The Setup
Two-story Disney+ special, 27 minutes, riffing on Black Mirror. First segment "The Way We Wasn't" has Homer buying a defective lamp that pries open an alternate-timeline what-if. Second, "I Have No Tablet But I Must Stream," pairs Maggie with an AI tablet that starts eyeing Springfield. Demi Moore and Patti Harrison guest. It exists because Disney+ needs Simpsons content between seasons and Black Mirror is a soft target.
What Works
The first story has actual bones. There's a real melancholy under it — the animation slows down, Dan Castellaneta gives Homer more weight than the joke needs, and for a stretch it feels like the writers remembered Homer is capable of being sad without cutting to a Ralph gag. Demi Moore, riding in from The Substance, gets exactly the tone the Black Mirror pastiche wants: chilly, over-lit, faintly cursed. The title card sting alone earns a laugh. Patti Harrison does a lot with a small part in the tablet segment; her line reads are the funniest thing in either half.
What It Gets Wrong
Twenty-seven minutes, two ideas, and only one of them is finished. "I Have No Tablet But I Must Stream" is a beat sheet from a 2015 tech thinkpiece: targeted ads bad, AI creepy, screens are rotting your family. No joke sharp enough to justify the runtime. The Black Mirror look is copied at the surface (cold blues, ominous UI, blocky title cards, that drone score) but nothing about the storytelling works the way Brooker's show works, which is to build one clean premise and screw it in tight. Here the premises wander and the endings arrive because the clock ran out.
Who Should Watch
Simpsons completionists who've stuck through every Disney+ short and want to keep the streak. If you liked The Good, the Bart, and the Loki, you already know the vibe: watchable half-Simpsons that costs nothing to skip. If you came in hoping for a real Black Mirror riff with teeth — the way Rick and Morty would handle it, or the way Treehouse of Horror used to — quit at the tablet segment's second act. You've seen this twist before. Everyone has.
The Ruling
SLOP because the seams show. This is a product built to fill a Disney+ tile, not an episode anyone in the room was fighting for. The first story is decent Simpsons. The second is a lecture with Simpsons skins on it, where the "AI is scary" thesis gets stated three separate times because the writers didn't trust the visuals to carry it. That's the Lecture Test in miniature: themes shouted instead of dramatized, characters pausing to agree with the point, the parody absorbing the exact flaw it's supposed to be roasting. There's a version of Yellow Mirror that runs 44 minutes, ships three sharper stories, and actually risks a joke that lands harder than the reference. This one runs short, plays safe, and calls it commentary.