"Baby You Can't Drive My Car" is the 644th episode of the American animated television series The Simpsons and the fifth episode of season 30. The episode was directed by Timothy Bailey and written Rob LaZebnik.
Plot
Homer picks up "chicken" nuggets at Krusty Burger’s drive-through and eats them while he drives recklessly to the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. At the entrance, the car hits a speed-bump and takes flight, crashing into Mr. Burns' office while Burns is showing Smithers the only Fabergé chicken; angered, Burns fires Homer. Later, Homer sees a TV news item for a startup company, CarGo, including a press event where Mayor Quimby touts jobs that will benefit the city. At CarGo, Homer interviews to be a "highly passive human" road tester of their self-driving car. The company founders see his bad driving record as an asset, and he is hired after passing their final test: sitting for hours doing nothing. His work amounts to enjoying various activities while the self-driving cars road test themselves.
One day after work, Marge arrives at CarGo to drive him home, and they enjoy the free food of the company's cafeteria. As Homer gives Marge a tour of the high-tech campus, they note that various recreational employee perks like a rock-climbing wall and game room go unused because the coders never stop working. Deciding to help the coders enjoy themselves, they call them down to join them instigating a foosball tournament, which the founders see as a "paradigm-blasting", team-building exercise that invigorates creativity. Seeking to innovate in employee satisfaction, they promote Homer and make him and Marge a team to boost employee morale. When Marge and Homer talk employees into trying out the company's regulation ice hockey rink with their office chairs, Homer videophones the activity to Lenny and Carl; they become the start of a mass exodus of employees who quit the nuclear plant to work for a fun employer. In response, Burns and Smithers work undercover at CarGo, where Burns commends the success of providing excellent employee motivation.
Meanwhile, Marge and Homer head home in a CarGo car, only to realize that it listens to their conversations and takes them to random places based on things that they randomly talk about. They report the problem to the founders, but are told it is a part of CarGo’s Sponsored Rides program selling users’ data to corporations; and that this insider information is covered by the non-disclosure agreement that Homer and Marge signed. Horrified at the unethical manipulation, Homer quits and vows to sue the company.
Homer, Burns and Smithers team up to stop the cars to end the company. With their CarGo credentials, they breach the main computer server room where Smithers works to reconfigure the deep neural network and disable the cars' fuel cells, but Marge confronts them with a Nerf bazooka gun. After pleading with Homer not to destroy the fun she is having from her job, she goes to report the situation to the founders, but notices CarGo's next phase, Sponsored Lives, an effort to use the cars' keychain fob to eavesdrop everywhere the keys go, even the bathroom. An appalled Marge then helps Smithers shut down the company by shooting a Nerf dart at the server keyboard. After the cars shut down, Springfielders are relieved and CarGo is bankrupted. Homer asks Burns to consider hiring him and Marge to work together at the plant, but Burns refuses and angrily begins to remember why he fired Homer until Marge shoots him in the head with a Nerf dart, causing him to forget. Homer and Marge then go home "self-driving the old-fashioned way" — drinking wine in Homer's car riding on a tow truck.
In the epilogue, the founders cite CarGo as a "bump in the road", and announce to their employees a new way to reach consumers; multi-lingual talking tattoos. During the closing credits, a scene from earlier in the episode shows Homer and Marge putting their CarGo car in "snuggle mode". They begin to make love in the car until it stops at the church, much to Reverend Lovejoy's frustration.
Production
Tracy Morgan was cast for two episodes for this season. He previously played himself in "My Way or the Highway to Heaven". In this episode, he plays a tow truck driver who encounters Homer and Marge.
Cultural references
The title might be a reference to the Beatles song "(Baby You Can) Drive My Car"