Farnsworth invented a button that sends the whole universe ten seconds into the past. To test out the button, he crams everyone into his time shelter, to shield them from the button’s effects. Leela asks if he can send people back in time as much as they want by pressing the button over and over. Sadly, it’s not possible since the button takes ten minutes to recharge.

Fry and Bender borrow the button to steal some diamonds for Leela’s engagement ring. Real classy diamonds that will make her “crap her pants.” Fry takes Leela out for brunch and says that the next time she almost dies, he wants it to be as his wife. The ring is hidden in a giant clam which chomps off Leela’s hand. Luckily he has the button handy and sends them back ten seconds so he can stab the clam into submission before she reaches for the ring. “Fry! This is all so sudden, after thirteen years!” He then tells her that if the answer is yes, she should meet him at the top of the Vampire State Building so that he can make the sunset last as long as possible.

When Leela doesn’t show up at the appointed time, Fry jumps off of the building. On his way down, he sees Leela heading to the entrance, admiring her ring. He also sees a clock and realizes that she’s not late after all, it’s just that his watch kept running every time he pressed the button. To remedy the whole plunging to his death thing, Fry pushes the button again. But he has been freefalling for more than ten seconds, so he gets stuck in an endless loop of horror.

When Farnsworth realizes that the button has been stolen and someone has been pressing it every ten seconds, he orders everyone into the time shelter. They can’t leave because of something about the button being pressed less than ten seconds later and not getting sent back to the right spot and tearing and ripping through time. Bender confesses that he knew it was Fry who stole the button. They scootch on over to the Vampire State Building without ever leaving the time shelter so that they can save Fry. Unfortunately, Fry fell asleep while plunging towards the earth and lets go of the button. Splat. Big splat. Big, messy splat. When the button hits the ground, Leela grabs it and presses it to save Fry. But Farnsworth is outside of the time shelter and…something about being shredded.

So now Leela and Fry are in an endless loop of Fry plunging to his death, splattering all over the sidewalk, and Leela sending him back into a freefall with the push of a button. “You know those dreams where you’re falling and right before you hit the ground you wake up? Those are great!” Bender devises a plan to run out there and save Fry with his airbag. It works, until Fry lands on the button and it freezes everything in the universe except for Fry and Leela. Oops.

Fry and Leela wander through New New York, taking whatever they want (including those earrings Amy borrowed and never returned). When Fry proposes again, Leela says that she would marry him even if he wasn’t the last man on earth. So they go to sleep on pandas in the zoo, with koalas as pillows. Because they can.

The next day, the happy couple assembles all of their frozen friends in a church and exchange vows. They go on an endless honeymoon, growing old together in a frozen world, the only two still-moving people on earth. And when they are anciently old, they drink the champagne they were supposed to enjoy back when the world still did all of the things it is supposed to do.

Then, a buzzing glimmer of something-or-other turns into a time portal. Out walks Farnsworth, who has been searching for the time button the whole time. Fry hands him the smashed time button in a plastic baggie, and Farnsworth fixes it in no time flat. He then zaps everyone back to the instant before he invented the time button, and Fry and Leela live their lives all over again.

The end.

Zoidberg waits for his lady at the bus depot and brings her flowers but she can’t handle his “personal musk,” also known as stench. He tries to return the flowers to the flower merchant lady who does not take refunds. Then, a robot tries to rob the flower stand and Zoidberg fights him off with his stinky armpits. This wins the love of the flower merchant, and she doesn’t even mind his odor which is “smellier than a whorehouse’s outhouse.” Conveniently the flower merchant, Marianne, was born without a sense of smell. It’s a match made in heavenish.

At the local recreational center, Randy introduces the five “Tapquest” participants, including Petunia (that extra clicking you hear is her hip), a six-year-old named Tonya with a heart condition, and Bender in leg warmers. One participant will be eliminated each week, beginning with a slimy green thing, then Petunia, followed by a twenty-legged creature. Finally, it’s Bender versus Tonya in the championship round.

