Roswell That Ends Well
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| Futurama episode | |
| "Roswell That Ends Well" | |
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| Episode no. | 51 |
| Prod. code | 3ACV19 |
| Airdate | December 9, 2001 |
| Writer(s) | J. Stewart Burns |
| Director | Rich Moore |
| Opening subtitle | FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY (except Grandma and Grandpa) |
| Opening cartoon | Bosko cartoon by WB (1930 - 1933) {b} |
| Season 3 January 2001 – December 2002 |
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| List of all Futurama episodes... | |
"Roswell That Ends Well" is the nineteenth episode of the third production season of the TV show Futurama. The episode originally aired on December 9, 2001. It won an Emmy in the Outstanding Animated Program (Programming Less Than One Hour) category in 2002. This episode is one of four featured in the Monster Robot Maniac Fun Collection.
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[edit] Synopsis
As the Planet Express crew kicks back in their ship to enjoy a supernova explosion from point-blank range, Fry puts a non-microwaveable metal “Iffy Pop” popcorn container into the ship's microwave. To the best of the Professor’s later hypothesis, this causes a reaction between the microwave radiation and the “gravitons and graviolis” from the supernova that blasts the ship into 1947. On their unsuspecting return to Earth, they find not only a fresh layer of ozone but a complete lack of a 30th century Global Positioning System, causing them to crash land in Roswell, New Mexico.
An unsecured Bender — convinced that “seatbelts cost more lives than they save” — flies out of the front of the ship and is smashed to pieces. The crew and Bender's disembodied yet still-conscious head go to seek out a way to return, leaving Dr. Zoidberg behind to pick up the pieces. He is promptly captured by the U.S. military and taken to Roswell Air Base for experimentation. The military also "reconstructs" Bender's body in the form of a small flying saucer to become the famous crashed UFO that brought Roswell, Area 51, and the related conspiracy theory into popular culture.
Meanwhile, the search proves futile: the microwave needed to recreate the effect is destroyed, and replacements haven't yet been invented. A microwave antenna from the army base would work, but even as he despairs Professor Farnsworth gives stern warning against using it: they must preserve causality, for defying it would change history and risk doing enormous damage to the future. Fry takes the opportunity to visit his grandfather, Enos, who is at the time stationed at the base and engaged to Fry's grandmother. Near-accidents cause Fry to become obsessed with protecting Enos from possible harm and Fry will cease to exist if he is killed, which is not helped any when Enos exhibits signs of latent homosexuality, making it look unlikely that he will actually father Fry’s father. Fry ends up inadvertently bringing about Enos’s death, by leaving him in a “safe” house—on a nuclear weapons testing range.
Fry then encounters and consoles his would-be grandmother Mildred, who was at the time engaged to Enos. Mildred latches on to Fry, who deduces that since he is alive, Enos and Mildred must not have been his grandparents, and the two end up having sex. When the rest of the group finds him, Farnsworth insists that Mildred indeed is Fry's grandmother. With the Professor's prompting, Fry realizes to his abject horror that he is his own grandfather. At this point Professor Farnsworth gives up.
The crew storms Roswell Air Base, effortlessly overpowers it and steals the microwave dish. Explosive shells and then-powerful fighter planes have no effect on the Planet Express Ship. Fry and Leela rescue Dr. Zoidberg from an alien autopsy (which he was taking in stride), in the process pelting President Harry Truman in attendance with Zoidberg's seemingly infinite supply of supefluous and/or non-essential organs, while the Professor grabs Bender’s wrongly-assembled body. Even as the professor cries "Choke on that, causality!", Bender's head accidentally falls out of the ship and is left behind in 1947. Back in the 31st century, Fry laments the loss of Bender, until an idea sends him to Roswell's ruins with a metal detector. He and Leela find Bender's head, none the worse for wear, reattach it to his still-mangled, hovering, “UFO” body and walk back into what passes for normality.
[edit] Connections with other episodes
This episode provides an important link in the story arc of Philip J. Fry. By becoming (or having always been; it is not entirely clear which) his own grandfather, Fry received a unique genetic abnormality which causes him to lack the Delta Brainwave, believed to be present in all other intelligent lifeforms, robots, and certain plants. This genetic condition made Fry immune to the influence of the creatures known as the Brainspawn, who travel through the universe, eliminating all forms of thought and intelligence that they might be the sole possessors of all knowledge. Fry was thus able to defeat the Brainspawn in the episode “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid”, but it was not until the Season 4 episode “The Why Of Fry” that Fry’s abnormality was explained as being due to him having done "the nasty in the pasty".
