Thirst Trap: A Corporate Love Story
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"Thirst Trap: A Corporate Love Story"
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Episode Information
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"Thirst Trap: A Corporate Love Story" is the fourth episode of season 35 of The Simpsons and the seven-hundred and fifty-fourth episode overall. It originally aired on October 29, 2023. The episode was written by Rob LaZebnik and directed by Timothy Bailey. It guest stars Christiane Amanpour as herself, Elizabeth Banks as Persephone Odair, Ken Burns as himself, Peter Coyote as himself, Peter Jackson as himself, Andrew Ross Sorkin as himself, and Kara Swisher as herself.
Contents
Synopsis
- "In a parody documentary, a young college-dropout CEO embraces the Silicon Valley "fake it until you make it" philosophy and bewitches Mr. Burns into funding her highly dubious dream project."
Plot
Mr. Burns sits down to be interviewed about Persephone Odair. The documentary Driven to Drink: The LifeBoat Story is then shown. A year earlier, Persephone gives a talk about LifeBoat, her company that she thinks could change the world. LifeBoat plans to make a device to turn salt water into clean drinking water. The documentary then moves on to show footage of an interview Lisa did with Persephone where Persephone talks about her grandfather, who was stuck on a lifeboat without drinking water until he died. When Persephone asks Lisa if she knows of any billionaires who could fund the project, Lisa suggests Mr. Burns, but tells her not to go after him. Persephone does anyway and tries to convince Burns to fund her project. After many unsuccessful attempts, Persephone finally gets through to Burns and the two go into business together.
Mr. Burns gives over Cooling Tower A at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant to LifeBoat and reassigns the staff of Sector 7-G there. He then sets Persephone up with several of his rich friends. The new staff of LifeBoat all get special job titles and everything seems to start off well, even with security being stricter and everyone having to sign NDAs. Persephone and Mr. Burns also ends up getting married, to the shock of everyone. The two of them become a new power couple and become the focus of many news publications. Finally, a prototype of the LifeBoat machine is made and shown off to the board of directors, but they weren't allowed to drink the sample because competitors could steal the technology from their urine.
However, things started getting worse at LifeBoat. Workers were getting fired every day, employees became paranoid about breaking their NDAs, Professor Frink, who was the chief engineer of inside the machine, wasn't allowed to look inside the machine. And finally, Carl emailed Persephone with some concerns he had, only to go missing after the email was sent. The Internet turned on Persephone and LifeBoat after this, with Twitter becoming full of hate tweets about her. However, Lisa still stuck by her. For Persephone's birthday, Burns bought her Twitter so he could delete all the hateful tweets about her. Eventually, an anonymous whistleblower came forward with damning new information about LifeBoat. The whistleblower revealed that Carl was kidnapped because he had evidence that the LifeBoat machine doesn't work. After the whistleblower came out, more pressure was put on Persephone and LifeBoat. However, the documentary stopped there as the company that made it was bought out by Mr. Burns.
After Mr. Burns buyout of the documentary, more documentaries about LifeBoat sprung up, including Salt You Need Is Love by Peter Jackson, where he shows footage of The Beatles, and On Thin Ice: The LifeBoat Naming Rights Scandal, which was about the sports stadium that LifeBoat had their name on. Finally, a Ken Burns documentary called LifeBoat: Abandon Ship was made which went over the actual problems behind LifeBoat. The whistleblower turned out to be Homer Simpson and LifeBoat immediately tried to get their lawyers set on him. Lisa then reveals that Homer got an anonymous message telling him there was something he had to see. Lisa went with him to the LifeBoat labs where they find Carl. Carl reveals that he was being blackmailed into working on LifeBoat in secret and then revealed that the machine doesn't work as intended because they use Jab-a-tose, a chemical used in Jab sodas, to mask the taste of salt in the water rather than remove it. Lisa then reveals that Persephone was a fraud.
At Springfield Elementary School, the first public test of LifeBoat was getting ready to launch. Homer arrives at the school and talks to Mr. Burns, trying to convince him that Persephone was a fraud. Burns realizes that he's never understood anything Persephone has been saying and after seeing the water kill a plant, realizes that they're about to poison the children. Burns tries to talk Persephone down after Homer turned the valve off, turning the water fountains off. Burns and Persephone got a divorce and Persephone went to prison for her crimes. Despite this, Persephone stands by having not done anything wrong. In an interview with Christiane Amanpour, Persephone mentions the story of her grandfather again, which was later revealed to be a lie. Mr. Burns ends his interview with Ken Burns and says that he'll always bounce back. He then goes to his office where he sadly bounces on a bouncy castle. In the credits, Peter Jackson reveals that he has over 90 hours of The Beatles talking about umbrellas.
Reception
"Thirst Trap: A Corporate Love Story" was nominated for a 2024 Writers Guild of America award in Animation.[1]
Gallery
References
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