Zoidberg introduces Marianne to the crew and they wonder what’s wrong with her. He explains her lack of smell, and Farnsworth mentions the possibility of a nose transplant. Zoidberg must never let Marianne know about the nose transplant, for his own good. The two lovers go on a picnic and he picks her a flower. She says that she would give anything to smell a flower. Zoidberg tells her about the nose transplant that will let her smell everything, and she says that she wants the biggest nose he can find.

Bender plans to put tacks in Tonya’s tap shoes—the more she taps, the more she bleeds. But Tonya eavesdrops on his plan and Nancy Kerrigans his leg. Because Dr. Zoidberg is too busy with Marianne’s nose transplant, Bender has to patch up his leg with a Wacky Pack sticker. Then, it’s time for “some fancy shmancey dancey” in a tap-off. Bender loses his foot and dances on his hands. Tonya taps her way to victory, and Bender “never knew I could hate this much” and vows to tap dance on her grave someday…just as she drops dead of a heart attack. Bender does a jig on Tonya’s corpse and the “rhythmic chest compressions” bring her back to life. Because they’re both irredeemably evil, they join forces to rule the galaxy.

When Marianne finally smells flowers, she thinks they’re disgusting. Zoidberg, on the other hand, smells delicious because she never learned good smells from bad. All she knows is that she likes Zoidberg, so she likes the way that he smells. Aww.

Reprinted with permission from www.survivingcollege.com

It’s Flomuary and March of 3013 near Planet Z-7, and there’s a strange sound traveling through outer space. By Arbor Day, it has reached Planet Earth. Hermes calls his friend Shazam to figure out the name of the song (which, SPOILER ALERT AND/OR CAPTAIN OBVIOUS is from Close Encounters of the Third Kind). Professor Farnsworth decides to track Fry’s brainwaves to figure out what part of his brain is triggered by the sound to narrow down the tune.  He isolated a memory from Dec 31st, 1999, the day Fry fell in the freezer tube. Because the memory still exists in Fry’s unconscious mind, Farnsworth induces a dream state to recreate the moment he hears the music.

Fry’s old apartment, his old turtle, his old burrito, his old girlfriend….and his old breakdancing crew. Their funky fresh beats were not what Fry was looking for, but maybe the neighborhood strip club will be helpful. Unfortunately it’s blank since he never went in there. He wakes up screaming to the tune of an ice cream truck that almost ran him over. Fry has been asleep for nearly two weeks, which is when the alien ship is expected to arrive on Earth.

Fry gets back into his dream and is greeted by his dog, Seymour. He sees his family and greets his mother who is preparing Cap’n Crunch casserole. Farnsworth is worried because Fry is wasting time with his loved ones instead of searching for he source of the music. Fry doesn’t want to go to work because he knows that he’ll fall into the cryogenic freezer and never see his family again, but his brother reminds him that if he gets fired from his job, he’ll never pay off his debt to the Columbia House Record Club. Leela arrives to keep things moving along. Nobody seems surprised to see her because it’s a dream. She gives him a little more time, but asks him to hurry because the world is ending and “your dream pants need changing.” The rest of the gang barges in, including Agnew and Nixon’s head. Fry’s father kicks the commie head out of his house.

Fry tries to burst back into his house, but it’s blank because he was never in his house past 10 p.m. on December 31, 1999. Fry takes everyone to the “stupid pizzeria where I worked that night” so that they can locate the tones. While making a delivery to I.C. Weiner at Applied Cryogenics, Nibbler confesses that he was there the whole time to make sure that Fry fell into the freezer tube.

Then, Nibbler tosses Fry into the freezer tube again, sending him and everyone else forward to the present. Fry heard the tone, plus two extra notes. They all go to Mount Shushmore to play the extra notes to the aliens. The ship lands and it’s adorably tiny. Inside is Digby, Nibbler’s associate. He explains that as Lord Nibbler’s personal chauffeur, the two went out for drinks, got blotto, lost the keys to the ship down the drain, and they had to take a cab back to their base. Since that time, he has had to go from planet-to-planet looking for the ship. The music is the tune fro the key fob. Fry shows Digby the ship out back behind Applied Cryogenics.

