Talking Simpsons - Bonus Episode - Talking Futurama "Insane in the Mainframe"

Episode Date: July 10, 2024

The Talking Simpsons Network is taking a week off, so to fill the content gap, we've decided to post an episode of our Patreon-exclusive Talking Futurama podcast miniseries! If you like this episode and want to hear the rest (with more to come every month), head over to Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and sign up at the $5 level. Once you do, you'll have immediate access to all of our limited miniseries, covering animated shows like King of the Hill, Mission Hill, The Critic, and Batman: The Animated Series. So visit Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and sign up today!

Once again, television has given me a reason to live. Good news, everyone. It's Talking Futurama, where we like having discs crammed into us. And I'm one of your hosts, the more ashamed of myself than usual, Bob Maggi. And this is the Talking Simpsons Patreon's chronological exploration of Futurama, who is here with me today, as always, a doctor of Freudian circuit analysis, Henry Gilbert. Hi! And this month's episode is

Insane in the Mainframe. Oh, don't worry, Fry. I, too, once spent a nightmarish time in a robot asylum, but now it's nearly over. So long! Today's episode aired on April 8th, 2001. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history.

Welcome to the world of tomorrow. Oh, boy, Bobby. Spy Kids tops the box office. The Simpsons wrestling game is dumped onto the playstation one and there's a vote that fails to change mississippi state flag uh from the confederate one to a non-confederate one and it uh it won't be dealt with until this very year of 2021 and that was the premise of a famous south park episode it was indeed i believe called chef goes nanners yep okay yeah where the not great moral yeah yeah it's that is it in the end isn't every crime a hate crime i think that's what it was saying you know that was the one where it's cart cartman does

a hate crime to token that's uh but that was the one of oh the kids don't see race they don't see this as a lynching on here it's that everybody's the same color in this lynching, which is, you know, not every South Park moral hits it. It was a weird, like, sort of only racist-y racism kind of thing. That was, again, it was, you know, the year 2001. It's how we all felt. The Mississippi state flag is one of many state flags in the south that you know it had a certain state flag before the confederacy and then within decades after the loss of the confederacy they changed the state flag to some variation on the stars and bars like arkansas did the same uh miss mississippi north

carolina or no sorry south carolina many of them did as a statement of fuck you yankee we miss slavery like that was the statement of it i was embarrassingly old when i realized really what the confederate flag stood for and that's probably by intent they just want you to assume it's like oh this just means the south right and i was reading this story online where uh chucky cheese charles entertainment cheese uh the proprietor inside of his restaurants would have flags from every country. And one of those was the Confederate flag. And he had to be explained, like, here's what the flag means. And here's why it should no longer be a Chuck E. Cheese.

Thankfully, he listened. And the Confederate flags came down at Chuck E. Cheese. No, at Six Flags Over Texas when it started, the Confederate flag was one of them. You'd see it everywhere. And yeah, listeners may not know, I was born in Arkansas, and then our family moved to Georgia, and then spent another bit of my childhood in Florida. I am an entirely a Southern boy. So I say this from firsthand you know, not like firsthand knowledge of it growing up, like the Confederate flag was flown around is just like, oh, it's it's Southern culture. It's good old boys. It's whatever. But if you dig just even slightly deeper into it for others, for a lot of people, it represents something far nastier. And at the very least, Southern independence, like there's definitely like're yo you're a yankee from the north

screw you we're the south and that's our style but you know the south it's taking pride in your area like that using a token of um using a totem of hate and um chattel slavery like no fuck that like that's awful but so yeah and and in 2001 like it was this vote on changing the flag in mississippi was like a ballot measure it was popular enough to at least get to like a 40 percent to uh on yes to change the flag but but it stayed the same and it wasn't until really you know that very weird thing of 2020 into 21 many brave people going to the streets to say the cops are killing people please stop this and the cops tried to change as little as possible but every other part of popular culture was like we'll turn down the racism a little bit is that it's like well thanks and all the voice of cleveland stepped down exactly it's like well that's nice and stuff and

oh the mississippi flag changed uh way overdue or you took down these confederate memorials or whatever fine could the cops stop killing black people could that also happen please like that's that's people weren't doing those marches and political actions to change the flags or the monuments they want to let people know that black people are being murdered by the cops in an insane amount but whatever anyway when this episode aired they failed to change the flag and now they've they've since it finally well you know arguably more hateful and disturbing than that was simpsons wrestling yes a terrible playstation one game released in 2001 very very late in the system's lifetime i mean the ps2 was out yeah and uh i mean wrestling

obviously was very popular in the year 2001 and this was a good idea but not executed well at all when i did rank lists of best to worst simpsons games in my old games press job i would always tell people like you know hey don't sleep on simpsons wrestling is the dark horse worst game on this list like i know we all think it's probably bart man versus the world or the radioactive man one but it i think simpsons wrestling has a real shot as the worst one it's it's pretty wretched. And you can have like adults beat up children in the game, which is fun. I can't believe that got through.

Yeah. You'd think grading would go like, no, clearly too busy on Futurama to know that people were making games where Groundskeeper really could beat up Bart Simpson. Or Lisa. Or Lisa. Yeah. And Spy Kids. I was more of an Agent cody banks kind of guy that's my uh jimmy glick impression that's funny that's good i i don't know about any of these

movies actually i didn't see agent cody banks either but uh robert rodriguez i know he's cool which makes me think these movies must be good uh yeah i associate them with cleaning movie theaters in my early 20s uh and because uh spy kids that rodriguez is an incredibly prolific filmmaker like he made he would make a spy kids and another movie some years like he was that quick with it because he was also a guy who really adapted it to digital filmmaking uh earlier than most in in his field i didn't realize he directed all of these yes that's crazy and and i believe edited and did the soundtrack too and it's it was like it was the typical thing too of the edgy director has children and makes a film for his children but still gets his edgy friends to do stuff in it

