Time comes for us all. There’s no way for anyone to prevent the arrival of tomorrow. That is unless you live in Springfield, USA. If you call that small city home you get to stay the same age forever. You apparently also get to be on TV forever, which is why The Simpsons might never get a chance to air a final episode. However, that didn’t stop the animated sitcom from making one anyway. The show kicked off its 36th season with a meta “Series Finale” even though it’s not actually going anywhere.
A cartoon version of former The Simpsons writer Conan O’Brien hosted a meta season 36 premiere from the “Dolby-Mucinex Theatre.” After throwing plenty of shade at himself, Fox, viewers, and the show, he welcomed Springfield’s most notorious family, their friends and foes, and celebrity guests to the event. Some of the famous voices/faces to get in on the silly fun included Tom Hanks, Joel McHale, John Cena, Danny DeVito, Seth Rogen, Mark Proksch, and Amy Sedaris.
In classic Simpsons-fashion, the show used this faux finale as an opportunity to tackle a timely topic: AI. O’Brien said the writers had turned the script over to artificial intelligence. It produced an episode-within-the-episode called “Bart’s Birthday,” a trope-laden goodbye full of classic final episode cliches and parodies. It was a truly fitting story for a plagiarism machine.
The A.I. crafted some big departures, fond farewells, emotional retirements, potential spinoff setups, and absurd births and weddings. But things went haywire when “Series Finale” Bart became sentient after realizing he couldn’t actually turn 11. Bart Simpson is ten years old. He knows he’s always been ten years old and always will be. That’s just how things work in Springfield, USA, the only place immune to the passage of time.
It’s also the only place immune to ever having to worry about making an actual series finale.