Future-Drama

"Future-Drama" is the fifteenth episode of Season 16. The episode marks a milestone for the series being the 350th episode produced.
==Synopsis==
Through Professor Frink's future machine, Bart and Lisa see their lives in the year 2013, where Bart steals Lisa's chances at going to an Ivy League school in order to impress a skater girl named Jenda while Homer (now separated from Marge and living in an underwater apartment) fights Krusty the Clown after Marge begins dating him.
== Full Story ==
While walking through Springfield, Bart and Lisa childishly squabble over who is "gay for Moleman" - fighting, they roll into Professor Frink's basement. He welcomes them, saying that his new astrology machine told him they would come to his house, and he goes on to show them a film of how life will be in their last days of high school, eight years in the future.
In 2013, Bart and Lisa are graduating. Lisa is doing this two years early, and is bound for Yale. She goes to the prom with a muscular, emotional Milhouse, having only agreed to this after he saved her from a house fire that he caused when she was twelve years of age. Bart is in love with a blond girl, called Jenda; after the prom, Bart proposes to Jenda, but she turns him down and ends their relationship, because she doesn't believe he is able to provide for her.
Meanwhile, Marge has separated from Homer after he blew the family savings on an underwater house. Homer takes Bart to a night on the town in his hover-car, as Donald Fagen’s IGY (International Geophysical Year) plays in the background, but the only girls they find are Mrs. Krabappel and Ms. Hoover who used to be Bart and Lisa's fourth and second grade teachers respectively. Bart then plans to get a job at the Kwik-E-Mart. While making a delivery to Mr. Burns, he is held at gunpoint by Snake (who now uses a combination phaser/cellphone), but Bart saves Burns when Snake is distracted by a phone call.
As a reward, Burns offers to send Bart to Yale with his scholarship, which was previously promised to Lisa. Believing it will impress Jenda enough to take him back, Bart accepts. When Lisa finds out at their graduation, she becomes furious with Bart. Meanwhile, in the audience, Homer fights Krusty, whom Marge is now dating.
Jenda does indeed take Bart back, now that he has the scholarship. Meanwhile, Lisa, felling dejected, chooses to settle for Milhouse while attending Hot Dog on a stick Management Camp. While walking with Jenda, Bart finds Professor Frink's house, and uses the astrology machine to see what the post-2050 future holds for Lisa and Milhouse: they live a nowhere marriage and Milhouse sells all his bone marrow just to pay the electric bill, which still isn't enough. Bart rushes away to save Lisa from life with Milhouse, and gives her the scholarship. Before leaving Jenda tells Bart that she can guarantee one thing about his future, which that she won't be in it.
Jenda dumps Bart again, and he chooses of getting a girl who loves him for himself. In the present, Frink tells Bart he will find that special girl... one minute before he passes on at the age of 83. Meanwhile, Homer has won back Marge's heart by getting beaten up by Krusty.
== In the year 2013 ==
(Due to the show's floating timeline and the fact that the episode is non-canon, a lot of the events are up for debate as to whether or not they will happen).
* Cletus has been voted Vice President of the United States.
* The United States is in a fifth Gulf War. The latest military operation is to find the President's missing head.
* Maggie lives in Alaska (which, thanks to global warming/climate change, is now a beach instead of a frozen wasteland). A polar bear goes to attack her, but is so weak that it ends up dying.
* Video postcards have been invented.
* Uter (who was said to have been missing since "Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner?"), Richard, Janey, Wendell, Ralph, and Allison attend Springfield High School, along with Bart, Lisa, Nelson, Milhouse, and the Mackleberry twins.
* Milhouse is obsessed with building his muscles and has become so emotionally unstable that the police have to tackle him when he goes on a rampage following Lisa breaking up with him.
* Skinner is the principal of Springfield High School, with Kearney as the very strict, very anti-drug assistant principal.
* Popular drugs include booze, kick, puff, doze, maxx, stim, and turb. Stim is said to be very dangerous, as it can put people into a persistent vegetative state (as seen with Superintendent Chalmers, who is now wheelchair-bound and only able to say, "Skinner" over and over again) while kick causes hallucinations and can easily be slipped into drinks (as seen when Nelson spikes the punch with a Thermos of kick and Ralph trips out when he takes a drink).
* Nelson impregnates Sherri and Terri, who each gave birth to twins. He then deserts them both, similar to the way his own father deserted him.
