Love and Rocket
Production Code: 4ACV03
Original Airdate : Sunday February 10, 2002
Written by : Dan Vebber
Note: This capsule is still a work in progress. Send
additional comments or missing information to tomg at io dot com or
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Synposis
Love is in the air when Bender finds himself involved in a shipboard
romance....with the ship. When the Professor upgrades the Planet Express
spaceship's software with a sexy female voice (guest star Sigourney Weaver),
Bender falls hopelessly in love. But when the ship discovers that Bender is
unfaithful, she charts a course for self-destruction, and it's up to Fry
and Leela to save the day.
Title sequence
Opening theme promotion :
WHEN YOU SEE THE ROBOT, DRINK!
Opening theme cartoon :
unknown
Did You Notice?
... The Planet Express ship was colored grey when it passed in front of
the Horsehead Nebula?
... Garbage was being used to produce the heart shaped boxes?
... The Conversation Hearts candy pieces were made of Bone Meal and Earwig Honey?
... The wireframe dummies in the Romanticorp Romance Acceleration Lab
were modeled after those used by psychologist Harry Harlow in his experiments
on surrogate mothers for rhesus monkeys?
... The lady rowing the boat was accompanied by the wire frame dummy
she fell for in Romanticorp's Romance Acceleration Lab?
References (movies, books, etc.)
+ Love and Rockets
Comic book by Hernandez Brothers. Title of the episode.
+ The Care Bears
Basis for genetically engineered Lovey Bears produced by Romanticorp.
(see comments)
+ Mountain Dew
Sponsor of Extreme Elk exhibit. (see comments)
+ 2001: A Space Odyssey
Red light interface for the ship and irrational, rebelious misbehavior
in the same vein as HAL-9000.
"I'm sorry Leela, I'm afraid I can't do that."
Inability of Planet Express ship to read the lips of crew hiding in shower
stall.
Brain Room
"Daisy" song sung by Bender. (see comments)
+ Friends
TV show Lurr is watching when Planet Express delivery arrives from Romanticorp.
+ Spaceballs
"Shields on full Yarnell" (see comments)
+ The Matrix
Scrolling matrices of green numbers on screen while Bender loaded his programming into the ship.
+ Tron
"Inside the computer" visualization when Bender and the Planet Express
Ship merged their programing.
Freeze Frame Fun
>> Buildings/Signs
Welcome to Romantic
Milwaukee
Birthplace of Beer Goggles
Romanticorp
A Division of General Emotions
sign on Lovey Bear stuffing machine:
Bear "Hospital"
Central Park Zoo
Now With More Goats.
Other zoo signs:
Mountain Dew Presents
Extreme Elk
Howler Mummies
Tapirs
On screen caption while ship is approaching Omicron Persei 8 planet:
Omicron Persei 8: 247 Days Without Invading Earth
Animation, continuity, and other goofs
When Bender is sitting on outside on the ship's wing on a picnic sheet
(right word in that context) it is moving as if there was air in space
The Planet Express ship is hit by five of the Omicron Persei 8's torpedoes, but has more than
five damage spots.
Previous Episode References
(nothing yet)
Other Comments
The lovey bears in the beginning, where Amy mentions something about
them kissing, is a take-off on the Hallmark kissing bears
that have magnets in their mouths, so they stick together.
The "Mountain Dew Presents" exhibit was a reference to the Mt. Dew commercial where a twenty
something males endures a horn-ramming territorial dispute with another male Elk to protect
his soda. The commercial itself is a spoof on the animal program Wild Kingdom.
The song "Daisy" was programmed into one of
the first computers to synthesize voice in the late 1960s. When "2001: A Space Odyssey" came out it was very cutting edge. It was one of the first
demonstrations that a computer could make recognizable speech. At the end of
"2001" when David Bowman is dismantling HAL's logic circuits, HAL begins to
sing "Daisy" in a slow, distored fashion as if the song were leaking out
of a deeply neglected speech test from a memory unit.
The first scene of the Planet Express ship flying through the
Asteroid field very much resembles the intro movie of the action shooter
Descent II released in '96 where the material defender is docking on
Valhalla Tower. Same camera perspective and almost the same ship
movement.
When Leela disconnects the ship's Carbonated logic unit,
she mentions that she won free admission to Six Flags. Six Flags is a
chain of amusement parks in the States, and in the spring and summer
months, Coca-Cola runs a promotion where you get $5 off admission if
you bring an empty specially marked can with you. I don't know if they
ever did a free admission thing though, I don't drink Coke.
Shields & Yarnell were a male-female comedy team who showed up quite a
lot on the Sullivan show in late 60's-70's. The team did a lot of mime-type
work and the female half of Shields and Yarnell did the actual body work for
the character of Dot Matrix (the C3PO parody voiced by Joan Rivers) in "Spaceballs".
Contributors
Capsule authored by Tom Georgoulias, using postings from alt.tv.futurama
Joe Klemm
Tom Georgoulias
Ken Lilly
Jym Dyer
Moon
Larry Finkelstein
Patrick Denny
Daniel Dreibelbis
Lyle McDonald