like there's tons of major stars in it i believe the the parents of the spy kids are selma hayek and antonio banderas uh and i recall i never watched the movie themselves but i remember cleaning the theaters for spy kids 2 and it has the the flubs and blooper reel includes there's a scene in spy kids 2 or 3 where stallone is the villain sylvester stallone is the villain but but George Clooney is a character in the movie too. And there's a moment where George Clooney morphs into Sylvester Stallone as part of some plot development. And so Clooney has to do a Stallone impression

as he morphs. And the blooper is Clooney going like, like doing a very broad Stallone impression. And he's like, is Sly gonna get pissed at me doing this is this too much that was before the casamigos fortune hit his bank account yeah he's not doing this anymore he doesn't need none of that no more yeah i feel like people 10 years younger than us uh go nuts over these movies you know what on the on twitter i definitely see memes about things that

are for people 10 years younger than me or 20 years younger than me who grew up with this but i don't see spy kids get memed to the extent that say uh avatar the last airbender or um the harry potter films gets memed even though it's the same era with these spy kids films but or also like seeing now the insane like look i love the toby mcguire spider-man films when i was a teen as well but seeing the immense nostalgia that's exploding for it now now that the trailer for the big spider-man team-up movie of no way home is out i was like oh people really people younger than me really really really love the Sam Raimi Spider-Man films. You weren't thinking about all the kids in the theater with you.

I wasn't. Because those were for me. I was like, finally, they made a Spider-Man film for an 18-year-old watching Spider-Man movies. But yes, anyway, what a month this was. This episode, though, written by Bill Odenkirk and directed by peter avanzino uh peter avanzino former ren and snippy guy which makes sense given the content of this episode being painful and disturbing yeah and graphic and a person going insane as well a real like ren style screw like insanity scream from billy west later in this episode you know what i guess too for billy west

he'd done many of those scream and freak outs as well i didn't even associate that with like oh yeah this is like ren going crazy in a billy west episode only billy west can scream like that as a voice actor and yeah last month we did where the bugle of rome and you know i said it on that podcast but one of my least favorite episodes this in terms of just pure jokes is in my like top three it is so funny but also uh painful and disturbing and it just haunts me some of the things that happen to fry are like nightmares of mine so yeah that's uh that's funny i'd say this is a top 10 futurama for me but on the other side sometimes when it would show up in like an adult swim rerun or i was doing a play all on my dvds i sometimes would be like i don't know

if i'm in the mind space for this now because it seriously is like such an insane stress nightmare like it is you know for the people uh i i definitely have had nightmares of like oh i'm in the wrong place or i'm doing everything wrong and or everybody's crazy but me and i'm losing my mind like and fry suffers so much in this like they are so cruel to fry as a character uh a couple times it's like this is too far you've you've tortured fry too much and it does make you think what is happening to fry when we don't see him what horrifying things are happening to him we find out like he can barely eat yeah he can't shower or bathe or shave which is why he gets filthier and filthier in this episode he's starving he's having discs shoved into his butt all the time like it's he can't

he has to sleep standing up if he even can and then he can't sleep anymore when he's being stabbed like everything awful happens i feel so and then to find out this like i guess too there's lines about the extreme injustice of someone in jail who doesn't deserve to be there that like is too real and also reminds you of like oh yeah that's real life and that's sad too like this is really happening to somebody right now i remember uh like a friend and i watched this or we were talking about it the day after it aired and we were talking about all the fun jokes but then later we were like that was kind of fucked up though wasn't it that's a really fucked up episode and guess what it aired at seven o'clock p.m

insane seven o'clock on fox on a sunday night that is insane in the main frame that that would show up there i got a fry's butt is hanging out this whole uh episode too like dirty dirty episode yes and again fox they did not ask for they did not buy a 7 p.m show they bought a 9 p.m show and this is definitely a 9 p.m show content again it's like you ask yourself why do you even make a third season of this fox if this is what you're gonna i'm glad they did but if this is what you're gonna do with it why why who who made this decision is just to stay friends with mac reigning maybe or just to get to that syndication number and make money off of i mean we're only we're not even at episode 50 yet that's true we did that was part of our logic we were

parsing out at the start of this third season of just like maybe it was they said let's get close enough to 100 as we can let's keep it we're we're 30 deep already 30 something deep already let's get to 100 we can do it this episode though it kicks off with a cold open that just is a hint of how disturbing it will be in the future with this weird thompson's teeth ed yeah but i just i i mean it's a weird idea that i don't think works completely but i think the guy eating a bowl of teeth and just the way he bites down on a mouthful of teeth is uh in the foley and like the sound of like the teeth falling out of his mouth like the teeth parts it's like porcelain shattering yeah like it's hard yeah no it's um it rattles

around in my mind forever it is the cold open ad joke i think of when i think of the show even more than bachelor chow i think of teeth strong enough to crush other teeth and it's just like uh just i mean also like teeth breaking is gross like that is sticks in your mind but just the sound of it biting down on a mouthful of teeth yeah and just the way the guy bites down happily but it takes him like a bit of effort to do it i know it's it's insane but again it's letting you know this is going to be a disturbing episode it's true maybe it's to chase you off already it's like if you can't take this thompson's teeth out then you couldn't take the rest of this episode so get out of here if you're like six

years old your bedtime is probably eight o'clock so you're gonna be watching all of this and telling your psychiatrist about it's probably now yeah no 10 years later they were telling them like i've i've been having this nightmare of being stuck in a robot insane asylum and they find out like oh no that was a cartoon you watched when you were four it's just lodged and now it's on hulu you can watch it whenever you want uh and the the opening cartoon for this one it's another famous studio sing-along tune just like the last episode the guy shooting himself with two guns yes yeah okay uh so which really this cartoon would have been better for the previous one because it's a cowboy one and so is that but it that is the famous studios public domain 1947 cartoon the mild west which again has