That night, Fry visits his mother in his mother’s dream. They hug, and it’s a sweet little moment.

Reprinted with permission from www.survivingcollege.com

Bender beat up Carlos, the elderly one-legged cowboy who lives next door, and took his cowboy hat. So they all go line dancing. Leela finds it enjoyable because there’s no touching and lots of rules. Bender tries out the mechanical bull and sets a new record for the shortest ride.

Everyone else gives the bull a whirl to hilariously predictable results. But when Leela takes her turn on the bull, her hand gets stuck and, well, the mechanical bull gets shot and Leela has a new bar record. Turns out she’s breaking out in suction cups, which is the first phase in the process of squidification. There’s no treatment other than insanely expensive medicine that will delay the process by a few months, and Fry pledges his unsquidified love for Leela and promises to find a way to get the money for the medicine. Leela is despondent. “Isn’t it bad enough that I occasionally lay an egg? Now I have to be a squid, too!”The group decides to sell the Planet Express to raise the funds, but Fry is an idiot and trades the ship for two giant magic beans. Farnsworth calls him an idiot and the beans end up out the window.That night, Leela decides to move underground, to the sewer. But just as she pulls up the manhole cover, she sees the giant beanstalk and decides to give it a climb. At the top, she finds a deluxe apartment in the sky, complete with rainbows and unicorns and “it’s like a fairy tale….” until she is captured by Momsanto. It’s her floating genetic engineering facility. The magic beans are actually genetically engineered combination elephant/bean beans. There is also a pine-u-porks—the delicious treat with built-in toothpicks.Momsanto tells Leela that she has some freaky genes and wants a look-see. A struggle ensues, and Leela’s boot falls from the sky. Luckily, they landed on Fry and Bender, who travel up to the deluxe apartment to rescue Leela. Fry and Bender find Leela in the castle’s tower, but her tentacles have grown to insane proportions and, as Bender says, “That’s nasty!”Bender bends the door open and the trio make their escape from the tower and straight into the genetically engineered laboratory. In the lab, they find a giant. For some reason Leela frees him from his shackles, and he fee fi fo fums them all over the place. They manage to dive down a drain, which leads to Momsanto’s headquarters. “Well, look what the giant cat dragged in? Memo to self—breed giant cat, to drag things in.”As Leela holds Momsanto’s henchmen in a headlock with her tentacles, Bender and Fry steer the cloudship with questionable skills.  But, Leela is able to grab onto the top of a building and swings everyone back to safety. Hurray! Momsanto lands in Leela and Fry’s precious moment to thank Leela for helping her to genetically engineer her beans. With suction cups so that the beanstalks don’t fall down. Then, she cures Leela of her squidification, which shuts Leela up about the unknown long-term effects of genetically modified thingamabobs.

Oh I see, it’s a little like Escape From New York. Leela and Fry realize they’re wearing the wrong gang colors so Leela takes off her top….and turns her shirt inside out. Only she screwed up, and Fry finally finds out if he’d crap his pants if someone stuck a gun in his face. Somehow the Blips and Cruds make peace, and then not so much, and everyone shoots themselves in the face with the bent gun barrels.

Meanwhile, Bender got botjacked. They stole everything but his mouth and eyes. Luckily Herme had a rojack installed. It leads to a chop shop, where they find Bender’s head. The rest of the parts were sold, and the crew is left with only a list of buyers. The first stop is a sex shop. Naturally, it’s Bender’s antenna. But it was already sold to a senator. He’s through with it because it has already done everything and everyone imaginable. Then, a college dorm where Bender’s body is being used as a keg. Once it’s empty, he’s 40% back. Robot arms in a casino, where an extra pair of arms come in handy. Timmy gets a double leg transplant. “No more crutch or withered leg, someone’s sure to adopt me now!” Yeah, Bender takes his legs back. But he’s still missing his ass, which shipped out on a freighter on a ship that sank in a spacestorm. “My ass is my soulmate, it even has its own hindbrain.” Bender has a lot of tuchus pride.

