The Route of All Evil
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| Futurama episode | |
| "The Route of All Evil" | |
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| Episode no. | 44 |
| Prod. code | 3ACV12 |
| Airdate | December 8, 2002 |
| Writer(s) | Dan Vebber |
| Director | Brian Sheesley |
| Opening subtitle | Disclaimer: Any Resemblance To Actual Robots Would Be Really Cool |
| Opening cartoon | Unknown |
| Guest star(s) | Unknown |
| Season 3 January 2001 – December 2002 |
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| List of all Futurama episodes... | |
"The Route of All Evil" is episode twelve in season three of Futurama. It originally aired December 8, 2002.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
Having been suspended from school for salting Bret Blob, Dwight and Cubert find themselves stuck with their fathers. After having sent the Planet Express crew on a fake mission to deliver pizza to DogDoo 8 (which doesn't exist since the universe ends at DogDoo 7) and generally annoying the staff, the boys are overcome with boredom. They decide to start up a company to rival Planet Express: a paper route. They become so successful that they take over Planet Express when it is discovered that the Professor was declared legally dead three years ago. The name of the company is then changed to the name of the boys' delivery route, 'Awesome Express'. Meanwhile, Fry, Leela and Bender brew beer inside Bender.
Dwight and Cubert end up taking on too many customers and cannot deliver the papers and need help from Hermes and the professor to solve the problem. All the papers are successfully delivered; however, as they pass Bret Blob's house the boys admit that they broke his window last week. Hermes and the Professor take the boys to apologize. When Mr. Blob doesn't accept the apology, he beats them up, but later apologizes in the hospital. Bender comes in with his beers to enjoy, and everything ends happily.
[edit] Cultural references
- The title is taken from the phrase "money is the root of all evil", derived from the Latin "radix malorum est cupiditas", the creed of the Pardoner in his prologue and tale from The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. This itself is taken from 1 Timothy 6:10 (King James Version): "The love of money is the root of all evil...etc." - and "radix enim omnium malorum est cupiditas" in the Vulgate of Saint Jerome.
- One of the asteroids to which Cubert and Dwight deliver papers seems to be the planet inhabited by the Little Prince. The first time they deliver papers, the Prince catches his with no problem; the time with Hermes shooting them from a gun, however, he gets hit, and flies off into space crying "Au revoir!"
- Cubert is shown playing with a device similar to a Game Boy.
- Bender considers calling his beer Botweiser, a reference to Budweiser beer.
- While flying through the asteroid belt the dog chasing Dwight and Cubert is eaten by a giant worm in a crater, a parody of a scene in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.
- Professor Farnsworth having himself declared dead as a supposed tax dodge, though he had really only been taking a nap in a ditch in the park, is probably a reference to a similar tax dodge used by the character Hotblack Desiato in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy book series.
- Several scenes feature references to the NES game Paperboy.
- Bender is shown reading a Victoria's Circuit catalog while he is sitting on the stove in order to brew beer inside of him. Victoria's Circuit is a parody of the clothing maker Victoria's Secret.
- A beer mentioned in the episode is given the name of St. Pauli Exclusion Principle Girl. This combines St. Pauli Girl beer and the Pauli exclusion principle.
[edit] Continuity
- When the blob-boy takes Cubert and Dwight's lunches, Dwight screams, "My manwich!", the same thing his father Hermes screams in "The Deep South".
[edit] Production notes
- This episode had a delayed release because Bumper Robinson, who played Hermes' son Dwight, moved to China for 10 months mid-production.
- Klein bottles of beer can be seen near the start of the episode. This is a visual joke, as klein bottles are really four-dimensional objects and cannot be properly formed in three dimensions.
- The periodic table on the lunchbox has only 107 elements, actually fewer than the number known to exist when this episode aired, and two less than the number of named elements at that time. This is unlikely to be a mistake and is most likely intended as a visual joke.