a play on words it has a sing-along song at the end and it's just a bunch of cowboy jokes the last one was irish jokes this one is cowboy jokes and, this episode opens with a 10th anniversary party for Zoidberg. No one is into this, but Zoidberg is very happy because it's all about him. Yeah, you know, this confuses me. Every time I start up this episode, I'm like, oh, what Zoidberg episode is this? That it's about his 10th anniversary? Oh, it's not Zoidberg at all. I forgot how this gets to the insane asylum, but it's all about getting them to the bank

to be accessories to a robbery that's all this is building the pathway to a uh a seller an anniversary to a uh to a liquor store to a bank to a courtroom to the insane asylum a lot of a point a to b to c to d to e to get us to act two. And Hermes has to do the minimum obligations for this ceremony. And he reads from this manual where I assume he's supposed to be selecting which of these options to read out loud. But he says, dear employee, has it really been five, 10 or 15 years? He hates Zoidberg so much he would never even bother to switch out words on his behalf. I mean, you note here, too too i noted that farnsworth calls zoidberg our good friend zoidberg because farnsworth is the only guy who likes zoidberg

in the office he's he's that deluded to not be in on the zoidberg hates uh zoidberg gets the token of appreciation which is uh two coupons we only see what one of them is for yeah and it's a buy one get one free oil change coupon but he doesn't uh you can't afford the first oil change and he doesn't have a car so there's a lot of problems going on here with zoidberg but um she yeah they i like they say it's it's a vaudevillian on the commentary they note it's not only a vaudevillian style joke but delivered by a vaudeville style character in zoidberg and uh zoidberg is going to start reminiscing about all the patience he's seen and all the fluids gushing out of them.

And this is when Hermes shows him what his pension is. And it's zero because he didn't pay anything into it, you dumb stink bug. I love that. And then Zoidberg hugs him. He's like, I don't care what you just said. I need physical contact. Like an excuse for physical contact. You kept track of it all these years.

And this is when Fry starts to worry about his own retirement. Oh, no. I'm boned. I haven't paid into the pension either. What'll I do when I retire? I thought you were retired. Hey, I don't see you planning for your old age. I got plans. I'm gonna turn my on-off switch to off. Well, I'm gonna take action. It's time to check

on my retirement fund. Damn. Still only $100. A penny saved is a penny earned. Also, could you get some athlete's foot cream for my face? He's right. I've got to start investing wisely. Well, down to my last lottery ticket. Cherry. Cherry. Mule. Crud. So, you got six bucks left to retire on. I recommend tender vittles. So, yes, this lottery ticket thing came from something that happened to David Cohen in his life, but they didn't have the time to show the entire process in which I believe his mom won $100 worth of lottery tickets in a radio contest.

So, they scratched them all off and they won like $60. Then they use that 60 bucks to buy more lottery tickets, scratch those all off and won $4. So it just proves like, don't do anything lottery related. You'll always fail. Yeah. I,

I love a scratcher. I love scratching stuff off. I haven't bought one in a long time though, because I, I know it's a joke, but as a kid, I love scratchers. They were so much fun but uh yeah the i i agree with bender's plan on off switch to off there there you go and retirement uh here's how i interpreted his one joke was it an r word joke

where he says i thought you were retired oh was that the joke oh are they getting away with a little dangerous joke there no i boy so i only read it as bender calling him lazy like saying like oh yeah i thought you are you were retired because you don't do any work or you're just lazy all the time but actually i i think the way bender said i thought you were retired like i think you're right i think there could be i think that's how they did it yes and this is the first appearance of Talking Money, by the way. Yeah, yeah. And we'll see that more in the future.

But I have a deleted scene. Yes, I wondered if you got this, yeah. And I will warn you that in these deleted scenes, there is going to be some temp audio, often by David Cohen, and it's very distracting. Very much so, yes. But here is the deleted scene. It will tell you what the money originally said,

and it will also have a scene of bender and fry in the convenience store spending some of the money damn still only a hundred dollars yo fry it's all about the me's he's right i'm gonna roll this into some higher yield investments here you go 100 lottery tickets what about you sir can i recommend some malt liquor for your portfolio? Or a pack of Cancer Futures? Nah, I'm looking for a quick payoff. Just give me the liquor.

So there you go. So Benjamin Franklin had a It's All About the Benjamins joke, which by 2001, I'm glad they cut that out. Oh, man, I'm glad they cut that. Yeah, our previous guest on Talking Sims is Scott Gairdner. He wrote and directed this very funny video about parodying the Trump-era comedy shows of I Love You America and all that. And it started with Mike Mitchell dressed as Benjaminlin on a hundred dollar bill talking to somebody and his example of bad comedy he wrote that mike mitchell in ben franklin garb ends it with him singing like it's all about the me's baby so uh yeah this joke would have aged even worse if they

lived to see the parody of it uh but uh the takedown of it rather it's much funnier to hear him say like uh could you buy me some athlete's foot ointment? Like, that's better. Like, do a joke about him being trapped in there. Yeah, it's like the faces are sentient and they're infected by your, like, foot diseases or something. Yeah, they're a full AI that they're, like, every, so every dollar bill is alive with a president that talks. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner greener at electric ireland we can help guide you there you see our new net zero hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans

ev tariffs solar panels and much more making your usage clearer your trips greener your home cozier and your world brighter find our net zero hope at electricireland.ie uh but yeah they're also turning scratch and uh scratch offs into a scratch and sniff that's a cute little future idea i like that one it's like apple apple mule uh cherry cherry cherry mule do you think to the uh the mule joke later when the person uh the bank teller smells and thinks he's a mule farmer that's it so do you think that fry stinks as bad as mule always or that the scratcher has such a pungent aroma that it drifted onto fry and he still smells like i think he scratched off so many lottery tickets with mules on them that it all affected his body. Okay, I like that.

I like that. So they end up at Big Apple Bank, which we've seen before, and there's a hidden reference here. This homeless person outside of the bank is a real homeless person who was outside of Rough Draft Studios while they were making the show.

