Reprinted with permission from www.survivingcollege.com

Part 1: 2-D Blacktop

Put on your 2-D glasses, because it’s the new season of Futurama! What? You didn’t get 2-D glasses in your box of Admiral Crunch? Well, then maybe just cover one eye. You only have one eye? Oh I give up.

The crew has to deliver a very delicate chandelier. Before they even get out of the atmosphere, the Planet Express crumples up like a heap of garbage and is taken to the Impound Lot 136, “The Happiest Place On Earth.” But the Planet Express is Farnsworth’s baby, so he is determined to fix his shippums, and…Speed Buggy! Oh, how I’ve missed you!

Anyway, just as the broken down ship is about to drop into the incinerator, it flies away, trailing duct tape and string in its wake. Back on the open skyway, Farnsworth gets into a war of words with “hoodlums” and enters a drag race. “Twice around Central Park,” with the loser making the winner’s Medicare co-payments for a year.

It’s like a bad action movie, with a kangaroo pimp named Pimparoo and a lot of turning and burning to escape the Po Po. But “Wrinkles got some mad moves, yo!” and Farnsworth throws Old Bessy into the Dimensional Drift, earning the drag racers’ respect and evading the police who get distracted pepper spraying some homeless families. The racers invite Farnsworth to hook up with their crew, and despite having no idea what that means, he enthusiastically joins their gang.

Meanwhile, Leela shows everyone their “safe new ship” which will knock everyone’s socks on, where they belong. There’s no windshield because those are breakable, and it has a nice boxy shape for safety rather than speed. They take their flying toaster on its first delivery, but with everything running so smoothly, Bender is bored. Bender is bored! Bender is bored. Bender is bored!

Farnsworth visits his new gang’s garage, which is where they trick out their ships and discuss feelings.  When they take the newly improved Planet Express out for a spin, they run into Leela in her flying toaster. After words are spoken, the ships battle it out on a Mobius drag strip. “No cops, no laws, no rules.” Leela goads Farnsworth into trying out his Dimensional Drift, but it confuses the old man into flying in the wrong direction…and straight into the flying toaster, causing both ships to collapse into the second dimension.

The second dimension is like the third dimension, but without the dimensionality. Farnsworth, Fry, Leela and Bender are learning the rules—step around, not past; sometimes you can only see vertical line segments; and two-ended digestive systems cannot exist in the second dimension as it would divide a two dimensional being into separate pieces. To avoid starving to death, the group tries out the Dimensional Drift one more time. It works! They can see the third dimension, and they’re saved. Everyone has renewed depth and a fully functioning digestive tract. Whew!

Part 2: Fry and Leela’s Big Fling

When Leela and Fry make a big deal about going home for the weekend completely alone, without anyone else at all, just me and my Calvins, you kind of know something is up. But an evening in the Planet Express locker room isn’t exactly surprise and romance, despite Fry’s best efforts to prepare a meal made of Things Around The Office. As he gazes lovingly into Leela’s eye, Scruffy mops up. So the couple decide to take a quiet walk in Central Park…where Bender is out for his nightly crime spree.

An attempted mugging evaded, Fry and Leela somehow end up at a fancy restaurant, eating a meal of giant ants served by Zoidberg. So they go to Leela’s apartment to be alone and listen to “Just The Two Of Us.” When Nibbler interrupts their cozy evening, Leela receives targeted advertising for the perfect getaway.

The Planet Express is loading up the ship with old timey cars that are being delivered to Simian 7, the planet of the apes. Fry and Leela tell Farnsworth that they are taking some time off for a vacation, and it works out well because humans are not allowed on Simian 7. Because Amy is human and also needs to pilot the ship, Farnsworth dresses her up in marmoset pajamas.

Leela and Fry arrive at their vacation bungalow for rest and relaxation. Leela wants to go skinny dipping by the light of the fireflies, but Fry is afraid that someone will see “wingus and the ping pong boys.” But it’s vacation, and they are the only two people at the resort, so he dives in anyway…and so does Leela’s ex boyfriend, Sean. His shuttle broke down so he couldn’t leave, and here he is.

Leela hangs out with Sean at the bar. He noodles on his saxophone and bores Leela to tears because there is nothing less interesting than a saxophone player. When mechanical hands decline Fry’s invitation for the evening, he fights for Leela’s attention. Then, Sean’s wife arrives in a “hooter hammock” and calls Leela a hussie before departing in a freshly repaired shuttle. That leaves Leela and Fry to fight amongst themselves.

Over on Simian 7, Bonobo Associates is waiting for their old timey car order. But the chimpanzees don’t want the cars, they just want the tires. For office chairs. Of course. Amy’s disguise doesn’t work out so well when she runs into an old classmate, Gunter. He shows everyone Colobus Circle, and explains how terrible humans have been towards primates. He then takes them to the Pick-And-Eat, which is exactly what it sounds like. Next, the zoo, where the animals don’t even know that they’re in captivity.

Fry ends up apologizing to Leela because he’s a man, and when they are finally alone, they’re not really alone so much as in the human habitat on Simian 7, with countless primates watching the couple make sweet, sweet love. Amy, Zoidberg, and Bender try to talk the zoo director into freeing Fry and Leela, but the zoo director explains that humans have been vacationing there for years, voluntarily. The director then plays footage of Fry and Leela speaking openly and honestly about their friends, and Amy is exposed as a human in marmoset pajamas. The group escapes into an adorable prairie elephant cage and then into the human habitat…but first have to pass through a moon worm. Which takes one week. Which means Fry and Leela have already finished their vacation, none the wiser.

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