Tech upstart Persephone Odair becomes partners with Mr. Burns in both business and marriage, but her world-saving project is not what it seems.
Driven To Drink: The LifeBoat Story
Chapter One: The Launchening
Lisa is interviewing Persephone, talking about how like Bill Gates, she too was a Harvard drop-out, having dropped out so early, she never set foot on campus. Persephone then goes into where she got the idea for LifeBoat, from her grandfather, a sailor in World War 2 whose ship was torpedoed, leaving him in a lifeboat, surrounded by undrinkable water, leaving him to die "of quitting, and super-duper dehydration". Persephone refuses to quit though, not until she's brought LifeBoat to life, jokingly asking Lisa if she knew any billionaires. Lisa knew of the only one in town, the villainous Mr. Burns. Despite Lisa's warnings, Persephone's sights were aimed at Mr. Burns and his money. Persephone goes to an energy convention in Florida, where Mr. Burns is a panelist. With a climate changed-caused storm of wind and fire breaking down the convention center, Persephone makes her case for Mr. Burns' money to be a hero in a fight against climate change. He's not interested. And she's not interested in quitting. Following Mr. Burns relentlessly, he eventually decided to hear her out. With a documentary crew behind her, Persephone convinces Mr. Burns to join her after speaking of disruptions, decisions and daring. Mr. Burns gives LifeBoat much of his personal wealth, his favorite cooling tower, and the workers of Section 7G, fired and rehired under LifeBoat and with magic-sounding job titles and higher wages. Big changes are happening, like pep rallies with bounce castles, strict nondisclosure agreements, and Mr. Burns and Persephone getting married.
Chapter Two: Perseph-Monty
Persephone and Mr. Burns are over the moon in their new marriage, and are the new power couple that the business world can't get enough of. But now Persephone has to make a working prototype of her desalination device. The desalinated water is seen at a board of directors meeting, but in sealed cups, so her competitors won't get her secrets from her directors' urine. Secrecy is rising at LifeBoat, and so is the unemployment rates. The company is so paranoid that chief engineer Professor Frink wasn't allowed to look inside the machine despite that being his job. Carl tried emailing Persephone for answers, only to disappear. Lisa still believed in Persephone, but the internet doesn't. Mr. Burns bought Twitter and erased all tweets that were criticizing Persephone. An anonymous whistleblower contacts CNN, talking about his best friend, Carl, and how he was about to reveal something big about the desalination machine that would break the company if it were to go public, only to disappear. The whistleblower also states that the machine doesn't work. Thanks to the whistleblower, LifeBoat's stock and reputation were taking a massive dive. Could this be the beginning of the end? A new narrator chimes in, saying that this isn't the end, LifeBoat will save the world! Join them next time on...
LifeBoat Afloat: Persephone's Total Vindication - A BurnsCo Production
Mr. Burns bought the company making "Driven to Drink" and forced them to change their tune, but they're not the only documentary covering this story. Far from it. There's also Peter Jackson's...
Salt You Need Is Love
It's mostly unrelated footage of The Beatles talking and not making music, because Peter Jackson wanted to make the most of unused footage from The Beatles: Get Back. And there's also Ken Burns'...
LifeBoat: Abandon Ship
Chapter One: The Percentage of Salt in Tears
Mr. Burns' legal team got the raw footage of the anonymous whistleblower, revealed to be Homer Simpson. Legions of lawyers are sent Homer's way with subpoenas, but Homer dodges them all. Homer got an anonymous tip about something that he has to see, and Lisa joined him to investigate, but what she saw shattered her belief in Persephone. Carl has been forced into working in the lab in secret, or else the world will know he's a Jimmy Buffet superfan. Carl's job was to put a chemical called "jabitose" into the machines, and Frink explained it's an extremely potent sweetener from a discontinued diet soda brand. LifeBoat bought all of the unsold cases because the chemical is so strong that it could completely obscure the taste of salt. The machines weren't desalinating the water at all, just pumping it full of a flavor-neutralizing sweetening chemical. The LifeBoat liquid isn't fresh water, but chemical-infused salt water.