So I wonder if they ever found out, like, hey, that was me with my cart, or they're probably dead. Yeah, probably dead. I mean, you know what? It's cute and all, all but maybe give her how about you give her some benjamins yeah just putting her in the if you're if you're gonna joke about like hey let's draw like the lady who walks by here every day with their shopping cart give her some character payments or something yeah yeah but uh you're probably right then determined or not that homeless woman

is long dead it's been 20 years so uh there's a sign outside counterfeit money ask about her phony baloney account that's funny and this is when uh fry is trying to open his account he has six dollars but they charge ten dollars for a monthly fee and i'm sure a wealthy mule farmer like yourself knows this fry uh i love that i mean the the that overdraft fee like that is hardly a joke now like that's just every i get i get a oh you want to go paperless thing eight dollars yeah charge like you know i was mad that there was not an overdraft fee joke it's just like your account so he opens an account for six dollars it costs ten dollars to open an account now he's overdrawn by four dollars he should be hit with like a $35 overdraft fee,

like immediately. Absolutely. They're not mean enough to banks. No. It only happened to me once and it never happened again. It happened to me a few times just because I didn't pay attention. Look, now I'm doing what Union Bank of California wants me to do, which is blame myself. No, it's their fault. They're taking advantage of me. But I haven't been, I'll let you know, Bob, I have not been overdrawn in over a year. Were you overdrawn at the memory bank? I doppled many an anteater, I did. Well, I approve of that.

I also love the look on Fry's face when he is handed his overdrawn receipt, like your account is overdrawn by $6. And he's like smiling. It's so extra stupid of him he thinks he's being responsible uh so this is when we meet roberto uh who is just this weird looking menacing robot i love him i think it's dave herman doing like an eddie murphy impression but i can't be completely sure it's in that zone yeah i like well what yeah he's so he's so crazy and angry and on edge at all times and and an amazing design i love his face like it's just his spaced apart eyes are really great yeah on the commentary uh oh bill odenkirk is saying it looks like a moominshans puppet it does and i didn't know what that meant so i looked it up and it kind of does i i know the moment shots from they were on multiple uh muppet shows so i i saw them a lot and i they always

as a kid i'm not saying i remember them fondly i didn't like it when the moment shots came on it was silent like mimax for two to five minutes it's a bit creepy and alienating yeah what child wants to see that they like oh hey the colorful puppets are away they're not going to sing and dance anymore time to just look at people with like plastic faces um motion around asylum reminds me of uh la balloon sportif from mr show but those guys at least made noise yeah sportif yeah uh well this is when bender uh sees roberto i guess an old pal of his, probably involved with some crimes. I would think they've buried a few bodies together. I would bet.

Yeah. I also heard them say on the commentary that they designed Roberto's body to look like a tombstone, which I totally see now that they say that. That was a good move. And yeah, they're just catching up, being very casual. He's asking Roberto, like, oh, how you been doing? He's like, not bad, not bad. And he pulls out a knife.

He's like, this is a stick up I love that he says like you old lunatic which like yes he is insane he's a crazy this is a stick up with a knife robbing a bank with a knife is also very funny and that the bank makes no stop of him there either yeah everyone observes

his knife powers they're all on the floor Fry hides behind a plant and this is when we have a bank robbery. Yeah, I'm doing okay, too. I'm taking a Chinese cooking class at the Learning Annex. Cool. Can you give me a hand here?

Sure thing, pal. Hey, you! Red! Quit watering that plant and get the door! Well, nice talking to you. Same here. You guys are all right. Here's something for your trouble. Hey, thanks talking to you same here you guys are all right here's something for your trouble hey, thanks, buddy

Please punch you're under arrest shoot him in the back quick while they're not looking Court is in session the Honorable Judge Whitey presiding. The charge is bank robbery. Now, my caddy chauffeur informs me that a bank is a place where people put money that isn't properly invested. Therefore, robbing a bank is tantamount to that most heinous of crimes, theft of money. Now, in this episode, I notice most of the uh fry is too stupid to be afraid of things but in this episode he's afraid of a lot of things and it makes him very down to earth like when roberto tells him to get the door he like panics and runs and trips over a hostage he looks very shaken up yeah you know that's that is really well done on fry i guess

it also gets him already in the high strung mode mode he's going to be in for the second act. Yeah, you're right. I'm used to Fry being too stupid to be scared of something and not know the danger he's in. This is almost, you could say, out of character form, but I like it. I love him being so... The drawing of him, of the three of them together with his nervous smile which is just saying please don't kill me yeah that's so great and and who would can you believe it that the police arrived late and arrest the wrong person that's crazy that would never happen

today yeah i i also was thinking that cooking class joke you know now that really i was thinking like oh it'd be cool to take a cooking class. But that for me is just YouTube video. I just YouTube like, oh, recipe. Could I cook that? It's replaced most education and authority figures YouTube. No one will ever learn how to tie a tie from anyone but a YouTube video. I do that for the first time in years and I use YouTube to figure it out. Exactly.

And same with and on the opposite side, you know, for makeup tutorials, like that's what you're going to it's it's it helps everyone with everything you know uh we didn't talk much about retirement it's something that i don't think of and probably won't do because i'm lucky enough to have a job where i don't destroy my body every day only my brain only the brain gets destroyed so when my mom like well i'll talk to my mom every once in a while and she'll bring up retirement and things i should do and i'm like what do you what is this 401k who has those uh that's like yeah i know it's those suggestions my dad hasn't mentioned a 401k to me in a while but he used to and i was like what what am i gonna what do i need that for i had a 401k for about like eight months for the

one job that actually gave me one so like twice a year i'll get way too many documents about the two thousand dollars i have in my 401k it's like oh boy that might pay rent once in the year 2070 maybe no way actually no way that'll pay like a tenth of rent yeah that'll be like my grocery bill when i'm 80 exactly uh but yeah they make it to uh famous original ray superior court obviously we went over this before but a joke about the uh the many names of the many similar pizza places but there's one real one in new york and you have to find it i love judge whitey and hyper chicken they are so funny i laugh at them every time i wish i saw them more often like it's such you know the simpsons did so many courtroom scenes that it had to be a real challenge for all these simpsons guys to think of how do we do something that's ours and unique about courtrooms when the simpsons like mastered

it with lionel hutz and here they come up with like the richest judge ever and a hyper a southern hyper chicken yeah the simpsons never really did much with the judge the judge was usually the straight man in the courtroom scenes but yeah judge whitey obviously very biased the hyper chicken uh very incompetent to the point where he asked the surveillance camera, can you remember what happened? And we see the perfect image that's projected of Fry and Bender and Roberto seemingly in cahoots. And he says, I should be disbarred. Your Honor, I move that I be disbarred for introducing this evidence against my own clients.