* Scientists have invented magic, as seen with Marge's Polaroid of Bart and Lisa turning into a cake.
* Moe has a clone who argues with him over who's real and who's the clone, as well as a spider clone (because a spider entered the cloning machine). All three pursue Marge's love.
* Mr. Burns, now a 112-year-old shut-in (though not looking any older), sponsors a Yale scholarship as punishment for stealing Christmas (which Lisa misses, but Jenda doesn't). He keeps diamonds to have them changed into Earth's most precious mineral of the age: coal.
* There are four forbidden zones that are near or around Mr. Burns' mansion: radioactive, smallpox, eternal midnight, and swarming with uni-clams (a half-unicorn, half-clam hybrid creature).
* Ralph can use the potty (or only said that because of how socially awkward he is).
* Yale University is now owned by McDonald's and has banned men from taking science. To appeal to female students, Yale offers majors like "femis-try" and "gal-gebra".
* Otto has a job as a limo driver and it's implied that he still does drugs, as he drives erratically, is naked without noticing or caring, and thinks he can glide (not fly, as he thinks that's ridiculous) as he throws himself off a cliff.
* All the cops in Springfield have become RoboCops. Clancy Wiggum has a rotisserie (complete with chicken) in his belly.
* Smithers is put on injections that he must take every ten minutes in order to curb his homosexual tendencies.
* Plastic surgery now extends to giving people animal tails (as well as implanting celebrity butts and relocating nipples), which Marge's sister, Patty, gets.
* The U.S. dollar has been replaced by (or is now called) the "Reagan". 
* Saudi Arabia and Israel have become one country (Saudi Israelia), which America declared as their 51st state.
* Apes are trying to get the right to vote (cf. the billboard that says "Give Apes The Vote. You Won't Regret It").
* Snake still robs people, only now he robs Mr. Burns and uses a phaser/cell phone.
* Eating genetically modified food has led to "smart puke", vomit that can outsmart anyone who tries to clean it, like Groundskeeper Willie.
* Singers at prom night have been replaced with iPods. 1980s songs, like "Take on Me" by A-Ha and "True" by Spandau Ballet, remain overplayed.
* Prof. Frink has committed suicide (even though Lisa's Wedding shows that he's one of the scientists trying to find a cure for Mr. Burns getting stabbed in the back 17 times so Burns can get out of cryogenic stasis. However, since Lisa's Wedding took place in 2010 and Future-Drama took place in 2013, Frink's suicide could have been three years after that).
* The garbage man uses a spaceship (similar to the one from E.T.). It has to fly all the way up to move to the next house.
* Blinky the three-eyed fish has hundreds of descendants, including a three-eyed whale.
* Marriage has become a three-year commitment.
* Teens have a new social interaction: "getting some forehead" (head-butting).
* The Springfield Nuclear Power Plant has three cooling towers.
* Homer owns the first hover car ever made, which Bart thinks is a bad idea, as the first hovercar has a lot of kinks that were worked out with later models.
* Sinks are operated by voice-command.
* The now-elderly Apu, and his eight children, manage the Kwik-E-Mart. The Nahasapeemapetilon Octuplets now wear personal jetpacks so they can torment staff members more easily.
* Quantum tunnels (wormholes) exist and are used in lieu of vehicle tunnels.
* Bender from Futurama lives in the Simpsons universe, looking for new friends.
* Homer is still taller than Bart, if only by as little as one inch.
* Armpit noises are considered a language, even though Lisa doesn't think so. Bart is fluent in it.
== Awards ==
*This episode was nominated for a 2005 Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program (for Programming Less Than One Hour). It lost to the South Park episode, "Best Friends Forever".
== Citations ==
fr:Future Drama
pl:Future-Drama
pt:Futuro-Drama
Category:Episodes Set In The Future
Category:Bart episodes
Category:Lisa episodes
Category:Milhouse episodes
Category:Homer episodes
Category:Marge episodes
Category:Outstanding Animated Program Emmy nominated episodes
Category:Romance-themed Episodes
Category:Episodes featuring guest stars
Category:Milestones
Category:Bart vs. Lisa episodes
Category:Episodes in which Homer almost loses Marge
Category:Dramatic episodes
Category:Episodes on DVD
Category:Episodes with alternate end credits
Category:Directed by Mike B. Anderson
Category:Written by Matt Selman
Category:Episodes banned from TV in countries
Category:Episodes where Homer chokes Bart