Syrup 2013

A young man named Scat devises a bold idea for a new drink after spilling his own beverage and swearing under his breath, naming it FUKK. He crashes a key meeting at the Addison Cola Company by triggering the fire alarm, and there he entices a formidable marketing executive known only as Six with the promise that her team will refine the concept before presenting it to the board. The board’s initial resistance is apparent, but Six tells them that Scat is willing to relinquish trademark provisions for a mere two million dollars. In a brutal moment of realization, Scat discovers he never reserved the trademark and races to the Patent and Trademark Office, only to learn that his roommate, Sneaky Pete, has stolen the idea and registered it earlier that morning.

The dream turns sour as Sneaky Pete’s idea—FUKK—explodes into the nation’s best-selling energy drink. Scat, now sidelined and embittered, watches as his once-bright future dims. Yet fortune arrives in a surprising form when Six recruits him to help craft a fresh ad campaign after she’s removed from the FUKK project and reassigned to Addy Classics. With a five-day deadline looming, Scat moves in with Six and tries to conjure a breakthrough. After venting his frustration by shaking a vending machine, Six drops a chilling statistic about twelve people dying from vending-machine accidents, and Scat suddenly seizes on a provocative concept: a cartoon where people die from vending machines to symbolize how far fans will go for the drink. The resulting ad is accepted and aired, but tragedy strikes when a teenage boy really dies in a vending-machine accident, and the ad is pulled for being insensitive. At the funeral, Scat delivers a speech, only to realize that Six recognizes the mourners as actors she’s seen in ads. Realizing Sneaky Pete engineered the fake death to sabotage their campaign, Scat pulls the fake body from the coffin to reveal the truth to the gathered crowd.

This blow leads to Scat’s firing, though he initially believes Six has stayed with the company. In truth, Six has quit after Addison refuses to keep Scat, and both end up pursuing work elsewhere—Scat taking a stint at a shoe store, then a brief spell as a rickshaw driver, before landing a job at a rival firm; Six is also recruited elsewhere. During this shift, Six drops a name tag from her work, hinting at a possible real name (Elizabeth) before she quickly retrieves it, leaving the hint unresolved. With their futures uncertain, the two team up again to conceive a new line of drinks. As they discuss their growing attraction, Scat formulates the Average KOK and also imagines a separate celebrity-linked drink simply called KOK, where numbered drinks correspond to celebrities who grant permission to drink them. The plan to take the drink public takes a dark turn when a teenager dies after hoping to drink his lucky number 17’s version. The death is real, and Scat appears on television to apologize, yet he ends up pointing out that sales have never been higher and that people—like him—still dream big.

As Scat walks past TV screens showing his own image, Six finds him, and the moment becomes intimate. He reveals his real name is Michael, and he asks for her real name in return. She answers that “Six” is the name she wants to keep, and they share a kiss. The final line lingers on the ambiguity of their professional partnership and personal connection: Scat says, “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you, Six,” and steps away, leaving their future open but their chemistry undeniable.