It's a way to justify that, Joe. Like, why did I do that? That was a bad idea i should be fired my my license should be taken away from me it's also a perfect david cohen style joke of or just futurama style joke of they have a they have a rich white guy who would obviously be mad at a bank robbery more because he's rich but he's actually so rich that banks are unknown to him he's like who would put money in a bank he doesn't know banks he had to be told by his uh caddy chauffeur what a bank was and so then he has to then such a secluded way of saying like tantamount to the most heinous of crimes

theft of money and this is when fry is asked to testify i love i love him ask it being asked like do you recognize the robot a hugging on you and this here hologram that's great and then it's a black it's a year 3000 it's a collogram but it's still black and white like surveillance footage is black and white and i they could have done it slightly better but i do also like that when the image vanishes roberto is behind the picture of himself it's not like one-to-one because he's farther away but it's still a good visual i mean it's obviously roberto but he's wearing a fake beard but he pulls the beard down to show that it's him and he pulls out a knife oh that's great you know he fry is stupid enough to need that you know but

and that's when lila says uh fry just give a name you don't want to look stupid on court tv which uh is a joke because uh i think the joke here is that in the future court tv will air every trial even like these low rent bank robberies where uh in 2008 it became true tv which uh just airs like murder documentaries But I found out that in May of 2019, Court TV came back. It did. As a digital broadcast station. Oh, that's good. You can't keep a good brand down.

That's good. Court TV, I mean, everybody knows the name Court TV way more than True TV. Yeah. Especially with a stylized TRU TV. I did a little Court TV research, and I think we talked about it on something else,

but they started in 1991. They got their first big hits ratings with the menendez brothers trial right and then of course like two or three years later it was the oj trial and i think judges rightfully recognize that uh letting cameras into our courtrooms for these high profile cases makes it into a circus yes so i think that's why court tv had to do less courtroom coverage because they couldn't that's true they had to just get laws in state after state were passing of like well you can't film here you can't i this wasn't court tv but i on e when the um early 2000s uh court case against michael jackson uh was happening they i think they counted on being able to film in the courtroom and then when they couldn't they just did reenactments of the transcript every day and it's one of the funniest

just look up the reenactment like oh this guy is pretending to be chris tucker reading transcripts but he also is trying to do a chris tucker impersonation it's it's quite silly and i was just thinking about it if you go to uh any old snl clip of them doing a parody of the menendez trial or a parody of oj they will have a court tv bug in the corner because that's the the footage they were parodying i'm looking at the menendez one right now and they have the court tv bug in the corner of the sketch and and their camera angles have to parody the camera angles that were on tv they have to recreate those so it looks authentic so of course fry won't testify it was yes what you say

if i testify i'll be killed oh it's for you and the other hamburger will also be made of your lungs. So long, pal. I refuse to testify on the grounds that my organs will be chopped up into a patty. Ah, the 67th Amendment. I may be a simple country hyperchicken, but I know when we're finger licked. What do you say we plead insanity? A few months in an insane asylum? I could do that standing on my head. If you start now, it might help our case. Counselor, what evidence do you offer to support this new plea of insanity?

Well, for one, they done hired me to represent them. Insanity plea is accepted. Mr. Bender, I hereby commit you to the asylum for criminally insane robots until such time as you are deemed cured. Yahoo! The system fails again! And, Mr. Fry, I sentence you to the home for criminally insane humans. Your Honor, that facility has been full ever since you ruled that being poor is a mental illness. Order! Order! The only poor people I want to hear about are the people who

tend to my pores at the spa a lot of really corny jokes like uh try staying on your head it might help our case a bit or whatever i mean this though is uh very much in the style of jokes of oh anybody who uh it's all a scam claiming insanity it's just guilty people screwing over the system that should be punishing them like at very 90s way of looking at it i looked into it uh for some other stuff because i love true crime and uh you'd be surprised about the amount of like murderers and people who try to get insanity please and they clearly are insane but if at some point they realize what they were doing was wrong they cannot be found insane that is like really the the criteria there that's that that's crazy so you can hear voices and kill eight

women and bury their bodies and eat some of them but if you thought for a second that it was wrong and you tried to hide the evidence of you doing things then you cannot be found insane wow man jeez i mean yeah it's uh well i guess really it's just we're a vindictive society that wants to punish people, but not help them punish them. We don't have the resources to take care of the mentally ill. Absolutely not, no. I mean, these people fall through the cracks in the first place because of that. I mean, like Eileen Wuornos, like she was definitely, should have been treated for mental illness,

but wasn't, like she just fell through the cracks in the world but that the way the way bender says the system fails again it's like oh that's the mocking that shows you their feelings on the oh definitely and bender's like it's a big scam for bender like i get to go to this insane asylum i'm gonna have fun there it's not gonna be jail uh i also like that whitey is a witness to a crime intimidating a witness and he just takes it as for you like he doesn't care and and also very actually realistic of a very rich judge viewing the poor as evil like uh being poor is a mental illness yes uh what a dark joke though but bender and fry get wrapped up in bubble wrap uh fry gets the

defective electronics thing stamped on his head. They're put in a box. Instead of being carted away, the box is continually flipped over. That's great. So Fry is already suffering inside a box with Bender. You hear like, ow, my head. Ow, my feet. Ow, my head.

