A new episode of The Simpsons - in which Homer gets canceled before appearing on a Joe Rogan-esque podcast - has divided viewers.
The animated comedy show is well known for satirizing and spoofing many aspects of modern life. Their latest victims are 'cancel culture' and - bizarrely - infamous podcast host Joe Rogan, who is one of cancel culture's biggest critics.
Titled "You Won’t Believe What This Episode is About—Act Three Will Shock You!", the offending episode is the 14th in the long-running show's 33rd season. It begins with hapless patriarch Homer being blamed for leaving the family dog in a hot car and escalates when he starts to get publicly shamed for the 'wrongdoing', per The Independent.
Things hot up even more when Homer tries to make a public apology for his actions - and ends up accidentally knocking the Reverend out the church window. It's not long before a clip of the incident goes viral and Homer is flat out canceled, losing his job, his friends, his co-workers, and even the support of his family.
But there is one person who will still listen to Homer's side of things - an unnamed 'right-wing podcast host' who is a dead ringer for controversial commentator Rogan.
The doppelganger doesn't say much in the episode and only appears briefly to welcome Homer into a building with the sign "Right-Wing Podcast House".
Unfortunately for The Simpsons, many viewers think that the episode missed the mark, and have taken to social media to criticize it.
"The message of mob mentality and someone who did nothing wrong being publicly shamed is actually a decent one, but like most of modern Simpsons the writers dropped the ball," one fan wrote. Others agreed, suggesting that the episode was confusing. "I don’t know exactly what they were trying to say. There wasn’t really a solid through-line," another viewer tweeted, while a third added: "Trying to “both sides” parody defeats the purpose of parody."
Meanwhile, other fans pointed out that Homer had already been canceled in an episode of the show from 1994 - titled 'Homer Badman' - that did a better job of spoofing cancel culture.
"They already did homer gets canceled in 1994," they wrote.