art room. The police come and instead of arresting Homer, they arrest Burns because of the stolen painting they find in the room. After being brought to jail, Burns puts a saddened Smithers in charge of the nuclear plant. Once Burns is in jail the storyline splits into Burns's time in jail, and Smither's time in charge of the power plant. At the start of his time in jail Burns has a hard time. He fails to bribe the guards, blackmail the warden, and his roommate graduated from Dartmouth. Eventually Burns is taken in by a big black man who tells Burns he must turn to the Lord. he then performs an exorcism on Burns, sucking out all is evil. After Burns begins to feel the love, and prison is not so bad for him.
While Burns is in prison, Smithers moves into Burns's office, and even though he never wanted the job embraces it. He decides to be a little bit more employee friendly. He introduces a new health plan, and puts a real suggestion box in, with the only catch being happy workers are productive workers. The employees do become happy, and thanks to Smithers are content at work. Smithers even goes to Moe's with Homer and his friends. Homer and his friends try to get out of work, and Smithers believes their excuses and give them the time off. After leaving the table for a moment, Smithers hears Homer and his friends making fun of him for being nice. Because they made fun of his very decency Smithers begins to hate humanity and becomes worse than Mr. Burns. Homer and his friends see this and wish they could get Burns back. At Moe's unintentional suggestion they decided to break into the prison and bust him out. it is then revealed that the three guards taking Burns at the beginning of the episode were Homer and his friends. At first, Burns is hesitant to go, but eventually he leaves with his employees. He is as evil as ever, and when he returns to his office Smithers is overjoyed to see him
The B story of this episode follows Lisa and Bart. After seeing Bart has nothing else to do, she asks if Bart wants to help her with her ant farm. Bart finds it kind of dumb at first, so says no. Eventually, Bart decides to help with the ant farm, and to Lisa's dismay gives the ants a Poptart. The siblings end up fighting over the ants, and breaking the farm, and their dog eats all of the ants except one. Bart shows remorse a little bit later, but Lisa refuses to let him see Annie, the little orphaned ant. Bart and Lisa do end up taking care of Annie together, and eventually realize she doesn't have much time left. They release her into the wild, as Lisa comments that the ant was string enough to bring her and her brother together. Immediately after the siblings free Annie, the dog eats her.
It was hard to find an overlaying theme or message in this episode. The structure of the episode was very different from what I am used to. The main story line split in two, while there was a B storyline as well. Overall I found the message to be not to take advantage of the people in your life. Everyone is in our lives for a reason, and it is when we take advantage of them, or loose them that we realize their purpose.
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I felt the same towards this episode. I felt it was not a normal lay out of the story lines for the Simpsons and i wasnt sure how i liked it. I thought the main story, or the A story, was kind of dull and did not provide to much entertainment to the viewer. I felt there was still funny and comical parts throughout the episode, but they were more random and did not quite have to do with the plot.
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