David X. Cohen says that's incorrect. It should be ow, my head. Ow, my side. Ow, my feet. Ow, my other side. Ow, my head. Yeah yeah he shouldn't be when if he's landing first on flat on his back then only when he's upside down um landscape mode wise that's when he'd land on his head and when he'd fall back down he wouldn't land on his feet he'd only land on it yes yeah it's uh but i uh i've i've uh gotten a heavy delivery and done the flip

move on it instead of carrying it i'm just like okay and up and over all right a little farther just wham usually it is a thing in there that is uh like an unbuilt uh bookcase or something usually yeah yeah the torture for fry starts here really he is already dehumanized and uh treated as like yeah the and the look on his face of like uh like his intense fear and i think though too something they completely forget in this episode after this is that fry is in a mental institution for a crime like it is because he is the the show never fixes the fact that fry was found guilty of bank robbery like they don't undo that i guess maybe uh being yeah i guess if he was found to be not insane then he'd have to go under trial again or something like a retrial or something i don't

know how it works in the future uh maybe when roberto gets arrested another time they decide like oh actually i guess it was was Roberto, not you guys. So we are cleared. But that doesn't seem likely either. So Act Two opens on the HAL Institute for the Criminally Insane Robots. And I like the insanity chirping birds floating above it in a circle. That's so great. Yeah.

And of course, HAL, the AI in 2001 A Space Odyssey that does go insane. Really? Wasn't he the sanest of us all in that movie i mean no he was gonna kill those guys because they were gonna shut him down he was crazy i mostly just looked at the fun screensaver the movie showed me oh man i love it yeah that's one of the best movies i should read that book someday but it's hard to think it'd be good as the movie and i believe it's david x cohen or perhaps bill and kirk that says on the commentary humans on a conveyor belt with bad things happening to them is a Matt Groening nightmare.

And this is like Matt Groening's brain on the screen right here. I think you can tell Matt Groening was programmed by watching cartoons that had, you know, Powerhouse would be playing as a guy goes down a conveyor belt to their doom. Just like as Pluto gets sent to hell or as a pig gets fed food like yeah but the violence would not be as realistic as to what happens to fry oh man it's not like a fun cartoon animal no the fry is stripped nude and that's how his humiliation begins like it's just so so the the extent to his dehumanization is hard, but it's even worse because they do the line you said early that Amy says to Bender is how he should feel. Bender, for Fry to suffer the most, Bender has to feel nothing for Fry and help him in no way. But to know that Bender is doing that to his best friend, the cruelty makes it worse.

It makes this whole situation that's already incredibly stressful 10 times worse because fry gets nothing from bender i guess i never thought of that because bender is only around for some jokes but yeah this is he's in jail sorry he's in an asylum with his best friend being tortured and bender will not help not in any way like he's like i take it like a robot he's like like and this point here is fried saying to him like well uh bender i'm not supposed to be here he's like like and this point here is fried saying to him like well uh bender i'm not supposed to be here he's like who cares like that's what they say in the conveyor belt so many of these jokes are perfectly set up though uh because he's saying you know once they see my

fragile naked pink body they'll know i'm not a robot that's when his clothes get sucked off yes he gets pushed off screen we just hear horrible noises and screams like something is happening to his body and the way that magnet is bashing him in the butt i'm like yeah i gotta think at some point he grabbed onto the magnet to get pulled up there because otherwise it would just keep smacking him like it's it's not even like cartoon violence it's just like what if something hits you in the spine like a metal object could do in the spine effect of it i i think it was odin kirk too on the commentary he said that like originally they wanted Fry to be nude

the entire time he was there. That like, because why would they give him clothes again? Like robots don't wear clothes. Yeah. Peter Avanzino wanted Fry to be naked for the entire second act, but they didn't even try

because they knew they couldn't get away with it. It's funny enough seeing his butt hang out. I mean, that is already humiliating too. Like he's not given like pants. Like, yeah. It's like the perfect joke escalation because there's three things that happen and you always see what happens to Bender first. Well, it's like, well, yeah, he's not given like pants like yeah it's like the perfect joke escalation because there's

three things that happen and you always see what happens to bender first well it's like well yeah he's a robot he can handle this the third one is the best setup of all time and i love this joke it's disturbing as hell though where bender we just see his face a drill comes in from off screen just drills into his head as he just like you know sings a nonsense song and he's just he's no problem with this at all then you see fry go up next and you're like what the hell is this going to happen now and fry has to like deep throat this drill so it won't drill into his brain and i i got a gif of it on twitter i'm like this scene is as disturbing as intended what's missing from the gif is fry screams as he has a drill in his mouth he's screaming as

the drill is in his mouth which means his like mouth obviously he's fine in the next scene but like his mouth has to be torn apart you don't want to have a drill in your mouth like in his his mouth closed around it it's just yeah i so upsetting like it's just incredibly upsetting to see but that is like one of the most perfect physical humor setups for a joke where just like you see Bender. He doesn't care. He's not affected. And then you're thinking, oh, shit. Fry is next.

What happens to Fry? Yeah. The X-ray one after it is it's funny, too, but not as not as much as the drill. They should have ended with the drill. Yeah. The X-ray one is like they X-ray Bender and we see like a bat floating around in his cabinet because I guess he's crazy. And then they gamma ray Fry and like whatever's in his stomach starts bubbling and he starts burping. And Bender just goes, I find that offensive.

The one time that Bender is offended by something is just a belch from Fry. It's a poor. And then the way Fry is dropped into the next scene is also just awful. Yes. Dr. Perceptron, the doctor of Freudian circuit analysis. And let's hear Fry get some therapy in this next clip. Greetings. I am Dr. Perceptron.

Let me give you something to help you relax. Look, there's been a terrible mistake. I'm a human being, see? I'm all squishy and flabby. Also, I complain a lot. Yes, you do. You need to relax more. Terrific.

