relationship becoming strained.
- While Bart does suffer negative consequences, it's not because of Homer living through his son, but his sabotage of the Evergreen Terrors' imminent victory due to the belief that it would yield a quicker reward.
- Homer is proven right by crushing his son's newfound success and enthusiasm not only does he become a Karma Houdini with everyone blaming Bart for what happened, but he's bumped up to first class.
- Continuity Nod: Nelson still has his "Nuke the Whales" poster from "Lisa's Date with Density."
- Downer Ending: After Homer ruins the competition, all of Bart's teammates blame him and pelt him with in-flight snacks for the 19-hour flight home with none of his family caring or noticing.
- Drench Celebration: Parodied with the Canadian team. When they think they're going to win, they start pouring maple syrup on the coach. It doesn't even get to fall on the coach before they're informed that they've been eliminated.
- ISO-Standard Urban Groceries: Lampshaded when Marge brings in a grocery bag with a baguette sticking out called "Le Baguette Cafe."
- Karma Houdini: Even though Homer was the one who ruin the match, all of the other kids blame Bart for the failure. He even gets moved to first class on the plane ride back.
- By extension, Lisa can count as one, due to her actions, particularly whining to Marge about going to South Korea and showing Homer how to let go of material posessions, leading up to Homer cutting the power.
- Mythology Gag: Marge's drawing of the family on a salt mandala is the same 90s promotional image still used on production scripts.
- Noodle Incident: Krusty says it'll be good to have kids back at the Krusty Burger after what his monkey did. No more details are mentioned.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The episode opens with the family getting along so well that Selma calls Homer a good father. It's this that causes everyone to realize that something's different and quickly figure out what (Bart isn't around).
- Police Are Useless: Not only are the security guards in Korea easily overwhelmed by a bunch of E-sports players, but they don't even notice or seem aware of Homer sneaking onto the roof to turn off the power.
- The Scapegoat: Bart becomes this twice in the episode. The first time is in the beginning of the episode where a lot of the family's problems note are blamed on him.
- The second is after Homer ruins the competition, Bart is the one hated by the rest of the team.
- Shout-Out: The MOBA game that Bart plays is called "Conflict of Enemies".
- Sins of Our Fathers: After Homer destroys the Evergreen Terrors' chances of winning the tournament, Bart's teammates take their frustrations on him.
- Stopped Caring: At the end, Bart just sits there and takes it as the rest of his team takes their frustration out on him. The rest of the family react similarly as Marge doesn't even notice and Lisa and Homer are preoccupied with their own situations.
- Trust-Building Blunder: Homer is sure he won't be needed at work while he's coaching Bart. Cut to the plant, where they are having a trust-building seminar. As they perform a trust fall, Homer's trust buddy, Lenny, falls down the stairs.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Lisa, who teaches Homer about letting go of material possessions, which leads to him turning the power off at the tournament.
