The twenty-eighth season of the American animated sitcom The Simpsons aired on Fox from September 25, 2016 to May 21, 2017.

[7] Other noteworthy events and gags include a Pokémon Go-themed episode ("Looking for Mr. Goodbart"),[8] couch gags spoofing Robot Chicken and Adventure Time, an episode that shows how Homer learned to feel better with food ("Fatzcarraldo"), Mr. Burns hiring all of the Simpsons (except Homer) to become his "pretend" family ("Friends and Family"), and Glenn Close returning as Mona ("Fatzcarraldo").

This also marked the first season where former recurring guest star Kevin Michael Richardson joined the regular supporting cast, starting with the episode "The Last Traction Hero".

As he prepares for the show, Burns hires Lisa as his assistant, but he is frightened by flashbacks of a childhood incident.

Marge tells Homer to maintain order as the safety inspector, but some food left in the plant's core causes an explosion.

Mr. Burns is concerned he will never have a family, so he creates a virtual reality program where he acts as the father.

In the twenty-seventh annual Simpsons Halloween special: Guest stars: Drew Carey as himself, Donald Fagen as himself, Kelsey Grammer as Sideshow Bob, Maurice LaMarche, Judith Owen as herself and Sarah Silverman as Rachel Note: This is the show's 600th episode.

Lisa and Bart investigate the side effects of Krusty's new candy and learn that it contains a dangerous chemical.

While there, he falls for a woman named Isabella and encounters a friend from the Air Force who defected to Cuba.

However, Isabella reveals that she is a CIA agent and used Grampa to capture the Americans who escaped to Cuba.

Homer discovers a new app that makes his life easier, so he hires someone to be a father figure to Bart.

Inspired by a Japanese self-help book on minimalist living, Marge makes the family get rid of some of their possessions.

Without it, Lisa is saddened, but Marge reveals that she could not bring herself to throw away their possessions and hid them in a storage locker.

They go and see it is thrown by Jay G, a hip-hop artist who was inspired by Burns' advice book.

The Simpson family explore the vacation town, and Bart encounters a man who claims Jay G ruined his life.

They learn that the man Bart met wrote the songs on Jay G's first album, and they hire him to write a revenge rap.

Homer finds a chili dog stand when Krusty Burger starts serving healthy food.

Bart and Lisa explore where they went in the canoe and remember another child named Charlie who fell into the river.

However, Lisa stops him by threatening to reveal that Fat Tony played terribly on a girls' basketball team when he was a child.

At Yale, Mr. Burns meets a fellow alumnus, Bourbon Verlander, who runs a for-profit university.

He encounters a woman, Phoebe, who will give him money if he picks her up from the nursing home four days in a row, so she can look at nature.

Guest stars for the season included Amy Schumer, Pendleton Ward, Allison Janney, Sarah Silverman, Taraji P. Henson, Keegan-Michael Key, chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen, Patton Oswalt, Lizzy Caplan, Michael Sheen, and Jason Alexander.

[32] Executive producer Matt Selman was also the showrunner for several episodes, a role he performed since the twenty-third season.

"[35] Guest writers for the season were Dave King, Peter Tilden, Ron Zimmerman, and Simon Rich.

[40] For the 600th episode, a version of the couch gag could be viewed in virtual reality in partnership with Google.

[41] Jean commented that it was becoming more difficult to think of original stories with the prevalence of other adult animated television shows that did not exist when the series started.

[42] This season featured the series' first one-hour episode, focusing on rap and hip-hop culture in depth.

[7] Composer Alf Clausen had difficulty scoring the episode because of his inexperience with the genre, which caused conflict with the producers.

[45] At the 69th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards, the episode "The Town" was nominated for Outstanding Animated Program.

The virtual reality couch gag in "Treehouse of Horror XXVII" was nominated for Outstanding Creative Achievement In Interactive Media Within A Scripted Program.