Now consider the following. You were admitted to this robot asylum. Therefore, you must be a robot. Diagnosis complete. I do other human stuff. I age, see? I'm Nurse Ratchet. Please come with me, won't you? We'll meet your roommate next, shall we? His name is Malfunctioning Eddie.

The car dealer? Wow, I guess his prices really were insane. He's very excitable. So don't say anything to surprise him. Pleased to meet you. Actually, we've met once before. What? Great foley on that.

And like the little creaky sound effect afterwards. God, every Eddie explosion is the funniest thing too yeah another great date herman voice but that would kill fry being there but yeah i a lot i like fry should be dead after the conveyor belt frankly man that him begging i mean again it's like hilarious but also uh well dare i say kofka-esque oh yeah this is very kofka-esque it's the very definition of kafka-esque and those were my nightmares as a kid i read kafka a ton and just like oh yeah you wake up as this bug and you just want to go back but you can't and just the world isn't made for you and you're dying as you're surrounded by it and having having this doctor who you trust like oh this authority figure they can

help me see can't you help me? And he's like, no. And he just turns off and doesn't help you. Like, oh, every injustice that can happen to Fry also just keeps happening. And I'm glad they don't go all the way with the one flew over the cuckoo's nest stuff. They go halfway. I mean, like, the Simpsons did their parody 10 years before this so it is kind of too late but nurse ratchet is fine because it's a new take on that idea where she literally has a ratchet for

an arm that she can pull you in with they can at least turn nurse ratchet into a robot and do a new thing with it yeah i mean i i only watched one flew over the cuckoo's nest because it was in me too a million things starting with the simpsons i was like well i gotta understand this these i think you know when they when you see the lounge later they don't call this out on the commentary but the guys playing cards i think are meant to look like danny devito and christopher lloyd and the other weird i think so too because there's not really enough jokes when they pan across the room and just a bunch of collections of crazy robots but i think it's meant to be a parody of that scene of just like what's going on in the asylum when jack nicholson gets there and who are these people yeah yeah i mean that's the thing too like which they call out on the commentary they're like well it wouldn't be a one flew over the

cuckoo's nest thing if you didn't get a tour yes uh yeah and i love the joke uh will fry where fry goes see i age you can't do it on a podcast but the pleading smile on his face and him like like showing his hands against his face, like, look, look at my face. I'm aging, don't you see? Yeah, and saying it to the robot, Dr. Perceptron, who's already been turned off. But all this makes sense with the rules of robots

they've created to this point too. Like this is kind of a callback to when he moved in with bender and i robot of like this is where a robot goes to sleep is a closet and you're shoved next to another one and a robot wouldn't care but a human would i was very happy to see the return of the robot bedroom which is just a stall or a booth and just the fun angles they have to invent to get both characters in the same frame especially when roberto's in there trying to stab fry later oh man yeah i mean and and malfunctioning eddie bringing him back from the put your head on

my shoulders like that they could have just made up an exploding robot but then they realized they had an exploding robot already is is great that's that's them caring about their own continuity which i love so one thing i forgot to mention is obviously this is a parody of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the famous movie about a person who commits a crime and then gets off by pretending to be insane. I think in this case, Jack Nicholson sleeps with an underage girl, and that's why he's in the asylum. I forget that part of that. Yes, the fun main character we follow throughout the entire story. But yeah, this is the same kind of setup setup but i will recommend a movie unrelated to this i know they weren't thinking

about it but when i went to one of the noir festivals in the city uh in the past decade i saw this movie from 1965 called brainstorm it's a very little known neo-noir you can buy it on amazon it's one of those print-on-demand warner brothers things where you can't just go to the store and buy it but it is another take on the same guy gets put in asylum to escape a crime but in this case it's very much like fry in which he actually goes insane because of the quality of the asylum and it's very shot very well it's a great little noir and i love it that's interesting okay i'm gonna look that up please watch brainstorm know, I think these asylum jokes don't work anymore because like Reagan shut them all down. There's no social safety net to send people to asylums anymore.

So you can't do jokes about like, hey, here's where social services will stick you, like in an asylum like this one full of crazy people. And I mean, the conversation about mental illness has changed in the past 20 years. So I don't know how much these kind of jokes this kind of material would happen now but it feels like this we we our conversations are not about people wearing napoleon hats and having multiple personalities anymore you know it's a bit more nuanced than that yeah it's it's not the same as funny farm or they're coming to take me away like all of uh what which this episode is fully drawing from especially though what i love with bender with his napoleon hat is he's like well i'm in an insane asylum i better put on a napoleon hat like that's what you do when you're here

and uh david x cohen on the commentary was saying how uh they have like different index cards in their office for different ideas on the show. And the ones they reuse the most are trial, chase, and tour. And they have all three of these in this episode, a trial, a chase, and a tour in Insane in the Mainframe. Hey, they're always fun. It's dramatic or it's an easy way to set up just a bunch of jokes. Like we're about to meet four people. they're all a funny concept let's let's walk around and do that so yeah we get a bit of this tour and we see wig bot returning from the luck of the fry rich love that wig by combing his hair and saying i'm a pretty girl and uh wig bot was very normal in his first appearance but i think after they saw his design they're like well

we have to do a crazier joke with wig but he's just like a clown head on wheels with wigs on him. It's very creepy. It's quite creepy. And this is where Fry is complaining to Bender for any type of sympathy. And Bender's like, well, you could die. That'd show up. And Fry just goes, I don't want to. So it's like, I guess he's willing to die, but he doesn't want to at this point.

