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"All those times I said 'Kill all humans', I'd always whisper 'except one'. Fry was that one…and I never told him so!"
Bender


Plot[]

The Sting (Main Episode) - 54

Leela disguises Bender as a space bee.

The Planet Express Crew are sent on a dangerous mission that their predecessors didn't survive: collecting honey from Space Bees. Bender is painted black and yellow, and given a tape to speak the bees' language of dancing so they don't attack Fry and Leela.

Leela finds a baby queen bee in the royal jelly and decides to take her back to Earth so they can create their own hive. Bender accidentally insults the Space Bee Queen and the offended space bees proceed to chase the crew. They make it to the Planet Express Ship and escape the hive, but then the baby queen bee wakes up. Fry stands in front of Leela to protect her, but the bee stabs right through Fry to get at Leela. The stinger only pricks Leela, but impales and kills Fry. Bender tosses the bee into the airlock and shoots it into open space, where it gets splattered by an oncoming space-truck.

Later, a funeral is held for Fry and his coffin is shot into the depths of space. During the funeral, a tearful Kug from Amazonia declares "him do good snu snu", while a few of the other women Fry previously slept with (Petunia, 21st Century Woman, Morgan Proctor, Michelle Jenkins, and the female radiator) disagree. Petunia derisively says "Ehh…" while the female radiator whistles doubtfully. Bender admits whenever he said "Kill all humans" he would whisper "(except one)", and never told Fry he was that one. Later that night, after Fry's funeral, Leela takes 2 spoonfuls of space honey and has a dream that Fry is alive and tells her "I want you to wake up". Everyone else starts to become concerned about her behavior, thinking she is going insane.

Later that night, Leela has a dream where Fry takes her dancing in a Venusian garden and gives her his jacket while sharing a midnight sleigh ride across the ice fields on Hyperion. She tells Fry she wishes she could tell the others he's alive, and he tells her all she has to do is wake up. Leela wakes up with Fry's jacket, which she finds out the next day is really her off-the-rack lime green jacket. Amy tells her "everything is going to be alright" in the Professor's voice, as Leela is stunned before Amy repeats herself in her real voice. After Leela says she needs more space honey, the Professor and Zoidberg warn her that one spoonful will calm her down and two will help her sleep…but three will put her in a sleep so deep that she'll never wake up. Hermes says "Never!" in the Professor's voice and Bender says it in Amy's voice, much to Leela's horror.

Later, Leela takes a spoonful of space honey to calm herself down, and then a second one. She is about to take a 3rd spoonful, but accidentally knocks the royal jelly jar on the couch, causing a sticky, naked, and confused Fry to form and ask "Why am I sticky and naked? Did I miss something fun?". According to the Professor's Gizmometer, the royal jelly Fry had fallen into left an imprint of his DNA and brainwaves, causing a new body to form when it mixed with Fry's hair, skin, and blood Fry left in the couch. The crew are delighted, with Bender suggesting they get hammered, now that Fry is alive and his credit cards are valid again. After they leave, Leela is relieved to have Fry back, but he tells Leela "you have to wake up", and is devastated to find out that this is just another dream.

Leela tells everyone she is happy in her dreams to reunite with Fry, but goes crazy when she is awake. Everyone then sings "Don't Worry, Be Happy" by Bobby McFerrin to Leela, but everyone is sitting casually as the song ends. Leela flies out to space to retrieve find Fry's coffin, get his corpse, and keep it under her mattress to remind herself that he is really dead and prove she is not insane. As Leela locates the coffin, she opens it hoping to find Fry, but opens it to find a never ending void of flashing colors.

Leela wakes up in her apartment with everyone else's faces the walls and floor, repeatedly yelling "You killed Fry!" at her before she rips them off and vacuums up Bender. Now believing she really is insane and the only time she is happy is in her dreams with Fry, she decides to take enough space honey to put her into an ever-lasting sleep. Leela takes the first two, and as she is about tp take the third spoonful, the framed picture of Fry on her side table comes to life and encouraging her to resist giving into her grief and taking the spoonful. Leela lowers the spoon and throws the jar at a large bee in her room, only for the resulting mess to create many smaller bees swarming around her. As she hugs the photo of Fry in fear, it tells Leela he loves her and she says she is scared and doesn't know what to do. Fry once again tells Leela to "wake up" and it cuts to Leela in a hospital bed, with a sobbing, disheveled, unshaven Fry beside her, telling her to wake up again. Leela finally wakes up for real (in Fry's jacket, like in her dream) and notices Fry is alive.

