Homer and Bart become viral video stars; Lisa takes a stand against Springfield Elementary's new detention policy.
This episode contains examples of:
- Actually Pretty Funny: Homer and Bart's initial viral fight starts when Homer tries to film his own internet talk show and uses magnetic letters to write the title behind him, to which Bart grabs a few and writes "MOOSE POO." This causes a furious Homer to exclaim, "Why, you hilarious—!"
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: This actually causes Homer and Bart to lose the base that has built up around viral videos of their typical altercations.Comic Book Guy: Excuse me, but I thought the hate was real!
- Continuity Nod: Homer chants "Monorail".
- Detention Episode: Springfield Elementary subsidizes its detentions to a private company that operates prisons, running them like literal prisons, with children making license plates.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Lisa gets detention (which ends up getting run like a prison) for accidentally starting a food fight. Worse, it only started because the tater tots she was served were so rock-hard that when she tried to jab them with her fork, it sent them flying into another student.
- Everyone Has Standards: Despite their love of violent mayhem, Homer and Bart ultimately can't bring themselves to engage each other in gladiator-style combat with actual weapons.
- Exact Words: When Moe says he'll give Homer anything the latter asks, Homer asks for the bar and Moe stays true to his word.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: See Mood Whiplash below.
- Foreshadowing: Homer mentions they could earn enough money to buy a boat, then a sign is seen indicating it will be the plot of a later episode, which became "Gorillas On The Mast.
- Freudian Slip: "Anyone who's done anything remotely poor is in private prison. Oh, did I say poor, I meant wrong."
- Gladiator Games: In the end, Homer and Bart are to fight on live television as gladiators with real weapons, with the implication that they are to fight to the death.
- Glurge: As Homer and Bart soon find out, their audience hates this. But eventually decides to embrace it as they're about to fight, to the anger of said audience and humiliation of Warburton.
- Halfway Plot Switch: Homer's plot with Anger Watkins is interrupted by the plot of Homer and Bart going viral. The initial plot is brought back during the epilogue as Homer interviews Anger during a live podcast.
- Instant Humiliation: Just Add YouTube!: Bart interrupts Homer's live podcast and the ensuing fight goes viral. A tech entrepreneur has them stage fights under corporate sponsorship for money. Ironically, it's a video of them hugging, which goes against their "brand", that ends up humiliating them.
- Irony: Staging fights causes Homer and Bart to bond to the point where it sinks their entire gimmick.
- Karma Houdini:
- Outside of losing his two biggest internet sensations, Warburton never gets any long-term comeuppance for either exploiting Homer or Bart's questionable relationship or making them fight to the death.
- The Faculty of Springfield Elementary only learned one lesson about using child labor to produce license plates - cut out the middle man and do it themselves.
- Left Hanging: It's never shown who exactly filmed Homer and Bart hugging, or how they managed to find their house. Lisa's subplot ends in a similar fashion with the teachers (except for Ned, for reasons left unexplained) working on the license plates and the children's strike being ignored.
- Mood Whiplash: Maggie is seen watching, and liking, the "Bart and Homer Hug Video" at the end. She then switches to another video called "Train Crash No Survivors". We don't see beyond the first second of the latter.
- Overly Long Gag: Homer laughs for almost two hours after seeing a video of a monkey smelling his finger and fainting.
- Revenge:
- When Warburton Parker was a kid, he used to be picked on. After making his fortune, he bought and closed the workplaces of the parents of those who teased him.
- Homer gets his revenge against Anger Watkins by giving him more time than he can make his angry rants last.
- Rhetorical Question Blunder: Warburton asks how much money Homer and Bart made with their first viral video and they pretend to calculate it until Warburton tells them he didn't expect an answer.
- Self-Made Man: When Warburton Parker introduces himself, he says he made his fortune with technology.
- Start My Own: After being humiliated at Anger Watkins' talk show, Homer tries to start his own. He's seen interviewing Anger during the epilogue.
- Sucky School: Springfield Elementary serves tater tots that are so hard, when Lisa tries to pick one up with her fork, it gets sent flying. This triggers a food fight that Lisa gets the blame for, and she is given detention (which is run like a prison system because of cutbacks).
- Take That!: Viral video marketing is presented in this episode as unethical, even leading to Homer and Bart being forced to fight to the death just so they'd become viral sensations again.
- The prison system, particularly private prisons, is mocked in Lisa's subplot.
- A banner for Netflix can be seen with the fake slogan "Over-indulging Writers' Passion".
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: When Homer appears in Anger Watkins' show, a caption says Homer is from Springfield, USA.
- Who's on First?: As Lisa tries to explain that she started the food fight by accident:Lisa: It wasn't me, it was physics.Skinner: ...Is this true, Fisix? I would've thought better of a Turkemenistani exchange student.Fisix: I had nothing to do with it! I came to this country to escape food-based violence!
