Plagiarism in Pop Culture: The Simpsons (Part 2)

Jonathan BaileyNovember 3, 2025

5 minutes read

Back in September, I wrote a Plagiarism in Pop Culture about a 1996 episode of The Simpsons. However, at the time, I had no way of knowing that, just weeks later, the show would take another crack at the topic.

To make matters more impressive, the entire plagiarism subplot takes place in the first five minutes. In reality, it’s just the setup for the episode’s actual plot, which involves Superintendent (Super Nintendo) Chalmers being fired from his job and what follows that.

But in those few minutes, the show manages to pack a lot in. It targets students’ use of AI in the classroom, the weaponization of plagiarism, and the struggles schools face in keeping up with technology.

It’s an amazingly relevant episode regarding plagiarism, and it is definitely worth examining.

So, even though I hadn’t planned to do back-to-back Simpsons episodes, that is what we are doing as we look at Episode 2 of Season 37 of The Simpsons, entitled Keep Chalm and Gary On.

Content Warning: (Minor) Spoilers for Season 37, Episode 2 of The Simpsons (Keep Chalm and Gary On).

The Plot

The episode begins with Bart walking into the kitchen, saying, “Read it and weep,” as he attaches an essay with an “A” grade to the fridge. Marge is quickly overcome with emotion, saying that she does read it and she does weep.

Marge is Impressed by Bart's A — Marge is Impressed by Bart’s A

However, Lisa quickly bursts everyone’s bubble by revealing that it wasn’t Bart’s work; he had “written” it using an AI named CheatGPT.

Marge is heartbroken, and Lisa asks her dad, Homer, to explain why using an AI is bad. His answer is remarkably well-spoken, but Lisa discovers he came up with it by using CheatGPT on his phone.

The episode then cuts to the school’s teacher’s lounge, where the teachers complain they can’t keep up with students’ use of AI. Principal Skinner announces that they have purchased AI detection software, but the students, in a scene mocking “hacking” sequences in many films, defeat it with their superior hacking skills.

Students hack the school to block AI detection. — Students Hack the School to Block AI Detection.

However, it’s the students who are next worried, as they complain that their homework is about bananas regardless of the topic. It’s revealed that the teachers “ghost prompted” them by hiding instructions in their assignments. They then return the favor by filling the teachers’ lounge with bananas.

Superintendent Chalmers then approaches Skinner, complaining about the school’s IT budget. He then announces to the students that Springfield Elementary is now a phone-free school and that all homework will be handwritten in class.

The students hit back once again, this time investigating Chalmers’ master’s thesis. There, they find two passages that were not quoted and that he made repeated mistakes between “ibid” and op cit”.

The Comptroller fires Chalmers, citing the district’s zero-tolerance policy on plagiarism, which Chalmers himself wrote. That sets up the rest of the episode, which focuses on Chalmers’ life after leaving that job.

Understanding the Plagiarism

For what is basically an intro segment, there is a lot to unpack. This is because it’s actually two separate plagiarism stories.

The first is the battle between the school and the students over the use of AI. The show, overall, handled it very well. It acknowledges that schools are using AI to cheat and the ways that schools and teachers are struggling to keep up.

That said, as funny as the “hacking” scene was, it’s not how students would actually defeat an AI detector. They would be much more likely to edit the work or use an AI humanizer or a similar tool. AI detectors, in general, don’t live on school networks and aren’t trivially hackable for students.

That said, the teachers’ response is also a bit outlandish. While ghost prompting is a thing, I’ve not heard of teachers doing it to students, at least not broadly.

This is mainly because it would be something students could easily spot, and students don’t always copy and paste their assignments when cheating via AI. It’s more common to embed ghost prompts in a much larger work, where humans are less likely to notice them.

However, the solution the school hits upon, namely banning cell phones and switching to handwritten assignments, is increasingly common. There’s a significant focus on making assignments more resistant to AI. Requiring handwritten elements is one of the more common approaches.

But it’s the banning of cell phones that has really taken off. Currently, over 30 states have bans or significant restrictions on cell phones in schools. However, that has less to do with AI and more to do with other distractions that come with cell phones.

This takes us to the analysis of Chalmers’ thesis. This is a stellar example of the weaponization of plagiarism. The students wanted to hurt Chalmers, so they examined his thesis in bad faith to find plagiarism.

What they found was that he had “neglected to put quotation marks around two different cited passages” and that he was confused about the difference between “ibid” and “op cit”, which are functially the same and are often a matter of a particular style guide.

Obviously, these are extremely minor transgressions and more strongly indicate mistakes than intentional plagiarism. At most, these would warrant a correction rather than anything more substantial. However, at the hands of his own zero-tolerance policy, he is fired.

Now, to be clear, the comptroller wouldn’t likely be the one to decide if this is plagiarism. That would be a matter for his alma mater, Ogdenville State University, to address. As we’ve seen, those investigations can take years, so this would not likely have been a quick revenge for the students.

Still, the scene definitely captured the fear that many in education have as we have seen more and more examples of plagiarism being weaponized for political or personal reasons.

Bottom Line

From a purely practical standpoint, this episode did get a fair amount wrong. However, the changes it made were either to serve the comedy, such as the hacking scene, or to advance the plot, such as Chalmers’ swift removal. This is very similar to the previous episode I reviewed.

What it managed to get almost perfect is the general fears and concerns that are present right now. From renaming ChatGPT to CheatGPT, to highlighting the struggles of schools and teachers to keep up, to the solutions they tried, to the weaponization of plagiarism against Chalmers, the episode hit all the right notes.

While I can pick nits about it all day long, it did a great job of taking the temperature of the room and lampooning the current climate. As I said in the last article, The Simpsons is a comedy show, not a morality play or a documentary.

As with the last episode I covered, the show managed to take the topic seriously, while also milking it for jokes. That said, I think they missed an opportunity to show teachers using AI as well. As we discussed last month, teachers are increasingly using AI, and many of those uses are highly dubious.

Still, the episode managed to capture several different fears academia has regarding AI and plagiarism. These are difficult times for teachers and administrators, and the episode did a great job of highlighting the challenges they face.

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