Days of Future Future
Homer is repeatedly cloned; Bart seeks closure from divorce.
The Simpsons' 548th episode, "Days of Future Future," aired on Fox on April 13, 2014. Written by J. Stewart Burns and directed by Bob Anderson, it is the eighteenth episode of season twenty-five. Set 30 years in the future, it follows "Future-Drama" and "Holidays of Future Passed." Bart visits a clinic to erase feelings for ex-wife Jenda, who dates an alien. Lisa decides whether to cure zombie husband Milhouse. Marge throws Homer, repeatedly cloned after death, out on a flatscreen. Amy Poehler guest starred. Reviews were mixed.
Quick Facts
- Season
- 25
- Episode
- 18
- Director
- Bob Anderson
- Writer
- J. Stewart Burns
- Production
- SABF13
- Air date
- 13 April 2014
- Guests
- Amy Poehler as Jenda
Facts from the source article.
Plot
Homer suddenly dies, and Professor Frink announces at the funeral that he has cloned Homer. Marge warns Homer to take this second chance seriously. After thirty years of clones dying, Frink cannot revive Homer but stores his memory in a flash drive, which he plugs into a monitor. Realizing her husband is just a face on a screen, Marge gives the flash drive to Bart until she is not mad at him. Milhouse laments to Marge that he and his wife Lisa have nothing to talk about. Bart brings Homer home, an abandoned classroom at Springfield Elementary. Bart sadly sends his two sons to his ex-wife Jenda's house. He needs advice, but Homer is of no use when the monitor freezes. Unable to move on from his ex, Bart uses shock therapy to give him closure from his divorce. Meanwhile, at Lisa's zombie soup kitchen, Milhouse is attacked by a zombie. Bart starts sleeping with other women. Bart visits Marge, who claims to not miss Homer but actually does. At Bart's apartment, Homer is given a robot suit. Bart is visited by his sons and asked to help Jenda with her depression. She shows up in tears, telling Bart that Jerry left her. Bart comforts her and says her crying is a reminder of what he lost. Jenda is impressed by Bart's newfound maturity and invites him to dinner while Homer watches their sons. It goes well, and the two mend their relationship. Meanwhile, Lisa and zombie Milhouse are attacked by bullies, and Lisa finds it attractive that Milhouse fights them off. Later, Bart and Jenda resume their habits of not paying attention to each other while Lisa prefers that Milhouse remain a zombie instead of being cured. Bart and Lisa go to Moe's to deal with their respective marital problems where Marge tells them to stick through it. She electrocutes herself to live in the flash drive with Homer. Milhouse is cured, and Bart moves on from Jenda, who is seeing Jerry again. Suddenly, Bart is back in the therapist's chair and learns what he experienced was a neural implant. Bart and Lisa visit Marge, who is back with Homer after giving him a robot body and new personality. Bart recommends Lisa move on if things do not work with Milhouse, but Lisa says Milhouse is still a zombie and there is no cure, which pleases her.
Production
In September 2013, Entertainment Weekly reported that Amy Poehler would reprise her role as Jenda in a followup to the sixteenth season episode "Future-Drama." Executive producer Al Jean said that the episode would feature Bart getting over his divorce from Jenda. The couch gag was based on an idea by Katie Hemming of Burlington, Ontario. A couch gag contest was held the previous season, and Ray Savaya won the Canadian fan vote. However, the writers preferred Hemming's idea, so they decided to make hers as well. Although she did not win the grand prize, she received a "Simpsonized" drawing of herself and a first season DVD box set.
Cultural references
Bart's memories are tampered with using a technique similar to the one seen in the 1990 film Total Recall. The robot Gort, from the 1951 movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, appears working in a diner. During the end credits, a fake preview for the following episode airs, mimicking the promotional style of the TV series Mad Men. This gag satirizes how those Mad Men previews give away nothing, a result of creator Matthew Weiner's aversion to spoilers, a trend that inspired parodies of other shows' promotions.
Reception
The A.V. Club's Dennis Perkins graded the episode a C, describing it as a disappointing sequel that brings Mr. Burns back to the show's seemingly unavoidable sci-fi future, which only further restricts the series' possibilities. Perkins argued that the episode lacks the emotional core of its predecessor, instead offering the kind of poorly conceived and inconsistent character developments that have come to define the later, erratic seasons of The Simpsons. He felt the installment reveals a show that has given up on its potential, treating the future setting as a dumping ground for leftover Futurama gags. Tony Sokol of Den of Geek awarded the episode four out of five stars, praising it as a laugh every 2.5 seconds, accounting for wind resistance. He called it a worthy addition to what will eventually become an even longer-running show that has "walked slowly up a flight of stairs." Sokol singled out Jerry, Bart's future ex-wife's new soon-to-be-ex alien lover, as a highlight. He noted that Nelson's mother still works as a stripper at age 87 because retirement no longer exists, and that even with 99 Democrats in the Senate, the Republican still manages to get his way. He also pointed out that Ralph Wiggum becomes the new police chief, being a chip off the old cop, and that Santa's Little Hybrid is an unnatural progression not covered by Cosmo. Teresa Lopez of TV Fanatic also gave the episode four out of five stars, expressing her usual fondness for episodes that explore the possible futures of the Simpson family. She acknowledged that these future installments are not technically canon—since no one can predict what will actually happen—but appreciated that this one attempted to maintain some continuity. The episode earned a 1.7 rating and drew 3.64 million viewers, ranking as the second most-watched program on Animation Domination.
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