Them, Robot

Plot

Mr. Burns learns from his lawyer that the cost of drug testing his employees is cutting into his profits. Smithers suggests replacing the entire workforce with robots to save money.

Burns agrees and fires everyone, but Smithers convinces him to keep one human around for maintenance and as a potential fall guy. Homer becomes that employee after storming into Burns’ office to thank him for his years of service and call him out for being cruel. The rest of Springfield, including Smithers, is left jobless, and the town’s unemployment rate hits 99 percent.

Homer tries to befriend the robots but gets zapped when one fails to appreciate his joke about working hard or hardly working. He swipes Burns’ robot manual and reprograms the machines to have human emotions and play baseball with him and Bart. During the game, a robot hits a foul ball. Homer runs backward into the street to catch it, nearly getting hit by a truck.

A robot saves him by stepping in front of the vehicle, and then several more robots follow suit, walking into traffic. At a funeral for the destroyed robots, Homer tries to make a toast, but a robot cites the Three Laws of Robotics and confiscates his beer, claiming alcohol is bad for humans. Annoyed, Homer borrows Flanders’ drill and performs “robot lobotomies” on them, which instead reprograms them to eliminate all obstacles to the plant’s operation—starting with Homer.

He flees to Burns’ mansion for help, but Burns only makes things worse by setting his hounds on the robots. One robot hurls a dog a long distance, and the rest of the hounds retreat. When Burns insults them, the offended dogs turn on him and join the robots.

The combined forces chase Burns and Homer into a greenhouse, where the unemployed townspeople arrive just in time to save them. Burns rehires his former staff as temporary workers. Homer rebuilds one robot and takes it fishing, but the machine gets fed up with him and self-destructs.

Reception

The episode originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on March 18, 2012. It was watched by approximately 5.24 million people during this broadcast, and in the demographic for adults aged 18–49, it received a 2.4 Nielsen rating and a seven percent share. "Them, Robot" became the second highest-rated broadcast in Fox's Animation Domination lineup for the night in terms of both total viewers and adults aged 18–49. Hayden Childs of The A.V. Club gave the episode a B, saying that while "there are a number of good jokes in this installment, the satire is far too gentle, if not feeble, for its subject matter, and the episode is far too willing to bury the satire to further the plot," but that "the episode offers enough good-natured humor to keep itself afloat."

Teresa Lopez of TV Fanatic gave the episode 3.5 out of 5 stars. Lopez felt the plot relied heavily on Homer's stupidity. She highlighted the robots' lines during the baseball scene. John Schwarz of Bubbleblabber gave the episode a 9 out of 10 and thought that the episode was a "sterling effort."

He highlighted several sight gags and the joke that the baseball rules of American League are worse than those of the National League. Steven Keslowitz referred to this episode as an example of popular culture warning of the dangers of automation.

Did You Know?

• Brent Spiner, who voiced all the robots, knew episode writer Michael Price, who offered him the role. Spiner thought voice acting was easy and compared it to 'stealing money.'
• The episode title refers to the 2004 film I, Robot.
• "Robot Parade" from No! by They Might Be Giants is played at the end of the episode.