As it turns out, the bee's stinger went straight through Fry and Leela ended up getting all the poison, while Fry only had to have his spleen replaced (his new spleen came from a guy who died in a motorcycle accident). The rest of the Planet Express crew comes in and are shocked and delighted to see Leela awake. Bender tells Leela she was "in the best coma I've ever seen!", Amy tells her she was in a coma for two weeks and Fry never left her side for a minute, while Zoidberg mentioned "he talked nonstop. Like a parrot of the sea." Fry said he thought hearing a familiar voice would "keep her mind together," and when he asks if it got through, Leela confirms it worked. The episode ends with Fry and Leela hugging and whispering to each other that they could use a shower.

Ongoing Themes[]

Death and Injury[]

  • The horrible, painful deaths of the previous Planet Express crew are played out on their ship's black box.
  • Fry's emergency high-speed escape-pack crisis response unit slams him against a few walls, since he has put the device on upside-down.
  • At least one space bee explodes while chasing the Planet Express crew.
  • Fry and Leela are both stung by the baby queen Leela planned to bring home, with Fry getting impaled on its stinger and dying in Leela's coma-dream.
  • The space bee Leela brought home dies from losing her stinger and is smashed to pieces by a passing space truck.
  • After a commercial break, Bender is on fire from the waist up for reasons unexplained.
  • Leela watches the other crew members explode one-at-a-time as a space bee stings them during the song.
  • Fry's got a new spleen from a guy who liked to motorcycle.

Doppelgängers[]

  • Bender impersonates a space bee.
  • Amy speaks to Leela in the Professor's voice and Bender in Amy's voice.
  • Fry appears in various forms throughout Leela's coma-dreams: as a strangely romantic version of himself, a version of himself made of royal jelly and his bodily fluids from the couch, and a talking photograph on Leela's nightstand.
  • The other crew-members' faces serve as wallpaper and carpeting in Leela's bedroom.

Fry & Leela[]

  • After their harrowing escape from the space bees, Fry suddenly has feelings for Leela again. He tells Leela to be careful next time because he doesn't want anything to happen to her. When the baby queen attacks, Fry puts his body between the bee and Leela to protect her.
  • While Leela is in a coma, she seems to have a lot more affection for Fry than she ever has before, perhaps prompted by Fry's death. In one of Leela's coma dreams, Fry is very romantic and she enjoys it. The alert viewer might notice something is clearly amiss with Fry being genuinely romantic with Leela. Fry has no capacity for romance and usually approaches Leela brazenly, even while thinking to himself that he is in fact being romantic.
  • When Fry comes into being through the royal jelly, Leela expresses great relief that "Fry" is now alive. She is surprised to see Fry alive and says nothing about feelings for him, and telling him "feeling responsible for your death was driving me mad."
  • When Leela reaches her breaking point, she muses "The only time I feel alright is in my dreams", then looks at Fry's picture and adds "with you!" Leela may have feelings for Fry that she's not entirely conscious of. She constantly denies having such feelings, but she clearly has some here. Fry's photo says "I love you" to Leela, but her hallucinations frighten her so much that she is unable to respond.
  • When Leela wakes in the hospital, it is revealed that anything Fry said in her coma dream was what the real Fry said while at her bedside for the past two weeks. This is not the first time Fry has said "I love you" to Leela, but perhaps going through this experience has matured him somewhat, which would finally give some meaning to his words. Their embrace suggests that even though Leela has begun to finally see the desired maturity in Fry, she's still comfortable being just friends with him.

Character Arcs[]

  • The alert viewer might be very suspicious when Bender, whose lifelong dream is to be a folk singer and has sung in previous episodes, claims he's not allowed to sing due to a "court order". This is a hint that Leela is dreaming, even before we see her wake up, just as Fry's genuinely romantic gestures are.
    • However, it would not be impossible for an actual court to order that Bender not be allowed to sing.

Hermes Conrad's Catchphrases[]

"Sweet three-toed sloth of Ice Planet Hoth!"

Footnotes[]


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