The Sting (Futurama)

"The Sting"
Futurama episode
File:Futurama ep66.jpg Fry and Leela paint Bender like a bee.
Episode no.	Season four
Directed by	Brian Sheesley
Written by	Patric M. Verrone
Original air date	June 1, 2003
Episode features
Opening cartoon	Unknown

"The Sting" is episode twelve in season four of Futurama. It originally aired in North America on June 1, 2003.

Plot

Professor Farnsworth tells his crew that they are not good enough to go on a mission to collect honey from giant space bees, a mission which killed his previous crew. Though Bender and Fry are relieved at the news, Leela takes offense and drags them along the mission.

At the giant hive in space, Leela paints Bender like a bee to distract the other bees while she and Fry collect the honey safely. The crew discover the remains of the previous Planet Express crew and ship in the hive, but Leela insists that they press on, even though they find the black box, revealing the past crew's grisly deaths(the previous captain seemed very similar to Leela in wanting to prove the Professor wrong). After gathering the honey, Leela decides to bring home a baby queen bee and some royal jelly in order to produce more honey without worry. On the way out, Bender inadvertently insults the hive's queen, causing the bees to attack. The crew manage to escape without pain, but in the ship the baby queen awakens and attacks the crew, impaling Fry with its stinger and pricking Leela. Bender disposes of the bee and Leela awakens with a minor wound on her body, but Fry appears to have been killed, as the stinger went all the way through his chest.

At Fry's funeral, a remorseful Leela blames herself for Fry's death. His body is shot into space (similar to the ending of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan), and everyone grieves his death. After taking some space honey to calm herself down and help herself sleep, Leela experiences a series of dreams in which Fry is alive, all of them ending with Fry telling her to "wake up" and Leela abruptly awakening. In one dream, Fry tells Leela that there is a gift in his locker; Leela finds it after she awakens. In another dream, Fry gives Leela his red jacket; Leela awakens to discover that she is wearing it. However, Professor Farnsworth's GizMomEter reveals that Fry is irretrievably dead. The jacket turns into her jacket when she presents it to the crew, and it is entirely possible that Fry could have told her about the gift in his locker, and her grief-stricken mind wiped it out, but she experienced the memory in her dream. This leads everyone to believe that she is going insane. She explains to the crew she was taking space honey, but Zoidberg warns her, for three spoonfuls of honey causes a permanent sleep.

Shortly afterward, Leela begins to experience delusions while she's awake. Bender tells her not to worry, and the entire room falls away as Bender's statement mushrooms into a whole song called "Don't Worry; Bee Happy", in which characters console Leela before being stung by an anthropomorphic bee, swelling up, and exploding. Finally, Bender explodes, and Leela finds herself back on the Planet Express table, where Bender informs her that he wasn't singing, and that he had a court order forbidding him to do so. Leela flies the spaceship over to Fry's coffin, deciding to steal his corpse and keep it under her bed to remind her that he's dead. When she opens the coffin door, she falls into a psychedelic display, and then inexplicably wakes up in her apartment. There, each of her walls have turned into the faces of her coworkers, telling her: "You killed Fry! you killed Fry!" over and over. She tears them to pieces.

In despair, Leela resolves to consume enough space honey to fall asleep forever and be with Fry in her dreams, but a photograph of Fry begins to speak and implores her to stop. As Leela is being attacked by bees, Fry's photo tells Leela that he loves her and pleads with her to "wake up" one last time.

Cut to a disheveled, weeping Fry at Leela's bedside begging her to wake up. Leela awakes and finds Fry is alive. Fry explains that Leela was the one who was poisoned; Fry was merely impaled with the stinger and needed a spleen transplant (which came from a man who loved to ride motorcycles). The rest of the Planet Express crew come in, overjoyed that Leela is finally awake. Amy explains that Leela was in a coma for two weeks and that Fry stayed at her side, talking to Leela just to see if she'd respond. At the end, they both gratefully hug one another for helping each other, then privately agree they both need a shower.

Production

The idea from the episode was originally inspired by an idea to kill off one of the characters and the story came together in a matter of hours after that. At one point in the episode, Leela is crying and takes a tissue to dry her eye. However, when she does this, she tears the tissue in half. The audio commentary notes that this was an inside joke referring to when the writers were all sick in the writer's room and saved tissues by tearing them in half.

Broadcast and reception

This episode was nominated for an Emmy in 2003 for Outstanding Animated Program (For Programming Less Than One Hour). Writer Patric Verrone was also nominated for an Annie Award for "Writing in an Animated Television Production". In 2006 this episode was named by IGN as number 24 in their list of the 25 best episodes of Futurama; the episode was included in the list because of its advancement of the relationship between Fry and Leela. The Futon Critic rated it number 48 in its list of the top 50 television episodes of 2003. This episode is one of four featured in the Monster Robot Maniac Fun Collection, indicating it is one of Matt Groening's four favorite episodes.

In its initial airing, the episode received a Nielsen rating of 2.4/5, placing it 81st among primetime shows for the week of May 26 - June 1, 2003.

Cultural references

• The title is taken from a 1973 film set in 1937 involving grifters. Bender wears an outfit in the beginning similar to the hero's outfit.
• Hermes Proclaims to be from Jamaica, the 'show-me island', in the same way Missouri is the "Show-me state'
• The scene where Leela looks into Fry's coffin and sees a tunnel of shape and color parodies 2001: A Space Odyssey.
• The scene where Leela wakes up with Fry's jacket on her is in a similar way to A Nightmare on Elm Street.
• In one of Leela's dreams, Fry appears in a way similar to the Cheshire Cat---as a smile hanging in the air, then his body forms---except he has his hair as well.
• The song 'Don't Worry, Bee Happy' is an homage to 'Don't Worry, Be Happy.'
• When Hermes finds that Leela is awake, he cries "Sweet three-toed sloth of Ice Planet Hoth!"
• The scene where Bender distracts the bee and then ejects it through the airlock references the film Alien.
• The plot has similarities to Ubik, by Philip K. Dick, because it involves the main characters suffering an explosion and a narrow escape, the main characters find evidence that they are dead, while the plot is moved on by people in comas.
• Fry is buried in a manner similar to Star Trek tradition.
• Another plot similarity---Soul Survivors, where the heroine believes her boyfriend dead, when, in actuality, he is inches away from her in the hospital.
• Zoidberg's advice is similar to the Navajo saying regarding Jimson Weed "Eat a little, and go to sleep. Eat some more, and have a dream. Eat some more, and don't wake up"

External links

• The Sting at The Infosphere.