I Dated a Robot

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Futurama episode
"I Dated a Robot"
Episode no. 47
Prod. code 3ACV15
Airdate May 13, 2001
Where Flag of United States United States
Writer(s) Eric Kaplan
Director James Purdum
Opening subtitle NO HUMANS WERE PROBED IN THE MAKING OF THIS EPISODE
Opening cartoon Private Snafu
Guest star(s) Lucy Liu
Season 3
January 2001 – December 2002
  1. Amazon Women in the Mood
  2. Parasites Lost
  3. A Tale of Two Santas
  4. The Luck of the Fryrish
  5. The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz
  6. Bendless Love
  7. The Day the Earth Stood Stupid
  8. That's Lobstertainment!
  9. The Cyber House Rules
  10. Where the Buggalo Roam
  11. Insane in the Mainframe
  12. The Route of All Evil
  13. Bendin' in the Wind
  14. Time Keeps on Slippin'
  15. I Dated a Robot
  16. A Leela of Her Own
  17. A Pharaoh to Remember
  18. Anthology of Interest II
  19. Roswell That Ends Well
  20. Godfellas
  21. Future Stock
  22. The 30% Iron Chef
List of all Futurama episodes...

I Dated a Robot is the 15th episode in season 3 of Futurama. It originally aired on May 13, 2001.

Contents

[edit] Plot Synopsis

Fry decides to do all the things he always wanted to do, and the Planet Express crew obliges. After demolishing a planet, visiting the edge of the universe, and riding a dinosaur, one of his few remaining fantasies is to date a celebrity. Fry and Leela venture into the internet to visit nappster.com and download a celebrity's personality. Fry downloads the personality of Lucy Liu into a blank robot, which begins projecting an image of her.

Fry and the Lucy Liu robot begin dating, aided by her being programmed to like Fry. The other Planet Express employees, concerned about his relationship, show him the standard middle-school film (similar to Boys Beware) on the dangers of dating robots. Unfortunately, Fry ignores the movie and keeps making out with his Lucy Liu robot.

Bender, offended by the concept of competing with humans for the attention of female robots, sets off with Leela and Zoidberg to shut down Nappster. He breaks into the back room, and discovers that Nappster has been kidnapping the heads of celebrities and making illegal copies of them. Leela grabs Lucy Liu's head and the four take off. The Nappster CFO loads a backup disk of Lucy Liu, and creates a horde of Lucy Liu robots ordered to kill.

Leela and her group, running from the robot horde duck into a movie theater, where Fry is seeing a movie with his Lucy Liu robot. Everyone ducks into the projection room. Zoidberg discovers a five ton bag of popcorn, and sends it pouring onto the robots on the theater floor. The robots eat their way out from under the popcorn. Fry's Liu robot points the projector at the other robots, and the heat causes the popcorn to pop, bursting the robots. At the request of the real Lucy Liu, Fry blanks his robot. A hypocritical Bender begins dating Lucy Liu's head.

[edit] Quotes

  • Zoidberg: It's funny, you live in the universe, but you never do these things 'til someone comes to visit.
  • Jeff Jervis: You can't shut us down. The Internet is about the free exchange and sale of other people's ideas. We've done nothing wrong!
  • Zoidberg (While spinning): Did you see me escaping? I was all "Whoop whoop whoop whoop whoop"! (Mimicking The Three Stooges)
  • Leela: This is Fry's decision. And he made it wrong, so it's time for us to interfere in his life.
  • Professor: Oh, dear. She's stuck in an infinite loop, and he's an idiot. Well, that's love for you.
  • Bender (To Fry): Stay away from our women! You got Metal Fever, boy! Metal Fever!
  • Bender: Humans dating robots is sick. You people wonder why I'm still single? It's 'cause all the fine robot sisters are dating humans!
  • Fry: Well, so what if I love a robot? It's not hurting anybody.
  • Hermes: My God! He never took middle school hygiene. He never saw the propaganda film.
  • Bender: What is the world coming to? That Fry's a sicko pervert, I tell you. Dating a robot! It's an atrosmacy!
  • Leela: But Fry's our friend, Bender.
  • Bender: Aw, jeez, would you stifle there, meatbag?
  • Leela: You stifle, Bender.
  • Zoidberg: Hooray! Finally you're standing up to him.
  • Liu: Thanks for rescuing me. Especially you, Bender. (sexily) Mmm. Quite a masculine piece of metal, aren't you?
  • Bender: Hey! Don't look at me like that. If you're thinking of crossing the line with Bender, you can forget it. Bender don't bend that way.
  • Leela: They're making a human pyramid...of robots!
  • Robot Lucy Liu: (After Fry presses the erase button) I'll always remember you, Fry. (In robot voice) Memory deleted!
  • Robot Lucy Liu: I find your slack-jawed stare very attractive (mechanical voice) Philip J. Fry

[edit] Cultural references

  • Nappster is a parody of the Napster file sharing service. In this episode, the "napp" in Nappster apparently stands for kidnapping.
  • Hand Crafters is an obvious parody of LensCrafters, a company providing prescription eyeglasses and eye care.
  • When the alien humors himself over buying the Milky Way via eBay his bidding paddle has the number 666 written in the alien language on it, a reference to the Mark of the Beast.
  • The box of blank robots says Mac Formatted.
  • Metal Fever is a reference to the deragatory slang phrases Jungle Fever and Yellow Fever, used to describe white men who date black and Asian women respectively. It also refers to the phrase 'White Fever', used to describe black men who date white women.
  • In one scene, Bender tells Leela to "stifle there, meatbag" while sitting in a large brown chair. This is a reference to the line frequently uttered by Archie Bunker (as well as his famous chair) in All In The Family.
  • When they are being damaged, destroyed or otherwise harmed, the Liu-bots use many typical, clichéd phrases used by many science fiction computers and robots, such as "System Error", "Does Not Compute", and so forth.
  • Jeff Jervis may be a reference to Jeff Jarvis.
  • The guy behind (Kid)nappster says that in the room of the celebrities someone is going for the Tetris world record.
  • The line "I would've gotten away with it it wasn't for those meddeling adults!" is a parody of the line often used in the Scooby-Doo cartoon series.

[edit] Connections to other episodes

  • Lucy Liu's head also appears in the episode "Love and Rocket", still inside Bender.
  • Although the Professor says there is only one other parallel universe, the episode "The Farnsworth Parabox" proves otherwise. This could be explained, however, by the fact that the parallel universe inside the box in "The Farnsworth Parabox" was created by Professor Farnsworth himself and did not exist previously, or that he was unaware of the other universes, despite their existence.
  • In the episode "The Route of All Evil", it takes Bender, Fry and Leelah a week to travel to the edge of the universe to fictional planet Dog Doo 8 (Dog Doo 7 is where the universe actually ends). However in this episode, the trip was made within an hour and a half.
  • When Professor Farnsworth is showing Fry the video of why not to date robots, the aliens invading Earth destroy the planet in the exact fashion as they did when Fry was frozen in "Space Pilot 3000".

[edit] External links


Preceded by:
" Time Keeps on Slippin' "
Futurama episodes Followed by:
" A Leela of Her Own "