[edit] Cultural references
- The title of the episode is derived from the title of Shakespeare’s play All’s Well That Ends Well.
- The soylent products that The Professor asks for come from the movie Soylent Green.
- The small clock shaped like a cat brielfy seen during the time-travel period has also been seen in The Simpsons' Garage.
- The fate of Bender’s head is a parody of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Time’s Arrow” wherein Data’s head is detached in the 19th century and found in an archaeological dig in 2368. It may also be a reference to Marvin from The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, who was buried alive for aeons. Another connection to Star Trek is how this episode is very similar to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Little Green Men,” wherein the show’s three Ferengi—Quark, Rom, and Nog— inadvertently travel back through time and become responsible for the Roswell situation.
- After Fry attempts to remind Professor Farnsworth about the dangers of messing with the time line, the Professor refers to Fry as "Mr. I'm My Own Grandpa".
- There are some similarities to the movie No Time for Sergeants in the character of Enos and his fate.
- Enos takes much of his character from The Andy Griffith Show’s Gomer Pyle, in his accent and characteristics, his childlike love of his commanding officer and use of Pyle’s trademark “Gol-ly!” Enos's sexuality may allude to the 1970s rumors that Jim Nabors (the actor who played Gomer Pyle) was engaged to Rock Hudson, and the rumors that have persisted since Hudson is gay.
- In 1947, there is a “Hard Croon Cafe,” a parody of Hard Rock Cafe and a reference to the fact that in 1947 rock and roll didn’t exist yet.
- When Leela and the Professor are sitting in the diner, we see the nuclear blast that kills Fry's grandfather in the background through the window. Typical for this era and locale, everyone in the town takes it in stride. Interestingly, so do Leela and the Professor.
- When the “conspiracy nut” takes a photo of the Planet Express spaceship, the resulting image comes out looking like the famously hoaxed Loch Ness Monster photograph. Similarly, his photograph of President Truman ends up looking like a cluster of blurry lights in the sky.
- The episode bears many obvious similarities to the Back to the Future movies. It also resembles an early draft of the script to the first film, in which Marty McFly uses the blast of an atomic bomb to reactivate the time machine, and eventually reappears in the present in a refrigerator left out in the desert. It is also similar to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book series in which Marvin the Paranoid Android has lived longer than the universe has existed due to time travel. At one point he is found in a desert after being left there in the past and waiting for thousands of years.
- As with many Futurama episodes, the premise reflects a famous work of Science Fiction. In this case, Robert A. Heinlein's "All You Zombies—", in which a time-travelling hermaphrodite becomes his own father and mother.
- On the side of the rocket it reads the episode title and also parodies the Kilroy was Here sign.
[edit] Goofs
- When looking at the 'High precision digital chronotron' (which had turned into a calendar), the date circled on the calendar -- July 9th, 1947 -- is shown to be a Tuesday, but it was actually a Wednesday.
- The clock on the ship's wall is seen to be going backwards at an increasing fast rate but the last year shown, 2865, is held longer than the years before that.
- In actual fact it would be impossible to view a Star becoming a Red Giant, or even to view a star, without severe and irreparable damage to the Retinas within seconds. The only person who seems to notice this is Leela, as she dons a large single-lensed pair of dark sunglasses as protection when the ship pulls up in front of the Star.
- Enos Fry was Fry's gandfather but in Luck of the Fryrish His father said that every male in the family's name is Yancy.
[edit] Production notes
- During their rescue of Bender and Zoidberg from the military base, the Planet Express ship fires a missile which clearly has the episode title painted on the side. It also has a drawing of Dr. Zoidberg done in the fashion of Kilroy.
- It's said that if Enos died, Fry would cease to exist because he would no longer have been born. What the Professor doesn't mention is that, if that occurred, he too would no longer exist, being also descended from Enos (and therefore now from Fry).
- When the Planet Express ship is being chased by planes and the go through the hangar, some windows are lighter than others, and some darker, spelling out DAMN.
[edit] See also
- Predestination paradox
- Grandfather paradox
- I’m My Own Grandpa, a song in which a man becomes his own grandfather through a series of bizarre marriages rather than time travel. (Referenced in the episode)
- “—All You Zombies—”, a short story by Robert A. Heinlein where the hermaphrodite protagonist, thanks to time travel and gender reassignment surgery, becomes both his own mother and his own father.
[edit] External links