The first public demonstration of LifeBoat's machine was soon to begin, at the drinking fountains of Springfield Elementary. Homer pleads to Mr. Burns that it's all a lie, but Mr. Burns isn't seeing it, his love blinding him of all of Persephone's flaws, and deafening him of all of the nonsense behind Persephone's speeches. Homer knows what's happening here, the love is still fresh and perfect, not the tired love of marriage that makes flaws impossible to ignore. Homer encourages Mr. Burns to look at his wife through the eyes of marriage love. Persephone makes a speech comparing water to cryptocurrency, and Mr. Burns doesn't understand a single word. And now that Mr. Burns has his head on straight, Homer pours a glass of LifeBoat liquid on a potted plant, killing it instantly. Mr. Burns knows the liquid is poison, and if those kids drink it, they will die and he will be liable. But Homer turned off the valve just in time. Mr. Burns won't stand for this dishonesty, but is willing to give Persephone a final chance. A chance that she blows immediately. Mr. Burns divorces her, he won't tolerate her claiming to be a good person when she's just as evil as him. Persephone is in jail, but she insists things have never been better for the company that no longer exists. As the documentary comes to a close, Lisa reveals that Persephone's grandfather didn't even die in a lifeboat in World War 2. With his final words for the documentary, Mr. Burns insists he'll bounce back, only for the camera crew to follow him to his office, where he sobs while bouncing in a bounce castle.
Tropes:
- Alien Blood: Mr. Burns has no blood type.
- Ambiguous Situation: Because of Persephone's tendency to lie compulsively with no tells, there's no way of knowing whether she really loved Mr. Burns or just his money.
- Artistic License:
- Nintendo Power is included among the magazines reporting on the marriage of Mr. Burns and Persephone despite ceasing publication in 2012.
- In-Universe example. Rather than show the actual effects of Hypernatremia, the documentary crew use special effects to have elementary students die painfully from drinking brine while dissolving into dust for suspense. The narrator explains it was a scene from the trailer.
- As Himself: Christiane Amanpour, Ken Burns, Peter Coyote, Peter Jackson, Andrew Ross Sorkin and Kara Swisher all guest star as themselves, covering the episode's events as if it were a real documentary.
- Aside Glance: Discussed when Homer asks the camera crew if this is the kind of documentary where you don't look at the camera or if it's like The Office (US) where you make faces towards the camera if something happens. Then he walks into Burns and Persephone getting married and he makes an awkward expression at the camera.
- At Least I Admit It: One reason Mr. Burns' relationship with Persephone sours is she continues to lie about being a good person, even to him.
- Bait-and-Switch:
- The anonymous whistleblower at first seems to be Lenny, but the raw footage reveals it was Homer holding a sandwich and standing in front of a plant, so combined, they make Lenny's silhouette.
- Persephone's final interview with Christiane Amanpour is in a gazebo surrounded by flowers (a reference to Oprah Winfrey's interview with Prince Harry and Megan Markle). Persephone insists that the company is doing better than ever, despite Amanpour pointing out that the company closed and Persephone is currently in prison, at which point the gazebo is shown to be set up inside the prison yard.
- The children that drink the saltwater from the water fountains die and decompose within minutes, only to turn out to be a special effect by the documentary crew as Homer stopped the flow in time.
- Big Damn Heroes: Homer turns off the valve in time, saving the kids from drinking the poisonous liquid.
- Blood for Mortar: Lenny talks about how cooling tower A holds a lot of memories for Mr. Burns. He then passes by the impressions of workers trapped in the cement walls of the tower.
- Broken Pedestal: At first Lisa admires Persephone for being a girlboss, but changes her mind once she's presented with evidence of fraud.
- Call-Back: Augustus Redfield is one of the members of the LifeBoat board of directors.
- Compulsive Liar: Persephone continues to lie even after being exposed.
- Creative Closing Credits: The credits are in a completely different font in this episode.
- Dark Secret: Parodied with Carl, whose deepest, darkest secret is that he's a Jimmy Buffett fan.
- Determinator: Persephone refuses to quit, and hounded Mr. Burns for his partnership relentlessly, despite him releasing the hounds and despite Lisa's warnings.
