Bart gets in trouble on Grandparents Day at school and is forced to hang out with Skinner's mother as punishment, but when he starts spending time with various grandmas in the neighborhood, he learns the benefits of hanging out with the elderly. Meanwhile, Homer and Lisa get addicted to Peekimon Get.
Tropes:
- An Aesop: Bart's takeaway (as narrated to Abe) is that "playing with women's hearts is a dangerous game and it's wrong to take advantage of the elderly."
- Animals Lack Attributes: Averted with the skunk that sprays Homer.
- Art Shift: As Homer and Lisa search for the missing suicidal old lady for Bart, we suddenly get a Animesque Disney Acid Sequence where Lisa and Homer look for Peekimon while Maggie fights them.
- Becoming the Mask: What was originally a way to grift money from grandmothers, Bart ended up enjoying his time with Phoebe that he became worried about her safety.
- Bigger Than Jesus: With a Lampshade Hanging about the fact that this kind of Blasphemous Boast doesn't register like it used to in an increasingly less-religious American society.Comic Book Guy: Look, this game is, or at least was, bigger than Jesus, okay?Reverend Lovejoy: Hmm, that's a pretty low bar these days.
- Broken Record:Phoebe: Oh, you're quite good at taking the piss out of someone.
Bart: Wait, that's okay to say? (starts saying "taking the piss" repeatedly)
Phoebe: Have you gotten that out of your system?
Bart: I'll get up in the middle of the night and say one more. - The Bus Came Back: Moe's little ex-girlfriend Maya comes back to show up catching a Peekimon on Frank Grimes' grave.
- Butt-Monkey: The late Frank Grimes. Several Peekimon Get players go to his grave and some dance on his grave. Gil is the only player who doesn't get anything during that scene. Hans Moleman, who crashed his car into a nearby tree, isn't rescued.
- Deliberately Cute Child: Bart starts a hustle as a call-in grandson for old ladies, turning on the charm to sickening levels.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Bart's "grandson" racket plays out like he's a different kind of escort, which is Lampshaded by Homer at the end when Marge calls him out for spending $600 on the Pokémon-like smartphone game he's been playing with Lisa.Homer: You're right, Marge. We spent too much. Bart was a gigolo. What are you gonna do? Be mad at the world?
- Did Not Do the Bloody Research: An In-Universe example occurs between Bart and the British Phoebe when she tells him he's good at "taking the piss," a relatively unremarkable phrase in British English (it simply refers to mocking or ridiculing someone and doesn't evoke the usual meaning of the word "piss" as readily as it does for American English speakers). Bart is delighted that "that's okay to say" and starts chanting the phrase.
- Hazmat Suit: Homer and Carl don these to drag a phone-distracted Lenny out of the core.
- How We Got Here: The episode opens two months after Bart had already gotten into the habit of visiting old ladies for gifts, while he, in voiceover, insists he's a changed kid. We find out he was talking to Grampa.Bart: You look confused. Why don't I start from the beginning?
- Hypocritical Humor: Skinner's Mom tells him he should live his own life. Right after that, she tells him to comb his hair.
- Intergenerational Friendship: Bart becomes a substitute "grandson" for elderly women and enjoys the coddling (and cash) until he meets Phoebe, who has no desire to fuss over him and is merely using him as a convenience to get past her nursing home's security, since she's not allowed to leave without a visitor. This being the case, she and Bart form a more straightforward bond that transcends their generational divide.
- Irony: Ned is into Peekimon Get, despite fundamentalists like him are known for being against Pokémon in real life.
- "Kick Me" Prank: In the opening scene set in a restaurant, an uncharacteristically polite Bart sticks a "TIP ME" sign on a passing waiter.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In this 2017 episode, Comic Book Guy says that the In-Universe equivalent of 2016 smash hit Pokémon Go is Bigger Than Jesus—"or at least was."
- Logo Joke: The audience in the Gracie Films logo is replaced with Peekimon.
- Obnoxious In-Laws: Homer won't help Bart's search for a missing person until he learn said person isn't any of his sisters-in-law.
- Real Money Trade: Homer finds out about this and it becomes one of his schemes that went nowhere.
- Smelly Skunk: Homer mistakes a skunk for a Peekimon, and tries to catch it. He gets sprayed for his trouble.
- Shout-Out:
- The couch gag is done in the style of The Big Bang Theory
- The episode features a parody theme song of the first English dubbed opening of the Pokémon anime.
- Bart's story has traces of Midnight Cowboy, with him talking like he was romancing the older women rather than pretending to be their grandchild.
- Take That!: There are several digs made at the game Pokémon GO through a parody called Peekimon Get
- Homer calls the game a waste of time.
- There are several instances of characters calling the game an overhyped fad that's long worn out its welcome in addition to claims that the game is mainly being used to dupe people into wasting money.
- In-universe: Apu did not appreciate Ned comparing a Peekimon to Ganesha and pointed out how the drunk vagrant in his store looks like Jesus Christ.
- Inverted when Lisa mentions positive points like Homer getting exercise for once, and it turns into a bonding activity for the two of them.
- Tempting Fate: Upon seeing Skinner punish Bart, Grandpa dares the former to punish a war veteran and Skinner makes him write lines.
- Too Dumb to Live: Homer and one of his coworkers unwittingly enter a reactor core while playing Peekimon Get.
- Whole Episode Flashback: The entire episode turns out to be Bart leading up to his apology for embarrassing Abe on Grandparent's Day at school, which happened within the first few minutes of the episode.Abe: Geez! I thought my stories were long.
- Writing Lines: Grandpa's punishment. He only writes one and it's about how that's enough to make him tired.
