popular culture - television

television has always been our cultural mirror. when it comes to ai, tv shows reveal our anxieties, skepticism, and dark humor about the technology that’s supposedly going to replace us all.

this is a list of the episodes or clips i’ve seen and felt worth covering.

timeline of tv ai commentary

episode analysis

ai vs natural stupidity

the red green show - season 15, episode 10 “there’s no place like the home” (2006)

red, harold, and dalton are sitting together in a boat; red and dalton are fishing, but harold is predictably not.

instead, harold is reading a book that predicts “science will create computers that think faster and clearer than humans.” red and dalton aren’t impressed. harold insists they’re living in the past, stuck in the 1950s, while he represents the future of artificial intelligence.

red’s response becomes unexpectedly prescient: “artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.” the punchline - that computers will never tell guys like them what to do because “that’s our wife’s job” - lands a bit differently in a world full of “claude boys” and r/AIRelationships…

what makes this clip fascinating in retrospect is how it captures the everyman’s skepticism about ai long before chatgpt. the fishing population algorithm harold mentions feels quaint compared to today’s llms, but the core tension - between those who trust the numbers and those who trust their gut - remains unchanged.

bart’s birthday (fake series finale)

the simpsons - season 36 premiere (september 29, 2024)

fox marketed this as “the simpsons series finale” - a meta-commentary on ai-generated content that becomes its own critique. the episode opens at the dolby-mucinex theater where conan o’brien hosts a celebration of the “series finale,” revealing that fox has tasked an ai chatbot called “hack-gpt” to generate the perfect ending.

the ai-generated finale starts predictably enough: principal skinner moves to sacramento, mr. burns dies (accidentally, thanks to homer), multiple weddings happen simultaneously. but then bart becomes self-aware. he notices everyone saying they’ll “miss this place” while turning off lights and closing doors - classic series finale tropes being deployed algorithmically.

as bart’s family announces they’ve “permanently fixed their relationship” and will cease being dysfunctional, bart realizes everything is changing and rejects the narrative. he refuses to blow out his 11th birthday candles (he’s always been 10), provokes homer into strangling him, and breaks the ai’s designed finale. the episode resets to bart’s 10th birthday party, surrounded by his unchanged, dysfunctional family.

the celebrities flee as hack-gpt explodes. conan, wearing his old late night jacket, walks out saying “i’m not going to miss this place.” the simpsons used ai anxiety to create an episode about why the simpsons can never actually end - because it exists in permanent stasis, immune to the narrative closure ai tries to impose.

deep learning

south park - season 26, episode 4 (march 8, 2023)

south park’s “deep learning” episode is partly written by chatgpt itself - and credited as co-writer in the closing credits. stan uses chatgpt to write romantic texts to wendy after she complains he only sends thumbs up emojis, while clyde’s ai-generated messages to bebe are impressively romantic.

the boys use chatgpt for their school essays, while mr. garrison - instead of catching them cheating - uses it to grade papers. when the school brings in a “technician” with a falcon named shadowbane to detect ai cheating, stan asks chatgpt to write a resolution to the entire situation.

the final minutes, actually written by chatgpt, feel “empty, robotic, and nonsensical” - an intentionally unsatisfying ending that perfectly demonstrates ai’s creative limitations. the episode captures the “double-edged sword” of chatgpt: powerful enough to fool teachers and girlfriends, hollow enough to reveal its own artificiality when pushed.

emma stone ai replacement

saturday night live - december 2, 2023

emma stone’s fifth hosting gig included a pre-recorded sketch mocking ai use in entertainment - a major issue from the recent sag strike. the premise: part of stone’s video was “corrupted” so filmmakers used ai to “seamlessly replace” her.

the result: cast member punkie johnson’s body with stone’s face digitally superimposed, creating an uncanny valley nightmare as “emma” moves through increasingly absurd physical comedy that the real stone clearly didn’t perform. the sketch works as both comedy and commentary on hollywood’s desire to own actors’ likenesses in perpetuity.

spinned off

big city greens - season 4, episode 203 (july 19, 2025)

gwendolyn zapp unveils bigtech video (btv), an ai entertainment platform that creates content by scanning citizens with drones to capture their “likeness, personality, and private thoughts.” the algorithm then generates personalized shows for “mindless consumption.”

the ai-generated shows are deliberately terrible:

• “three many remys” - a sitcom where vasquez manages three remy clones juggling knives and playing with tigers
• “gloria in the city” - gloria just lies on her mattress eating chips and watching her phone
• “postmaster frank m.d., p.i., d.d.s., b.e., ph.d., b.sc. esquire” - frank inexplicably serves as doctor, cop, lawyer, judge, executioner, and clown simultaneously

when the crowd revolts, demanding shows that are “funny, tug at heartstrings, with self-contained stories and serialized arcs, predictable but occasionally experimental,” zapp reconfigures the algorithm. it generates… big city greens itself. cricket’s response: “that looks terrible.”

the episode works as both satire of content algorithms and self-deprecating humor about the show’s own formulaic nature. the joke isn’t just that ai can’t create good tv - it’s that when it tries to give people exactly what they want, it produces something nobody actually wants to watch.