The Labour Day Parade – Episode 4 begins with Todd (Rob Wells) and Audrey Stool (Anastasia Phillips) carefully navigating through a group of climate change protestors at the front gates of Conch Industries. He assures her the disturbance and skeleton crew are typical for a Labour Day but claims more workers will trickle in to help with the float. Although Todd doesn’t give the protestors a second thought, he does appear concerned with the Enviro-Vestigate team already onsite. A quick conversation with Vanleuen (Tony Ofori) reveals they are there for integrity checks and soil sampling.
When Todd visits Chelsea Nakamura (Jennifer Spence) with his concerns about Enviro-Vestigate, she assures him the environmental company is just part of her efforts to get the plant back on track after Randy Bennett’s (Tom Green) negligence. She also claims that corporate is 100% behind the company and that’s why they’ve authorized two floats this year.
Before his shift, Homer (Jesse Camacho) spends several minutes going through an elaborate ruse at his locker that allows him to record conversations in Chelsea’s office.
Chelsea and corporate’s head of PR, Len Michaels (Matt Baram), call an assembly to share the news of the floats and their themes (the future of Conch Industries). After some careful consideration, the float building is turned into a competition between old and new employees. Chief Engineer, Medhi Chowdry (Raoul Bhaneja), is named as the official judge. As the assembly breaks up, Todd uses Homer’s paranoia to cleverly trick him into investigating Enviro-Vestigate.
The competition heats up even more when Todd learns that he’s been designated as an old employee’s team. Seemingly slighted by this, Todd raises the stakes of the competition with a Sharpie makeover. As he joins his new team, Todd attempts to kill two birds with one by cozying up to Medhi while inquiring further about the Enviro-Vstigate’s presence at the plant. He fails on both counts. Homer tries a different approach by lacing Len’s coffee with antihistamines. Len is in the middle of trying to convince Steph to become the female face of the blue-collar workforce when Homer approaches with his concoction. Steph doesn’t appear to be too interested in his offer.
Elsewhere, Chelsea is surprised to find that the Enviro-Vestigate crew is already wrapping up for the day. She’s even more surprised when she learns that they didn’t find anything nefarious. Homer puts his homemade truth serum to the test when he approaches Len with several trial questions. Once the serum proves effective, Homer’s questions patent and stock questions only lead to more questions, with Chelsea supposedly holding the answers. Minutes later, Chelsea catches Homer attempting to spy on her and calls him into her office. It doesn’t take long before she cleverly uses him and his need to share to learn more about the plant’s operations. According to him, the plant is more functional and effective than it has ever been now that Bennett is gone.
The entire town comes out for the Labour Day parade. Although barely, Len appears to still be on his feet as he takes his place in the lead vehicle that will escort the floats down Main Street. The old school team’s float comes out first and appears to be a replica of the plant’s flare stack, which shockingly resembles the male sex member. The youngster’s float immediately follows and is a partially open conch shell that resembles the female sex organ.
As the festivities slowly proceed, it’s revealed that the protestors have not only shown up for the parade, but their gathering indicates they have something planned. Their plan is soon revealed when one of the protestors douses the lead vehicle with a bucket of oil and proceeds to attack the Conch employees. Complete hysteria ensues and the flare stack float gets knocked over, making its design look even more like the male member. When the tractor pulling the flare stack float starts making sudden forward and reverse thrusts in an attempt to avoid the protestor, the two floats end up creating what could be described as an intimate adult encounter.
When the hysteria finally settles, the Conch employees retire to the local bar. Everyone appears to be in good spirits as the old-school team happily takes the loss and lets the youngsters give them a mascara makeover. Despite Todd being slurringly drunk by the time Chelsea and Homer track him down, he doesn’t have a problem comprehending their discovery about corporate shutting down the plant.
The Trades Review
Decent! Another decent episode with a lot of cleverly disguised storytelling and character development. I can more than appreciate how the characters are written in at times as imbeciles but turn out to be fairly clever. The parade scene with the flare stack and conch shell would be the perfect example. The complex connections and underlying main story development are nearly right on par with what you’d find in any of today’s modern shows. If you can look beyond the childish antics and oftentimes trite dialogue, there is a bit of a hidden gem with The Trade and for that, this episode easily deserves a 5.4 out of 10.
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