Well, this is an episode that, theoretically, I won’t get much from because it’s a parody of a certain type of documentary that I don’t see very often if at all, the one based around corporate shenanigans, specifically in this case, Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos mess. That means real-world documentarians Ken Burns, Peter Jackson, Kara Swisher, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Christiane Amanpour, and frequent narrator Peter Coyote do guest appearances.
OK, I know who about half of those people are, and only one of them for his documentaries.
Anyway, the episode opens with Mr. Burns talking about how he fell in with one Persephone Odair (guest star Elizabeth Banks), a woman who had invented a small device that could desalinate large amounts of seawater. Lisa actually discovered her and her company Lifeboat, so named because Persephone’s father had to survive in a lifeboat by himself, surrounded by water he couldn’t drink. Burns is so impressed, he turns the Nuclear Plant into the Lifeboat factory, firing all the workers and then rehiring them at higher salaries because that’s how tech companies work. Not sure where Springfield is getting its electricity from after that, but here we are.
So, this episode is set up like a documentary, but because I don’t watch many of them, if this was a specific sort of documentary, I have no idea
Anyway, Burns falls in love with Persephone and the two get married. But the workers at the company don’t really know what the product actually does or how it does it, and if anyone like Carl questions things too much, they get mysteriously fired. That drives a coworker to complain as a silhouette that looks like Lenny that Carl got canned, but then it turns out to be Homer, and he spends a lot of time dodging subpoenas. That’s a bit surprising since Homer never understands anything, let alone how to dodge a legal obligation. I mean, he thought Marge could go grocery shopping with stock options.
As it is, Lisa and Homer do some research on their own, find Carl and learn the magic machine just injects a forgotten soda into salt water to make it too sweet for anyone to notice that the seawater was still full of salt.
Can Homer convince Mr. Burns to do something before the kids at Springfield Elementary drink the deadly water? Mostly it takes Homer to convince Burns to listen to his new wife like he’s been married for more than five minutes, and Burns actually doesn’t want to do something evil like poison schoolchildren.
Wait, he doesn’t?
Eh, it doesn’t matter. Burns realizes his wife is talking nonsense all the time and has Homer shut off the bad water.
Wait, Burns didn’t want to do something evil?
Eh, it doesn’t matter. Still. Persephone can’t stop lying since even the lifeboat story she told turns out not to be true and Burns got her high school friends in the divorce.
So, that’s that. Now what was up with all the bouncy castles in this episode?
More Stories
The X-Files “Three Words”
Succession “Tailgate Party”
The X-Files “Deadalive”