The Simpsons is a series that “will never end,” as well described in the highly recommended book by Juan Damián Pardo. However, for the first time in 35 years, the series itself has played with its final conclusion with a meta episode that has caught everyone off guard. Season 36, which premiered last December 25 on Disney Plus, begins with an episode titled Bart’s Birthday, which explores precisely how this series might end.
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Subscribe (it's FREE) ►The episode, which is already the highest-rated in recent years according to IMDb, begins with a special cameo by Conan O’Brien, who was a writer for the series in the nineties. In his animated version, O’Brien explains that the Fox network has decided to use Artificial Intelligence to write the series’ final episode. What follows is a masterful parody of the predictable products generated by these technologies: a script that combines exaggerated tributes to series like Game of Thrones and Succession, plot twists that desperately seek to be memorable, and resolutions filled with clichés that only an AI could imagine.
A Finale Befitting AI
Among the highlights of the episode are the death of Mr. Burns, the unexpected discovery that the comic book store owner will become a father, and, of course, Bart’s eleventh birthday. This detail, far from being coincidental, is a joke about the eternal freezing of time in Springfield. After nearly four decades as a ten-year-old, Bart faces the possibility of growing up, a situation that causes a direct conflict between him and the AI.
But the episode not only plays with parody, but also reflects on the impact of technologies on narrative and creativity. The Artificial Intelligence, programmed to analyze millions of previous ideas and generate a “memorably perfect” ending, fails to foresee Bart’s emotional resistance. The young Simpson refuses to accept a script that forces him to grow up and abandon his identity as the eternal mischievous child. “My age must remain frozen,” Bart declares, in a moment overflowing with both metacommentary and nostalgia for everything already experienced.
This confrontation highlights a universal truth: while AI can replicate patterns, it cannot capture the human essence that defines characters like Bart. The tension between algorithmic calculations and emotional complexity is the central axis of an episode that ends up being a mirror of our own relationship with technological progress. One of the best critiques made on television about AI, and the best example that, ahem, they will never be able to replace us… neither writers nor journalists.
