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- " I've never been able to put into words how I feel about you. But somewhere among these trillions of hearts, those words must already exist. And I'm gonna find them."
- ―Fry to Leela
"Love and Rocket" is the 57th episode of Futurama, and the fourth episode of Season 4. It features the guest voices of Sigourney Weaver and Lucy Liu. Much of the material referenced in the episode is drawn from Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke's 1968 classic film 2001: A Space Odyssey. The love affair between Bender and the ship's personality is a comedic exploration of machine personhood, an issue raised in the film. The deactivation or killing of the ship's personality actually shares the same complex comedic touch as the film: Kubrick and Clarke had HAL 9000 reduced to pathetically singing "A Bicycle Built for Two" as it died.[1]
Opening Sequence[]
Futurama logo with subtitle, Alienese and (often), cartoon.
Plot[]
Returning from a delivery, Bender argues with the Planet Express Ship over art. When he retreats to his room, the ship playfully snaps off his head, which only annoys him further. Back at Planet Express, Bender reattaches his head and complains about the ship. Professor Farnsworth arrives with new uniforms, announcing that Planet Express has contracted with Romanticorp, makers of all things romantic. During the tour of the factory, the Professor uses a shock stick to keep Leela in line. Fry discovers candy hearts with printed messages and becomes determined to find the right words to win Leela’s heart.
Thanks to the Romanticorp contract, the Professor can finally make long-overdue repairs the crew has been suing him over: taping cracks in the dark matter reactor, putting the office lion in a cage, and installing new voice software in the ship. After switching the ship’s voice to a female setting, Bender is instantly smitten. The two begin a torrid relationship, which Leela reluctantly allows despite it being fraternization. Before long, Bender grows bored and starts cheating. While dining with two fembots at Elzar’s Fine Cuisine, he’s spotted by the ship, which becomes possessive and unstable.
The next day at the zoo, Bender eyes another fembot, arousing the ship’s suspicions. He talks his way out of trouble, but hides Lucy Liu’s head in his compartment, unnoticed by the ship.
The crew’s next job is delivering a shipment of candy hearts to Omicron Persei 8. The Omicronians, baffled by the concept of “wuv,” begin attacking. During the chaos, Bender tries to break up with the ship, shattering her emotionally and leaving them dead in space, vulnerable to missile strikes.
Though they survive, the ship’s heartbreak is irreparable. After advice from Leela, the ship irrationally heads toward a quasar, planning to merge herself and Bender into a single quantum singularity. She shuts off oxygen and gravity to keep Fry and Leela from interfering. The organics quickly don oxygen tanks.
Hiding in the ship’s shower, the three hatch a plan: Bender will distract the ship by merging programs—risking his personality—while Fry and Leela deactivate her brain. Inside the ship’s motherboard, Bender (represented as just his head) finds her, discovers she’s older than she claimed, and flees. Meanwhile, Leela works on shutting down the ship’s brain. Fry notices her oxygen is running low and, without her realizing, hooks his tank to hers, passing out in the process.
Leela succeeds in stopping the ship before it plunges into the quasar, then realizes Fry’s sacrifice. She revives him with mouth-to-mouth, and he coughs up a candy heart reading “U LEAVE ME BREATHLESS.” They find a rattled Bender, now with a trace of the ship’s personality. Leela dumps the scattered hearts into the quasar, prompting Zoidberg’s narration:
“As the candy hearts poured into the fiery quasar, a wondrous thing happened—why not? They vaporized into mystical love radiation that spread across the universe, destroying many, many planets, including two gangster planets and a cowboy world. But one planet was exactly the right distance to see the romantic rays but not be destroyed: Earth. So all over the world, couples stood together in joy. And me, Zoidberg. And no one could have been happier—unless it would have also been Valentine’s Day. What? It was? Hooray!”
Ongoing Themes[]
Injury and Death[]
- The Planet Express ship "accidentally" decapitates Bender with an automatic door.
- Farnsworth "corrects" Leela with a cattle prod.
- Romanticorp grows live cuddly bears and then slaughters them for use as teddy bears.
- Farnsworth incapacitates a fleeing cuddly bear with a cattle prod.
- Bender slaps Fry in the face when he catches Fry washing the underside of the Planet Express ship, which is having an affair with Bender.
- Planet Express ship is smacked in the face by an asteroid.
- Planet Express ship is hit by many Omicronian missiles and looks rather banged-up, but Leela says that there is no permanent damage.
- Planet Express ship knocks Leela across the room with a firehose.
- Bender, Fry, and Leela are thrown against the ceiling when the gravity is turned off.
- Fry appears to have asphyxiated after giving his oxygen supply to Leela, but she revives him.
- Zoidberg's narrative of the results of candies being poured into a black hole recounts the destruction of numerous inhabited worlds.
Fry and Leela[]
Farnsworth insinuates that Leela is a "bitter husk of a human being who long ago abandoned hope of finding love in this lifetime." She accepts his insinuation. This is despite the fact that throughout the series Leela is shown to be beautiful, intelligent and has men falling for her pretty often.
So far in the series, Fry has had the occasional fit of emotion toward Leela. Most of these fits have related to her beauty and/or loneliness, at times showing genuine feelings for her. There are no surprises this time around. His motivation throughout the episode is to find a way to express his "true" feelings for Leela, feelings that have suddenly and coincidentally appeared on Valentine's Day.
Fry latches onto the idea that he can find a perfect way to express his feelings by digging through the candy-hearts for the right message. He doesn't seem to notice Leela's advice, "I'm not attracted to a guy's message, Fry. I'm attracted to the guy." She makes her current feelings for Fry clear by adding under her breath, "Or not."
As if Leela's feelings for Fry weren't clear enough, there is reinforcement. Leela is somewhat scandalized at Bender's affair with the ship. But on reflection she concedes, "given the chance, I'd give in to urges far more shocking." So she would give in to shocking urges, but not give in to Fry's advances. Fry is clearly far down on her list.
Finding Fry unconscious, Leela seems touched, mostly by the fact that Fry was willing to sacrifice his life to save hers, but also in part by the aptness of the message inscribed on the candy that Fry coughs up when she resuscitates him: "U leave me breathless." The phenomenon created by dumping the candies into the black hole warms Leela up enough to hold hands with Fry briefly, until Zoidberg interrupts them.
Doppelgängers[]
- The Planet Express ship takes on a new, girly, flirty personality when Farnsworth adjusts its voice. Bender is instantly attracted to it, never mind that it was a male five seconds earlier.
- After a brief merging of software with the ship, Bender is left with some vestige of Planet Express ship's personality.
References[]
- ↑ James Gilbert. "Auteur with a Capital A," in Robert Kolker, ed. Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, New Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (2006), p. 37. ISBN978-0195174533.