In this episode, Homer gets fired from the plant (again) after Marge posts a photo on social media. While Homer gets a dishwasher job at a Greek restaurant, Lisa is influenced to create an app that captures the real-life consequences of anything one posts online.
This episode provides tropes, such as...
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The Conrad AI Lisa and her team of coders created is benevolent, but was ultimately a complete accident. He's also neurotic and capable of sleepiness. When he gets uploaded to the cloud independent of app downloads, he proves to be a beneficial hacker for The Simpsons.
- Bait-and-Switch Comment: At first, Quinn speaks like she's not going to favor Lisa.
- Benevolent A.I.: Conrad proves to be naturally timid and shy, and terrified of having to help manage the social media of so many people.
- Blackmail: Lisa's app finds blackmail material to force Mr. Burns to rehire Homer.
- Bullying a Dragon: Martin really shouldn't have made that crack to Quinn about signing up for coding class and not web design.
- Celeb Crush: Homer is apparently into Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.
- Continuity Nod: A bulletin board listing "weaknesses" of a scenario in which computers take over the world includes "HAVE TO WAKE UP BENDER."
- Creator's Culture Carryover: Lisa claims that Conrad’s voice was modelled on an announcer for the BBC, followed by a gag of Conrad discussing the upcoming shows. However, he gives the start time for the first show as 7:30 GMT, a specification a BBC announcer would not make, as the United Kingdom does not have different time zones like the United States.
- Description Cut: While rushing to Springfield Nuclear Power Plant to deliver Homer's lunch, Marge honks and tells people to make way because her husband needs his lunch. Cut to a scene with Homer eating a pizza.
- Deus ex Machina: Invoked. Conrad hacks the power plant's computer to make sure Homer is back at work by the end of the episode.
- Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: The female coder is blatantly allowed to get away with insulting and degrading men while blatantly favoring Lisa just for being a woman and is never called out on it.
- George Jetson Job Security: Once again, Homer gets fired from the plant, but this time rather than his own fault, it was because of Marge. Fortunately, thanks to Conrad, he ends up getting it back by the end of the episode.
- Hypocritical Humor:
- Mr. Burns fires Homer for a post joking about a meltdown in the plant, but when he makes a similar joke, he thinks it's okay.
- Overwhelmed by the contemporary Techno Babble between Quinn and Lisa, Homer exclaims, "I hate the modern world and all its crazy words!" He then pulls out his phone and says into it, "Siri, tell Amazon to drone me a beer."
- Imagine Spot: Upon realizing Homer forgot his lunch at home, Marge imagines Homer's hunger making him fall into a vat of acid that dissolves him except for his bones and his stomach.
- Instant A.I.: Just Add Water!: Conrad is sentient before he's even out of beta.
- Internet Safety Aesop: The moral to the story is that you shouldn't use an app to substitute common sense, think before you post.
- Karma Houdini:
- Quinn and the other girl coders never receive any punishment for their gender-based discrimination.
- Lisa likewise fails to receive comeuppance for getting Bart 5 weeks of detention solely to test if Conrad worked.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Marge ends up getting Homer fired when Burns takes offense to the social media post she had made.
- Not Me This Time: Upon hearing that Homer had lost his job (again), Marge asks him what he had done this time. Since this time it was because of her, Homer retorts:I married you!
- Not-So-Imaginary Friend: Conrad achieves sentience but only communicates with Lisa. When Lisa tries to show others, Conrad refuses to make himself known.
- Overly Long Name: At the AppCrush convention, Conrad wins the "Crush Crunch Epic Hack Disrupter Dynamic Convergence Disrupting Award For Achievement in Disruption".
- Pun: Bart sees Skinner's pitch video to the U.S. Patent Office for his laser nose hair trimmer (the demonstration of which going wrong) and describes it as "the Holy Fail".
- Ridiculous Exchange Rates: Homer receives two thousand drachmas from his job, which would have converted to about seven dollars American before Greece converting to Euros' rendered drachmas worthless.
- Shout-Out: The premise is broadly referencing Silicon Valley, and even includes a gag on their title sequence.
- One of the pictures Lisa shows Homer is of Bob Belcher, who Conrad analyzes will face the consequence of having his restaurant boycotted by short people for the burger of the day being "Short People Got No Braisin' To Rib Burger"
- Straw Feminist: The female coders. They only have Comic Book Guy in their group solely for the "token" aspect and he admits they get offended by anything he says. The teacher even insults all of the male students in her coding class and favors Lisa just because she is the only girl there.
- Technobabble: Lisa and Quinn's explanation to Homer about the progress of their app is loaded with psuedo-technology terms, some of which are misused while others aren't even real. It makes no sense if you understand the real terms. For example, an AMA is a specific post on Reddit, and you wouldn't make an entirely separate subreddit for just one AMA.Lisa: Relax, Dad! All we're trying to do is demo a build for the AppCrush convention!
Quinn: If we can solve our back-end server issues!
Lisa: And maximize our query speed!
Quinn: Then we can get hands-on write ups from DoingDoing!
Lisa: And Jezeba!
Quinn: And our AMA subreddit will be trending!
Lisa: Giga-trending!
Homer: I hate the modern world and all its crazy words! Siri, tell Amazon to drone me a beer! - Worthless Currency: Homer gets paid two thousand greek drachmas for his work. Since Greece converted to Euros in 2001, when he asks Marge how much that is in dollars she tells him zero.
