Bender Gets Made

"Bender Gets Made", also known as "Bendfellas", is episode 13 in season 2 of Futurama. It was originally shown in North America on April 30, 2000.

Plot

The Planet Express crew attends a taping of Elzar's television show, much to the joy of Bender, who secretly wants to be a chef. Bender continually disrupts Elzar in the middle of the show, until Elzar accidentally sprays Leela in the eye with his spice weasel. Leela, who is now temporarily blinded, is forced to wear an eye patch to protect her eye until it is healed. In order to make up for the incident, Elzar invites the entire crew to dinner at his restaurant, serving them the most expensive and appetizing things he has to offer. After the dinner, he actually bills them, despite the crew being led to believe that the dinner was free. Unable to afford the $1200 bill, Elzar solves things by having them arrested. However, Bender convinces Elzar to let Bender work for him to pay off the debt.

While working at Elzar's restaurant as a busboy, Bender meets the Robot Mafia, and is offered a chance to join them. He jumps at the chance of doing something he enjoys for a living: stealing (Elzar indifferently allows him to quit his job). Bender works hard for the Mafia, quickly becoming one of the Don-bot's favorites under the nickname "Blotto" chosen by Bender because "It's gritty, it's got street cred. Plus I can keep my monogrammed slippers." Unfortunately for Bender, the whole job turns sour when the target of the Mafia's long planned Zuban Cigar heist is the Planet Express Ship. In an intense space battle, Fry defends the ship and steers it at the same time, pulling strings strung between the ship's wheel and the gun turret to steer the ship; Leela is still confident in her piloting skills, but blissfully unaware that she is in fact holding Nibbler's dinner bowl, as she is still blind. She realizes her mistake upon feeling the raised letters on the bowl that spell "Nibbler", and promptly returns to the actual wheel. Unfortunately, her hindered skills allow the Mafia to destroy the fuel line. The Mafia board the ship, reveal that they are the "entire Robot Mafia", blindfold Fry and tie him up with Leela. Bender realizes that if Fry and Leela hear him, his cover will be blown. In a crazy attempt to avoid being discovered, he changes his voice to "king's accent", and pretends to beat himself up when the Robot Mafia finds out a robot was on the ship (Bender was pretending to be sick to disguise his whereabouts from Leela and Fry). He is almost discovered when Leela's blindfold comes off, but since her eye is still healing she can only see a blurry silhouette. The ship gets robbed, but instead of blowing the ship up and leaving with the Mafia, Bender remains on board, telling the Mafia he will take care of them. When they fly away, he ties himself up using his arms, and makes up a crazy story to remain unexposed. Back at Planet Express, Leela's eye has recovered and she thinks Professor Farnsworth was part of the Mafia, for he matched the silhouette she saw. Bender quits the Robot Mafia to stick to plain crime instead of organized crime, though not until after Tinny Tim gives him his fraction of the loot in which he literally eats the money.

Introduced characters

• The Robot Mafia
  • Donbot
  • Clamps
  • Joey Mousepad

Censorship

On FOX, Comedy Central, and the DVD version, Professor Farnsworth yells, "Sweet Zombie Jesus!" after seeing the check. On Cartoon Network and TBS, the "Jesus" was muted out.

Cultural references

• The police batons are visually similar to lightsabers. However, they are functionally different; instead of being used as blades for cutting, they are used as nightsticks for beating.
• The character Elzar is a reference to the television chef Emeril Lagasse as is his television program and restaurant.
• The laser guns the Robot Mafia uses look almost exactly like the Thompson Sub-Machine gun which is the stereotypical gun used by the original Mafia.
• URL refers to the "Marmaduke" newspaper cartoon.
• MmmTV, the channel that broadcasts Elzar's television show, is a reference to MTV.
• Leela's eye is treated at the Taco Bellevue Hospital, a reference to Taco Bell and the real Bellevue Hospital. To further this reference, one of the doctors appearing there is a parody of the Taco Bell spokesman of the time, a talking chihuahua-like alien.
• Bender correctly guesses that the Robot Mafia's "private lottery" is an illegal numbers game; Clamps insists they are into "nothing fancy, you know, ones and zeroes mostly", a reference to the binary numeral system used in computers.
• "Sammy 'the Mechanical Bull' Gravano" is a reference to real-life mobster Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano, an associate of John Gotti.
• Clamps says, "Bada-climp bada-clamp" which is a reference to "Bada-bing bada-boom."

Continuity

• A deleted scene had Bender cross out his serial number, 3370318, and replace it with "14" as a means of hiding from the Mob. However, the crossed-out serial number was shown to be 2716057, the serial number given by Flexo seven episodes prior in "The Lesser of Two Evils". This was meant to imply that at some intervening point Flexo had taken over Bender's life. The scene was removed after the creators decided it would irk fans and render the later episode "Bendless Love" (in which Bender impersonates Flexo in order to prove that Angleyne still loves Flexo) entirely incomprehensible.
• Bender comments that his food tastes good even though it was established in "My Three Suns" that Bender has no taste buds.
• Smitty describes his motivation for becoming a police officer - the failure of his father's restaurant business due to 'dine and dash' thefts. This contradicts "Space Pilot 3000" in which it was originally established that a person's job was assigned to them rather than chosen.
• Much like in other episodes, Dr. Zoidberg is treated unfairly: when Leela damages the Planet Express building during an attempt to take off while blind, Hermes states that the repair costs will come out of Dr. Zoidberg's pay.
• The Masked Unit in "Raging Bender" can be seen in the background in the Little Bitaly scene.
• Professor Farnsworth says, "Holy zombie Jesus," he used a similar phrase in the episode, "The Deep South" (which was also censored when aired on Cartoon Network and TBS, but not FOX, Comedy Central, or on the DVDs).

External links

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• Bender Gets Made at The Infosphere.