Portrait of a Lackey on Fire
In this episode, Smithers falls in love with a fashion designer, who builds a manufacturing plant in Springfield with poor working conditions.Smithers grapples with this information, asking Burns for advice, only to be told that "fast fashion" is an even more evil industry than nuclear power, and that Michael is effectively a supervillain."[1] After Smithers came out and had his first relationship in the twenty-seventh season episode "The Burns Cage," executive producer Matt Selman thought it was time for another romance.[3] Von Niederhäusern and Wiget first came to the producers' attention after they created a live-action shot-by-shot remake of the eating montage from the twenty-ninth season episode "Lisa Gets the Blues.[7] Tony Sokol of Den of Geek gave the episode a 4.5 out of 5 stars stating, "The innuendo-laden repartee with his boss, Mr. Burns, includes some of the cleverest writing of the series.In earlier seasons, Smithers' personal life barely intruded into the office, unless you had to get past his network firewall to see his introductory screensaver."[8] Marcus Gibson of Bubbleblabber gave the episode a 7.5 out of 10, stating, "The comedy delivered a couple of chuckle-worthy moments to keep this relationship smooth and steady without suffering from tasteless schlock.