Fry and the Slurm Factory
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| Futurama episode | |
| "Fry and the Slurm Factory" | |
 |
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|---|---|
| Episode no. | 13 |
| Prod. code | 1ACV13 |
| Airdate | November 14, 1999 |
| Writer(s) | Lewis Morton |
| Director | Ron Hughart |
| Opening subtitle | Live From Omicron Persei 8 |
| Opening cartoon | The Simpsons shorts |
| Guest star(s) | Pamela Anderson as the Bikini Girl |
| List of all Futurama episodes... | |
"Fry and the Slurm Factory" is episode 13 in season 1 of Futurama. It originally aired in North America on November 14, 1999.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
The episode opens with an advertisement for Slurm, a highly popular and highly addictive soft drink. The ad announces the beginning of a contest: whoever finds a golden bottlecap inside a can of Slurm wins a free trip to the Slurm bottling plant on planet Wormulon, as well as a party with Slurm mascot Slurms MacKenzie. Fry resolves to find the bottlecap by drinking massive quantities of Slurm.
Bender walks in sick, and Professor Farnsworth uses it as an excuse to test his experimental "F-ray", a device that enables people to look inside anything. After repairing Bender, the professor leaves the F-ray in the custody of Fry and Bender. After trying the F-ray out on random objects (including Fry, and sterilizing him in the process, although this was reversed before the events of "Roswell That Ends Well"), Fry realizes that they could use the F-ray to scan Slurm cans for the golden bottlecap. After checking thousands of cans, they give up on finding the winning can, and return the F-ray. Fry settles in to relax with a Slurm, and chokes on the bottlecap.
Cut to Wormulon, where the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory spoof begins as the Planet Express crew arrives at Slurm Centralized Industrial Fabrication Unit. The crew takes a riverboat tour down a river of Slurm through the factory, and see the Grunka-Lunkas sing their song. Overwhelmed with thirst, Fry tries to drink from the river (not realizing that it's not in fact Slurm), and falls in. Leela dives in to save him, and Bender joins them for no good reason ("Everyone else was doing it. I just wanted to be popular"). The three are sucked into a whirlpool and deposited in a cave under the factory.
Under the factory, they discover that the factory they toured was a fake. Making their way through the tunnels, they discover Slurm's true nature: it is a secretion from the anus of a giant worm, the Slurm Queen. They are discovered and captured by the worms. Leela and Bender are placed into overly complicated death traps and left unguarded. Bender is placed into a can-making machine. Leela is hung over a vat of royal Slurm which will turn her into a Slurm Queen. Fry is fed ultra-addictive "super-slurm", so that he cannot resist "eat[ing] until [he] explode[s]". (The Queen planned to market Leela's inferior secretions as "New Slurm" (a spoof of New Coke), thus making her own more successful.) Fry, Bender and Leela escape, but are pursued by the Slurm Queen. Slurms MacKenzie, exhausted from his years of partying, arrives and sacrifices himself to save Fry, Leela, and Bender.
When they escape, the Slurm Queen bemoans that the company is ruined, and disgustingly drinks her own Slurm, direct from the source, as a comfort. However, Fry is so addicted to Slurm that he keeps the nature of Slurm a secret so that it can continue to be produced.
[edit] Cultural references
- The entire episode, including its title, is a parody of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which is a movie adaptation of the novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl.
- The clip on the billboard in the opening credits features Bart, Lisa and Maggie from the old Simpsons short movies on the Tracey Ullman Show.
- Slurms MacKenzie is a parody of Spuds MacKenzie, the Bud Light spokesdog.
- The Slurm Queen, coupled with the way she excretes Slurm, is a parody of the Alien Queen in the movie Aliens.
- When the F ray is used on Bender, it can be seen that one of his components is labeled "6502". This is a reference to the 6502 computer processor, used in early home computers and the Nintendo Entertainment System.
- Leela and the professor playing 3D scrabble is a reference to the 3D chess in Star Trek.
- When the short cut scene of the Professor and Leela comes up playing a quad stack style Scrabble, the Professor's letterboard says FUUTAMR. This is an anagram of Futuram, which is the series name missing an A. The boards themselves also have variations of words combined. The first board has the words "Donut one ENU". The second board has the words "prop only". The third board has the words "Matt Area", most likely meaning Matt Groening's area . The highest board has the words "one eye".
- Leela's statement that "something is rotten on the planet Wormulon" is a direct parody of the famous line "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark" from Shakespeare's Hamlet.
- The plot to create New Slurm is a parody of The Coca-Cola Company's attempt to introduce New Coke.
- Before Slurms MacKenzie's death Bender says "Party on Slurms" and Slurms replies "Party on contest winners", this is a reference to Wayne's World.
- Soylent Cola is a reference to Soylent Green (1973), a futuristic film where the plot twist at the conclusion reveals that the "miracle food" Soylent Green is actually produced from the remains of euthanized humans.
- In the Alienese at the end of the contest ad, part of it says, "And the elusive Yak-Face". This is a reference to the hard to find figure from Kenner's 1983 Return of the Jedi action figure line.
- The authorities that were contacted to end the production of Slurm was the Bureau of Soft Drinks, Tobacco, and Firearms, a parody of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, citing that in the future, soft drinks are more harmful than alcohol products.
[edit] Goofs
- In the scene just before Bender incinerates the couch, we see that Amy has no earrings. In the following scene after Dr. Zoidberg diagnoses Bender, Amy has earrings again (only to have them stolen in the next scene).
[edit] Alien Messages
- At the end of the Slurm commercial near the beginning of the episode, three messages are displayed in succession, the last is in Alienese and reads "THE FOLLOWING SPECIES ARE INELIGIBLE: SPACE WASPS; SPACE BEAVERS; ANY OTHER ANIMAL WITH THE WORD "SPACE" IN FRONT OF IT; SPACE CHICKENS; AND THE ELUSIVE YAK-FACE."
[edit] Production Jokes
- In the slurm factory gift shop Dr. Zoidberg can be seen wearing a t-shirt with the Hebrew word "שלורם" written on it, pronounced Slurm. A more common spelling would have been "סלורם", but this option might have been chosen to resemble the famous Hebrew word shalom (שלום).