Leela, Fry and Bender go in search of Bender’s ass and get caught up in some interstellar fog. They smash into a lighthouse. “Are ye hurt?” “No, but we could use a hug.” The guy who runs the lighthouse makes a living salvaging whatever washes ashore, and he once got an entire Blue Man Group. He’s willing to help find Bender’s ass for a cut of the booty, which means “a percentage of the value of the recovered goods.”

The booty call is at daybreak, at which time the crew goes on an underseaspace mission to find the shipwreck. Bender recovers his beloved ass, and just in time because a storm is a brewin’. Fry takes pictures of Bender biting his own shiny ass, and the flash from the camera alerts another ship, the Muy Caliente, that the lighthouse is in their bath. Because Bender’s shiny ass saves the day, the lighthouse guy convinces Bender to leave it behind so that it can alert other ships. Bender’s ass, which has been named Assie, has a destiny, and Bender cannot stand in its way. He finds solace in the knowledge that somewhere out there, Assy is doing good.  Sort of. Assie spins out of control, saves a kid from a gravity well, and returns to Bender. “Assie? You came back to me!” Aww.

Images via The Infosphere

Reprinted with permission from www.survivingcollege.com

Today’s Celebrity Buzz is all about All My Circuits, starring the late great Calculon. The celebrated robot actor killed himself on stage, and loyal fans, including Bender and Fry, pay tribute at his gravesite. The show just hasn’t been the same since Calculon’s death. When Farnsworth lets them know that they can bring Calculon back to death, if they have his physical remains, Bender digs up his grave on live TV, and heeeere’s corpsie!

Calculon’s disembodied software is in limbo, so someone needs to go to Robot Hell and make a deal with the devil. Sounds like a job for Bender and Fry. When the Robot Devil hears it’s Calculon’s soul they are looking for, his ear-like protrusions perk up and he cuts a deal: If Fry wins, they get Calculon. If Fry lose, Robot Devil kills them. “Guess the number I’m thinking of, between one and three, not including one or three.” Fry guesses the letter “m,” and the Devil packs up Calculon’s soul in a to-go cup. Getting the soul back into Calculon’s robot body involves playing the installation disc backwards and a series of wireless networks. It’s working! His acting module is booting up! “Rosebud. By The Bard’s Quill, I’m alive!” After one long dramatic pause, Calculon is off to Hollywood.

Reprinted with permission from www.survivingcollege.com

It’s morning at the White House, and President Nixon’s Head wants to watch cartoons. He flips on the teevee and settles into The Futurama and Friends Saturday Morning Fun Pit. Kicking off the wacky antics is Bendee Boo and the Mystery Crew.

So to avoid any confusion, I’ve made this handy dandy charticle:

Planet Express = Mystery Express

Hermes = Fred

Leela = Daphne

Amy (very improbably) = Velma

Fry = Shaggy

Bender = Scooby-Doo

We clear? Good. Here, have a Bendee Brew.

The gang is confused by a laugh track and drives the Mystery Express right into a mystery. To quell Fry’s hunger, Hermes pulls over at a kabuki theater where the group hopes to find a concession stand but instead find George Takei. Because nobody goes to kabuki theater anymore, the snacks are old and Fry and Bender eat them anyway.

For whatever reason, Zoidberg and Professor Farnsworth have a cloning lab in the theater. Naturally, the Harlem Globetrotters arrive to show off their moves. They’re in town for the big game and are helping their friends with the cloning machine. Oh good! They cloned Larry Bird! No, a whole team of Larry Birds!

I guess the very thin plot line is that the dragon ghost of the kabuki theater wants to stop the Harlem Globetrotters from practicing. The dragon ghost visits Fry in the middle of the night, and Hermes ties his ascot before organizing the worst search party ever.  Things get cloned, the dragon ghost takes a bathroom break, and Amy figures it out. It was Zoidberg! But when Leela goes to rip off Zoidberg’s mask, she gets his entire face. Luckily, the dragon ghost wandered into a cage, and it’s George Takei. But why’d he do it? Because he’s mentally ill. Mystery solved.