- Eviler than Thou: Persephone proves herself even more evil than Mr. Burns, as Burns is at least honest about how evil he is.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Downplayed. Mr. Burns is horrified to learn Persephone's product is masked saltwater that children are about to drink, mostly as he would be liable for poisoning them.
- Faux Documentary: The episode is done in the style of the various Elizabeth Holmes documentaries, even making the camera not stay in one place all the time.
- Hostile Show Takeover: Mr. Burns bought the company producing the documentary mid-episode, so the perspective switches between multiple documentaries on the same subject during the third act.
- Ice-Cream Koan: Persephone is a master of this trope, with the phrase "Be the kind of fish that falls down ten times before it runs up the mountain on ocean shoes" on the banner of her company headquarters.
- Intergenerational Friendship: Mr. Burns somehow got Persephone's friends in the divorce.
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Despite Mr. Burns getting married in this episode, Smithers isn't sad, he's just glad that someone else can see what he sees in Mr. Burns.
- Karmic Jackpot: Mr. Burns has a last minute change of heart, resulting in him coming out on top in the divorce and not ending up in jail like Persephone.
- May–December Romance: Persephone is in her 20s, and Mr. Burns' age is incalculably high, but they fell in love and got married. The narrator calls this a "May-last-minute-of-December Romance".
- Missing Trailer Scene: In-universe example. Ken Burns admits they made a scene of the children of Springfield Elementary turning to dust just for the trailer, just to grab attention.Ken Burns: Sorry, we only put that in there for the trailer. Do you know how hard it is to get people to watch a documentary that's not about a small-town murder?
- Sexless Marriage: The end reveals that Burns' marriage to Persephone was never consummated, with Burns regretting that they got divorced before he could sleep with her, which he thinks he might have convinced her to do in a few more months.
- Shout-Out:
- The shot of a warehouse full of Jab soda spoofs the final shot of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
- Behind Peter Jackson is a poster of the Feebles doing an Abbey Road Crossing.
- Special Guest: Elizabeth Banks guest stars as Persephone Odair.
- The Stinger: Peter Jackson shows some more unreleased footage of The Beatles talking.
- Straw Feminist: When a reporter asks Persephone about the disappearance of Carl, she evades the question and accuses him of being sexist.Reporter: Ma'am, ma'am, the whistleblower claims the only person who has seen the inside of your desalination machine has disappeared. Isn't that suspicious?Persephone: Why do you doubt a female CEO, but believe the silhouette of a man sitting in the dark? News flash: Women have faces now!
- Take That!:
- The entire episode is a very obvious critique of Elizabeth Holmes and the fraudulent practices of her company Theranos.
- After Professor Frink complains about Lifeboat's secrecy to the point he got covered by a tarp whenever press was present, he says "Still better than working for ZUCKERBOIIG!"
- Mr. Burns gifted Persephone Twitter as a birthday gift, saying it was a bargain after Elon Musk was forced to sell it after his self-driving Mars rocket crashed into the International Space Station.
- The Titling: Chapter one of the documentary is titled "The Launchening."
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Lisa brings up Mr. Burns to Persephone during an interview, giving her the idea to pursue him and setting off the episode's events.
- The Voiceless: Bart appears briefly but has no lines.
- Truth in Television: Hypernatremia — an overdose of sodium in the blood — is an agonizing and serious condition, and such high sodium content is the primary danger of ingesting seawater. The bit about all those children instantly turning into dust is baloney, but anyone following the cycle of "drink seawater > thirsty from salt > drink seawater > thirsty from salt" could certainly be in critical condition within hours.
- Wacky Startup Workplace: LifeBoat's culture of pop music, bouncy castles and creative job titles (Burns is now "chief change alchemist") couldn't be more different from the typical drab corporate setting of the power plant—but it hides a lot more internal stress.
- Would Hurt a Child: Persephone has the first public demonstration of LifeBoat's machine with the drinking fountains at Springfield Elementary, which only masks the salty taste of brine as children are about to drink it and could have died from Hypernatremia if not stopped in time.
- X-Ray Sparks: In footage of Mr. Burns going out at events with Persephone, camera flashes expose his skeleton.
