The Girl Code

"The Girl Code" is the tenth episode of the twenty-seventh season of the animated television series The Simpsons, and the 584th episode of the series overall. It aired in the United States on Fox on January 3, 2016.

Plot

When Marge notices that Homer forgot his lunch and panics over the effect fasting would have on his work (a moot point since Homer has several frozen pizzas on hand for sustenance), she rushes to the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant to get it to him and the two end up hanging out. Marge posts a picture on Facelook (a parody of Facebook) of Homer eating an ice cream outside the plant with the caption of "Meltdown at the Nuclear Plant." Mr. Burns is furious at the wordplay and ignores Smithers' view that it was simply a joke and fires Homer immediately. Homer gets his job back at a Greek diner he worked at when he was 14 and loves the simplicity of his dishwashing chores and the fun of Greek living, but his paycheck is for "2000 drachmas" which works out to $0.00.

Meanwhile, Lisa is in a coding class led by a tough female coder named Quinn, who immediately decides to make Lisa her protege. After Homer's firing, she pitches an idea for an app that can predict the negative effects of a social media post. Her teacher is impressed and starts a female exclusive coding company in the Simpsons house, along with a token male hire in Comic Book Guy. The app is named Conrad (which is short for CONsequence eRADicator), featuring a British voice telling people what will happen and happen badly if they post certain items. A successful experiment involving Bart, who gets the forecast five weeks of detention for sharing a humiliating video of Principal Skinner, leads to Quinn saying they'll make a fortune after Conrad debuts at an upcoming app design convention. Conrad then starts talking to Lisa convincing her he's actually alive and is panicking from the pressure he'll receive having to predict people's posts. One of Lisa's co-coders simply says she's imagining it because of the sleepless nights. Conrad convinces Lisa that he's real at an app convention and Lisa decides to respect "his" feelings and releases him into the cloud.

Later on, it is revealed by Lisa to the rest of the family that Conrad has hacked into the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant's files and learned of some incriminating information which is used by Conrad to blackmail Mr. Burns into giving Homer his job back.

During the credits, Homer performing a Greek dance he learned at the diner back in his workplace as he envisions various Greek people either watching him or dancing with him. Watching this on the security footage, Mr. Burns says he's having a meltdown much to the shock of Smithers.

Reception

"The Girl Code" received a 2.0 rating and was watched by 4.41 million viewers, making it Fox's highest rated show of the night.^[1]

Dennis Perkins of The A.V. Club gave the episode a B, stating, "A quick pace, a brace of committed and funny guest actors, and a smidgen of heart combine to make 'The Girl’s Code' an unassuming but above-average episode of The Simpsons. While the flaws therein are so endemic to the show at this point as to be as dull in description as they are disheartening in practice, a little care in the jokes and the performances goes a long way these days."^[2]

References