‘Simpsons’ episode skewers Elizabeth Holmes, Silicon Valley culture

The Elizabeth Holmes drama has already spawned a best-selling book, an Emmy-winning miniseries and a documentary. It was time then, for the sitcom treatment.

In an episode that aired Sunday night, “The Simpsons” took a star-studded romp through Silicon Valley tropes. The central character of the episode was a startup CEO who mimics the trajectory of the Theranos founder Holmes, wooing billionaire investors before ultimately getting outed as a fraud. The 22-minute episode, titled “Thirst Trap: A Corporate Love Story,” also featured animated cameos by Andrew Ross Sorkin and Kara Swisher, actual reporters who’ve made their names dissecting companies’ rises and falls.

(Note: there are some light spoilers ahead.) 

After establishing itself as a faux-documentary, the episode opens with a Holmes knock-off named Persephone — voiced by Elizabeth Banks — who claims that her company can “transform an ocean of salt water into clean drinking water, cheaply and efficiently, with a machine only the size of a can of oats.”

Persephone’s character takes on many of Holmes’ signature characteristics, including her daily uniform (black pants and dark gray turtleneck, deviating ever so slightly from Holmes’ black-on-black ensemble) and penchant for outlandishly bold statements (her version of Holmes’ notorious “First, they think you’re crazy,” quote is “The doubters call this goal impossible, but I prefer to say, ‘I’m possible.’”). Persephone also offers what we eventually learn is a made-up origin story for her company: that she got the idea to start the company because her grandpa died of thirst on a lifeboat, which is why the firm is named Lifeboat.

Like the real Holmes, Persephone wins the support and funding of major business moguls, including “Simpsons” villain Montgomery Burns, who becomes her top investor and, eventually, husband. (At one point, Persephone hails Burns as “nuclear industry legend, Chief S’more Toaster at the Bohemian Grove, the first man with no blood type!”) The real Holmes also infamously mixed business with pleasure by dating the eventual COO of Theranos, “Sunny” Balwani, and also built a cult of personality by wooing major figures like Henry Kissinger and the Walton family en route to building a chummy board of directors that supported her even if they didn’t understand the technology she was promising.

Persephone’s cadre of wealthy, vest-wearing backers includes portrayals of George Bush, Guy Fieri, Jeff Bezos, Rupert Murdoch, Bill Belicheck — all done up in Simpsons yellow — as well as recurring show character Rainier Wolfcastle. Naturally, none of them actually get to test the results of the technology; Persephone explains that if the investors’ tried to drink Lifeboat’s water, competitors could “steal the proprietary aqua-tech in your urine.” 

Though the episode hews closely to Holmes’ real-life rise and fall, the scenes are also densely packed with generic tech industry roasts. Employees have buzzword-y titles: Persephone is “Founder and Status Quo Demolitionist,” and there’s a “Brain Dump Magician,” a “Chief Change Alchemist” and a “Chief Engineer of Inside the Machine.” As the company hires various “Simpsons” characters, each one is forced to sign a thick non-disclosure agreement. 

As for our core Springfield family, Lisa is initially a die-hard Persephone fan — her vision board includes pics of the CEO on multiple magazine covers — while Homer ends up working for the company as Lifeboat’s “Competency Rockstar.” In one bit, Homer gifts Marge some of the private company’s stock options, but when she goes to the grocery store, she has to put the food back on the shelves because she doesn’t have any actual money to pay for it. (As any paper-rich, cash-poor startup employee knows, options aren’t worth anything unless your firm gets acquired or goes public.) 

The episode also takes a jab at startups’ extravagant spending habits: At a “Lifeboat Company Pep Rally,” some employees dance in lab coats while a DJ spins a pop hit. Others catch fountains of colored liquid shot from the mouth of a Persephone-shaped ice sculpture — a visual pun on “drinking the Kool-Aid.”

While the focus on Holmes might seem a bit dated considering her trial ended last year and the tech industry is currently dealing with a surge in layoffs, there are a few strikingly timely scenes. When “Lifeboat” is removed from a sports stadium’s logo, a logo for the bankrupt crypto company “FTX” is shown underneath, then iconography for similarly failed startups “Moviepass” and “Quibi.” Elon Musk gets a harsher treatment than in his early “Simpsons” appearances: Burns buys Twitter for Persephone as a gift, and at a bargain price after the billionaire’s “self-driving Mars rocket crashed into the International Space Station.”

The episode ends with billions of dollars wasted, a heartbroken Burns and a jailed Persephone steadfastly refusing to admit any guilt. While it overall is a treat for anyone who will revel in lambasting one of the tech industry’s greatest recent dramas, there are some parts of reality that proved too grim for sitcom television. Theranos’ chief scientist, Ian Gibbons, died by suicide while working at the company after repeatedly flagging his concerns to Holmes. The closest “Simpsons” comes to that tragedy is when one employee disappears after emailing Persephone to tell her the technology doesn’t work, the name on his parking spot suddenly replaced with “nobody.”