Mr. Burns goes to jail for harboring stolen art, leaving Smithers in charge of the plant. Meanwhile Bart and Lisa care for some ants.
This episode contains examples of:
- Bad Boss: Smithers becomes worse than Burns after discovering the guys were seeing his benevolence as weakness to exploit. He releases wolverines instead of hounds.
- Bait-and-Switch: What the guard thinks is a social security card is actually Mr. Burns’s SS membership card.
- Burns tries to blackmail the warden by revealing knowledge of his addiction to something beginning with “H”. It turns out to be helium.
- Benevolent Boss: After Mr. Burns is sent to prison, Smithers tries to be one but changes his mind after he realizes how the employees take advantage of benevolent bosses.
- Blatant Lies: Homer's rotten pumpkin isn't to pelt Mr. Burns with. It's his lunch. Even pretending to eat it doesn't convince Marge.
- Bribe Backfire: attempts to bribe the prison guards by Mr Burns quickly fail as the guards take the money then imprison him anyway.
- Comically Missing the Point: When Bart says he didn't mean to kill their ants, Homer passes by thinking he meant that Patty and Selma are dead (probably misshearing "ants" as "aunts")
- Exact Eavesdropping: This is how Smithers learns what Homer, Lenny and Carl really think of him. Lampshaded by Carl that nothing is better than immediately backstabbing someone they just had a conversation with the moment he seemly walks off.
- How We Got Here: The episode starts with Homer, Lenny and Carl disguised as guards getting Mr. Burns out of prison. Burns then starts telling about the events that led to his imprisonment.
- Obnoxious In-Laws: When Homer overhears the talk about dead ants, he thinks the kids meant "dead aunts" and his sisters-in-law are dead. He rejoices and hopes they suffered.
- Produce Pelting: Mr. Burns is on the receiving end of one while being taken to prison.
- Status Quo Is God: Even if all his "evil" is absorbed from his body, not only is Mr. Burns seemingly no different afterwards (we don't see much, if any, of the "new", un-"evil" Burns), and it's revealed he had some spare "evil" in his toes that quickly multiplied and brought him back to normal.
- Ungrateful Bastard: Smithers is a pretty fair boss to Homer, Lenny, and Carl until he overhears them speaking bad about him right after he gave each of them a day off.
- We Want Our Jerk Back!: Homer, Lenny and Carl break Mr Burns out of prison because they find Smithers to be an even worse boss.