After practicing against five Larry Birds, the Harlem Globetrotters feel ready for their big game…against six Larry Birds. Sad trombone sound.

A crowd forms outside of the White House to protest cartoons. To pacify the huddled masses, President Nixon watches Purpleberry Pond, which I guess is a spoof on Strawberry Shortcake? It’s a cartoon that I’ve never actually seen (I was more of a Smurfs kind of gal), so we’re about to get very literal.

Leela is the Purple Princess. There’s a commercial for Sugar-Blasted Purpleberry Puffs, which are the sweetest part of your complete breakfast. Everything’s purple, and then Fry shows up. He’s Lord Loquat, and he’s orange.  But even though he’s different, everyone accepts him because the color of your berries doesn’t matter. Then, a commercial for Sugar-Blasted Purpleberry Puffs with Loquat Flavored Orange Berries. Yeah, this is looking a lot like my childhood.

There’s an evil Professor “berry burglar” who wants to get his hands on those healthy purpleberries, a flying Zoidberg, and it’s snowing sugar…which leads to a commercial for Sugar-Frosted Sugar-Blasted Purpleberry Puffs.

And now it’s time for G.I. Zapp, which is the code name for a heavily armed group of mercenaries. But the “stupid voters” are still unhappy because the cartoon is too violent. So President Nixon changes it to an elite group of peacekeepers, and everyone is happy.

G.I. Zapp is tracking A.C.R.O.N.Y.M., A Criminal Regiment Of Nasty Young Men. Something something something, lots of parachuting into enemy fire, the Professor has extraordinarily ripped abs, blood, violence, and it’s time for a P.S.A. Two kids fight over a football, and President Nixon’s Head has Agnew rip the football in half.  “Now You Know Something.”

And the moral of the story is, cartoons are fun and it’s a wonder we turned out so well.

Reprinted with permission from www.survivingcollege.com

The Planet Express arrives at 11-Worth Variable-Security Prison to transfer a prisoner. Leela does her best to get hooted at by the prisoners while Bender and Fry spot Silicon Red, the greatest folk singer in the galaxy, being released from prison.

Since Bender suddenly has a lifelong dream of becoming a folk singer, he asks for Silicon Red’s autograph…and everything he knows about folk singing. But Silicon Red is no dummy and stops Bender from stealing his guitar. Bender, however, is also sometimes not a dummy and takes a photo of the guitar, stores it in his hard drive (which also contains 100 terabytes of porn), and has an exact replica made from a 3D printer.

Bender names his new guitar Bender Mae, because Bender may be the greatest folk singer of all time. While Bender was having his guitar made, Fry got himself frozen in carbonite. Bender doesn’t notice because he’s too busy thinking about his big break in folk singing, which must involve original songs since all existing folk songs are all public domain and therefore of no monetary value.

In order to maximize his profits, Bender writes his own folk songs using a time-tested formula of 36% working on a railroad and being named Big Something, 75% bad hearted women, and “somebody kill somebody blah blah blah.” Using that simple formula and Silicon Red’s ability to generate an audience, Bender plans his career as Rambling Rodriguez, the new greatest folk singer ever.

Unfortunately, Bender gets booed off of the stage because his song is insincere, and Silicon Red tells him not to come back until he’s lived a life worth singing about.Bender wonders, “How can I be so bad at everything I try, and still be so great?” Leela explains that he can’t write a song about experiences he hasn’t had. Fry suggests writing about the heartless robot and his best friend, and Zoidberg suggests living on the railroad. Guess which one Bender chooses?

