Friends and Family

Friends and Family is the second episode of Season 28.

Synopsis
Mr. Burns hires the Simpsons to play his live-in virtual reality family, but excludes Homer so that he may play dad. Now alone, Homer finds a new best friend in girl-next-door Julia, who eats, drinks and thinks like him.

Full Story
Mr. Burns goes to an appointment with his psychiatrist to deal with his anger issues, however, much to Mr. Burns' anger, Dr. Nussbaum gives up on his case after seventy years and says that he will never be able to have a family. A few moments after Burns leaves the room, the doctor dies, and during his funeral, Burns paid for his tombstone, which had "Paid for by C. Montgomery Burns" written on it. This angers everyone there, so Smithers had to escape with Burns.

During their escape, Smithers runs over Professor Frink, who was wearing virtual reality glasses. Mr. Burns gets interested on the technology and takes it home, where he has a lot of fun with them. However, Smithers reminds him that the last thing his doctor said was that he needed a family. Burns denies, so Smithers gives him the idea of programming a virtual reality family to Mr. Burns.

At the families tryouts, The Simpsons are the ones who standed out the most to Mr. Burns, so he decides to hire them, but Burns intended to be the father of the family, so Homer is sent back home. During the first recordings, Mr. Burns likes the experience so much that he hires the Simpson family for ten years.

At home, Homer misses his family at first, but he later realizes thet he could have fun for himself. When he was laying naked on the roof at night, he meets his neighbor, Julia. He quickly realizes that they have the same love to beer and hatred towards Flanders, so they decide to be friends.

At the recordings, the rest of the Simpson family is already tired of their job, and Mr. Burns is angry at them. That's when Mr. Burns realizes that having a family is not for him and decides to give up on his project, firing the Simpsons. When the family gets back home, Marge finds out about Homer's friendship. She gets angry at him, as she thinks Homer was cheating on her with Julia. That's when Julia enters Homer's home and explains to Marge that they're only friends.

The episode ends with a fast-foward to a few years into the future, showing most Springfieldians, including Homer and Marge using virtual reality glasses.