Not bad, actually a pretty fun watch, except that both plots were deserving of much more development (if not a whole episode each, then at least all-but-act-1 or all-but-a-tiny-B-story). By the time each of them got started, it was over with a fairly quick resolution. (I'd also thought we were getting set up for a Lisa story where she deals with not being #1 - as in 1F17 - but no.) The only individual bit that really fell flat was the "Paul Flart" parody... uh, and the dance party ending.
DYN: ...Bender on the cover of Popular Robotics? ...the blue filter on Homer's 3D glasses somehow renders Burns and Marge invisible (is it opaque?)? ...Mrs. Glick dies (this may be the longest span from a character's introduction to death - she was introduced at the end of season 2)? ...two testicle terminology jokes? ...Homer bows on his knees twice (once to Darth SLH, once to Flanders)? ...the award Roz (Jane Lynch) is to receive looks rather like an Emmy? ...the robo seals stop to watch a Jetsons lookalike, even though they're under Bart's control (and not their own or the nerds' - Bart may like cartoons and TV in general, but it seemed like there was the bud of a joke there)?
Previous episode stuff BABF04: The reanimating/re-killing of Scratchy reminded me of this episode's "Tears of a Clone" cloning/killing machines 9F14: Science fair, Lisa vs. Bart NABF17: Shouldn't Bart know what "bully!" as an interjection means, only a few episodes after the Roosevelt story? 9F04, KABF14: These robo seals effectively have an evil switch... for some reason 8F17, DABF01, others?: 911 apparently calls a single phone at the police station
Other stuff
The way Smithers tells Homer to spread the butter around his head to get the award statue off suggests a cut prior line. There's an odd emphasis, as if first he passed Homer a stick of butter without specific instructions, and Homer ate it, then the scene continued as we saw it (exasperated emphasis, another eating, then the question of whether he wants to get it off or not).
Another opening variation. I have gotten a little behind on tallying the opening sequences, but though I've gotten used to cutting straight from Lisa's solo to the driveway, and seen a few other one-off shortenings, I think this is the first time we've cut from Barney's burp to the driveway! There's too much before it to suggest this is the reanimated title sequence's short-opening-plus-blackboard, but otherwise I wonder if it was done to wedge in the neener-neener-we-did- air-the-Treehouse-of-Horror-in-October blackboard, and if that will show up on subsequent airings.
Also, SHORTEST. ACT. EVER. (Or maybe not - I don't have all the figures in front of me, but I think even recent ones have been at least 2 minutes.) Act 3 was 1:39 in length, and contained only 3 scenes. Someone tell me an advantage of this 4-act structure?
Paging Don Del Grande. I couldn't help but notice that there were two testicle jokes in this episode (though both used and talked about alternate terminology). You remarked about NABF19 last week, wondering if that's what got it a TV-14 rating (I didn't even remember such a joke). I did recall, though, an offhand reference to "the testicle thing" in a previous TOH (BABF21, TOH XI), and that must have been rated TV-PG.
Finally: Martin's math tattoos in his fantasy sequence reminded me of an acquaintance of mine, who while studying physics in college got a biceps tattoo of [Sigma]F=ma, an equation for Newton's second law. So it does happen!