At a railroad bar, Robot finds a down home Robot named Big Caboose with a big ol’ hammer and bad grammar who has never been to the slammer or Alabamer. Bender finds a home at Railroad Camp, directing the work. Fry and Leela deliver explosives to the Railroad Camp and check in on Bender. Since Fry is still hostile after Bender abandoned him at the jail, Bender writes Fry into his latest folk song as the friend who turned his back on him. Then, Bender meets Big Caboose’s girlfriend, Jezebel, a female robot who is both lonely and easy. Yadda yadda yadda, Big Caboose comes after Bender for stealing his girlfriend. Leela and Fry notice that this follows the plot of Bender’s folk song a little too closely, and decide that reality is infringing Bender’s copyright.

Big Caboose chases Bender into the Robot Arms Apartments, where Fry lives. Bender begs Fry to hide him, but Fry wants to teach Bender a less on and turns him away. So Bender turns to Leela who explain that everything from Bender’s “brain” is being 3D printed.

To test it out this theory, Bender thinks about a giant octopus. Well, a lot of giant octopuses. Then, Leela has an idea—all Bender has to do is write his way out of the mess he’s created. So Bender thinks up a great ending for his folk-song-turned-real-life, which involves Bender being flattened by a train. But first, he copies himself, and the Big Caboose “killed the duplicate instead of meeeee!” Bender and Silicon Red then take their new sell-out rap act on the road, where they are met by sell-out crowds.

Reprinted with permission from www.survivingcollege.com

Over on Omicron Persei 8, Jrrr’s father, Lrrr, is watching Help from Angels, the new cop show that follows the format of all cop shows ever. Lrrr takes a break to help Jrrr earn a merit badge for planetary invasion. But, he chooses the easiest plant in the galaxy to invade—Earth. Their spaceship lands at the White House because all spaceships land at the White House.

The Head Of Richard Nixon gets the door, and Lrrr lets him know that he’s there to invade his planet. The Head Of Richard Nixon and Zapp Brannigan immediately surrender. Jrrr wants to leave, but Lrrr reminds his son that “those bowels aren’t going to disem themselves.” So Lrrr kills Nixon’s second-to-last Agnew and Jrrr and Lrrr get home in time for their favorite cop show. To retaliate, The Head Of Richard Nixon cancels all “cultural exports,” including television.

Farnsworth sends everyone to Omicron Persei 8 on a mission to get the active ingredient for his Good News herbal supplement. When Hermes realizes it’s the Omicronic, he packs everyone onto the “Omicronian Express” and busts through the blockade. Then, he divides everyone into pairs to look for the weed.   Luckily Bender’s ass is leaking enchantment. Or, his electrofield is activating the weed’s luminescence.

Fry happens upon a castle and tells Bender to let him know if they need to cheese it. When Omicronians find them and the crew rushes back to the ship clutching their baggies filled with Omicronic, Fry gets left behind. Bender then spends the rest of the journey covering up for Fry’s absence and feeling sort of bad about it.

Jrrr goes outside to play skull ball by himself and finds Fry hiding in the shed, E.T. style, including a trail of Feces Pieces. Fry figures out that Jrrr’s father is Lrrr, and they bond over Lrrr’s horribleness.

“T text home? Update Facebook status home?” Unfortunately the embargo on “cultural exports” means no social media. Instead, Lrrr takes Fry on a bicycle ride through he sky to a tech dump. Fry uses the electronics to spell out “SOS.”

Bender is eventually so broken up over Fry’s absence that he starts drinking again. When he holds a bottle up to his eye, he is able to focus in on Fry’s SOS message. Meanwhile, Lrrr finds Fry hiding in Jrrr’s closet and insists that Jrrr kill him, probably to earn another badge. “It’s a nice day, you’ll take him out to the yard, and after you kill him, we’ll play catch with his bladder.” Jrrr faces his “beloved pet” with a gun, but instead of shooting Fry, he shoots a hole in the cage and escapes in a bicycle powered by love, which is an ordinary thing on that planet.

Jrrr takes Fry to a vet, Drrr, who gives him weed to ease the pain. Drrr then recommends putting him down. But Jrrr won’t let him, even when Lrrr shows up to do the killing for him. But good news! Nobody has to kill Fry because he already died. And then his ass starts glowing, and Bender shows up, and Fry says goodbye to Jrrr and returns to Earth.