This evening saw the debut of the fourth episode of The Simpsons’ 35th season, entitled “Thirst Trap: A Corporate Love Story,” which largely serves as a parody of the HBO documentary The Inventor: Out for Blood In Silicon Valley and the life and career of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. Below is my brief recap and thoughts on this installment.
I want to start this review off by observing how very odd it is that FOX chose not to air the new “Treehouse of Horror” episode of The Simpsons tonight, instead saving the annual Halloween for next Sunday, which will be a full five days after Halloween ends. That baffling decision aside, this week’s new episode is a particularly clever one, and happens to be a riff on a documentary I really enjoyed at the same time. Now, The Simpsons has done mockumentary-style satire a number of times before, but never (that I can immediately recall off the top of my head) tackling this particular topic– the start-up culture in Silicon Valley. The Inventor, as fascinating as it was, was also ripe for parody when it was released in 2019, but I suppose The Simpsons’ turnaround time forgivably added a few years to that timeliness, much like the COVID-19 pandemic episode that only came around at the end of last season.
Anyway, this episode starts with Lisa Simpson (voiced, as always, by Yeardley Smith) interviewing a young Holmes-like tech mogul named Persephone (guest star Elizabeth Banks), who discovers from Lisa that Springfield has its own billionaire ripe for potential investment in her startup: one C. Montgomery Burns (Harry Shearer). Persephone’s company Lifeboat ostensibly manufactures a compact device capable of doing one very valuable thing– the desalination of water, which would naturally change the world if it worked. The only thing is, much like Theranos’s fabled “Edison” machine, nobody has ever really seen the Lifeboat technology function properly. But after pestering him incessantly, Persephone manages to get Burns on board, plus actor Rainier Wolfcastle (also Shearer) and a number of other wealthy supporters.
Everyone in Springfield is so charmed by Persephone that they don’t seem to notice that nothing she says ever makes any sense, and Burns is won over to the point that he transforms one of the Nuclear Power Plant’s cooling towers into the new Lifeboat headquarters… and then marries her. Lifeboat throws extravagant parties and drums up a lot of buzz, but still never successfully demonstrates its tech, with even Professor Frink (Hank Azaria) befuddled by how the tiny device’s desalination process is supposed to work. Soon a whistleblower appearing in silhouette (transparently Lenny, who immediately drops that his best friend is Carl) calls out that the emperor has no clothes, and the Lifeboat stock plummets. But at that point in the documentary, Mr. Burns buys the production company and the narrative turns overwhelmingly positive in Persephone’s direction.
This is where this episode gets really meta in its parody of documentaries, with guest appearances by Peter Jackson (poking fun at the Disney+ Beatles miniseries Get Back) and even Ken Burns, who takes over telling the “real” story of what happened with the other Burns and his new wife. Eventually Carl reveals to Homer Simpson (Dan Castellaneta) that the Lifeboat device isn’t actually desalinating water– it’s just covering up the taste of salt with an incredibly powerful sweetener that was abandoned in the 70s. Fortunately Homer springs into action and manages to convince Mr. Burns to hear what Persephone is saying through “marriage love,” and they pull the plug on the first Lifeboat demonstration before schoolchildren are turned into dust– though Ken Burns decides to leave that theoretical part in for dramatic purposes. Persephone gets sent to prison and lives in denial about the truth, while we’re treated to The Beatles talking about umbrellas over the end credits. There are just a lot of really funny jokes here, and the mockumentary angle makes this episode feel fresh and different, even though this show (and others like Documentary Now!) has used that approach before. Great guest stars, solid gags, and an entertaining story ripped from some (admittedly just a little out-of-date) headlines makes this one a winner for me.
New episodes of The Simpsons air Sunday evenings on FOX.