Bob's Burgers: "The Tina Table: The Tables Have Tina-ed"
Bob's Burgers: "The Tina Table: The Tables Have Tina-ed." Running #277, production code DASA16, Season 15, #1 (29 September 2024). Fox-TV Animation.[1]
Comic animation that is not SF, and probably tangential, but worth considering.
In the main plot of the episode, in the Wikipedia summary,
Tina's boring "Wagstaff [school] News" segment is in danger of being cancelled. She agrees to feature Mr. Frond's new counseling computer game, which he designed. The game diagnoses students' personality types and becomes a sensation. However, it diagnoses wildly contrary personality types to the students, who begin working to conform to their results. As the game moves toward district-wide rollout, Tina discovers that Henry Haber hastily programmed it for Frond, who knows the game gives randomized results. She struggles on whether to reveal the truth, given how popular her show has become. She has Frond play the game live and, thanks to Henry's programming help, it negatively diagnoses him, forcing him to admit on air that the game is fake. With the rollout cancelled, students return to their lives, and Mr. Grant opts to keep Tina's show, appreciating her commitment to the truth.
The kind of diagnosis of character types and their implications for careers was popular in the 1950s (engaged in by the Initial Compiler with the IIT [Chicago] Psych Department); the computer here seems to use a dual floppy drive of the 3.5-inch variety, popular in the late 1980s into the 1990s.[3]
So: Of interest in terms of the human/machine interface with technology from their cybernetic past, mediating a game with random results they take as prophetic.
RDE, finishing, 30Sep24