Unit 2013 relates to Fry because no one guess he's willing to die but he doesn't want to at this point unit 2013 relates to fry because no one thinks he's human either this is a fun like phil lamar robot scooting around and this is regular guy voice yeah and uh he thinks he's a human which really gets us his mental illness but we have a tour of all of these wacky robots we have norm uh he picks up cia transmissions on his teeth but because his teeth are satellite dishes, that's very possible for him. I, you know, I looked this one up on,

it was a trivia note on the infosphere, but I was like, no, I have to see this for myself. So it says for the week of May 15th in 3003, May 15th is a Sunday. So that you would say the week of May 15th for a week's lunch menu okay so i i think they were intentionally accurate there yes he is picking up the cia's uh cafeteria announcements

so those are the only messages he's getting and we have uh the great moments with mr lincoln robot has went insane love that i love that like i didn't go to disneyland until after i saw this episode me too anytime i saw robot lincoln jokes i thought they were hall of presidents jokes but no then lincoln uh the lincoln alone in his robo chair that he stands out of that is great moments with mr lincoln reference and the funniest thing about that is and i saw the the whole thing uh once and it's worth seeing at least once but the point of that is you will watch a robot stand up and not fall down. And it's a very important moment

when he stands out of the chair and you're like, oh my God, he's doing it. It's 50 years ago that was like people were tearing their hair out seeing it like a robot stands. I love the joke where he has multiple personalities

and all of them are also Lincoln. That's great. That is great. Like all Lincoln. A funny, a funny, you know, Lincoln is the comedy icon of that generation, especially,

you know, Bill Odenkirk's brother did many a great Lincoln joke himself. Oh yeah. And then we have Frankie who seems perfectly fine. He thinks he's a lunchroom worker. So they made him one. And I love this unit 2013 being very patronizing. Like,

how was the lunchroom today frankie uh it's pretty good poor frankie yeah that's great i mean isn't that really functioning in society that you're you find a place for your own uh mental illness can fit in in a job like a podcast exactly exactly turn your obsessive nature into uh patreon gold i would say we are frankie that's what we're saying uh then fry we see what he's gonna eat at this place he gets a tray full You turn your obsessive nature into Patreon gold, I would say. We are Frankie. That's what we're saying. Then Fry, we see what he's going to eat at this place. He gets a tray full of oil. I really love that joke because it is a sectioned off tray.

It has what you would think is going to be like, well, here's this serving and that serving. And to see that it's just a black liquid that fills it up entirely. The fact that it's a compartmentalized tray makes no sense like which makes it even great and crazy i do like that and we also have this mad hatter robot so fry cautiously sits down and then this crazy robot just goes change places and they're all like bumping into him it's uh it's great and bender is joining in on it he's just slamming into him and and fry's like seriously pleading with him in a realistic way. Like, I'm going to die here.

Don't you care? Let's hear Fry losing his mind. Bender, I can't take much more of this. I want out of here. Are you crazy? This place is great. Electro shock whenever you want it. Two Lincolns for every Napoleon.

Ah, sweet like crude. But I'm not a robot like you. I don't like having discs crammed into me. Unless they're Oreos. And then only in the mouth. Don't you understand? I'm gonna die here. Ah, quit your belly aching

and take it like a robot. Change places! Oof. The doctor says you are making great strides with your exploding problem. Well, the way I see it... You gotta get me out of here. I would have starved to death if not for that sick vending machine robot give me give me war fry he's got the munchies for freedom i i like how they explain how fry can survive but it also makes things seem even more harrowing where the second this uh

vending machine coughs out a bachelor bar he has to scramble for it and just like oh my god food food food yeah no that also i think he eats the wrapper like you don't see him put down the wrapper i just oh god and billy west sounds like is eating uh the desk but that again it's so funny but also just realistically sad like this is a man starving he's gonna die i think at this point he's got like giant sweat stains on his uh whatever smock he's wearing or something yeah and he's like pale and his hair is everywhere like i just also again the way the way bender slams into him in the change places one's like benders you're you're hurting him on purpose here yes his soft pink fragile flesh and and also yes how many like the great line of unless they're only unless they're oreos and then only in the mouth it creates a lot of horrible uh

visions yeah i'm glad we're not seeing what's happening there hopefully for i can avoid uh those disc crammings i don't know i don't know that nurse ratchet is pretty tough she's she's the one who seemingly is going to administer it later. It's time for medication discs. Yeah. But that explosion of malfunctioning entity on Victor is so funny. He's like, well, the way I... Boom.

Just, God. I'm glad malfunctioning entity can control himself. You know, he can reconstitute his body, apparently, after these explosions. Yeah. I guess he's sort of T-1000. Well, no, more like the Iron Giant. Yeah. yeah he's in pieces not liquid metal yeah so uh lila has some great political commentary for the audience and that they're trying to get fry out but the governor doesn't want to look like he's soft on people who've been falsely imprisoned so truer now than ever really like i mean if you hear about any like famous people famous cases of people kept

in jail like even when dna evidence exonerates them it can still take time to let a da admit they like a da or a governor that will not want to admit they were wrong even if the person is exonerated and they don't want to let them out which means that like for a person's political career uh an innocent person has to stay in prison like that the lila joke is just realistic it's not a joke and bender uh fry points out bender's been no help at all and bender comes in he's like hey guys i'm napoleon nah just kidding i'm not yeah just kidding i'm better like bender you should be more ashamed of yourself than usual is a great great line by Amy which is what I was feeling watching it every time I guess seriously Bender you're awful someone had to point it out and also I dug into this I wanted to find out like where does

this trope come from because we've seen in a lot of things uh that famous novelty song they're coming to take me away the record album is of a guy dressed up like Napoleon yep uh in the video game Psychonauts the first Psychonauts you go into the brain of a guy who thinks he's napoleon you play like a little rts game right yeah that was a good level yeah and this this idea is just all throughout pop culture so i look this up according to the straight dope and i'll quote the website they say uh by the end of the century uh the 19th century the you're thinking you're napoleon concept clearly made it into the popular consciousness in his trademark 1890 treaties the principles of psychology william james describes a typical exhibition of hypnotism in which a subject is for comic effect led to believe he's

napoleon a character in william de morgan's 1907 novel alice for short thinks he's napoleon but is consoled to keep it up to himself lest he gets locked up wow wow that old man it also sounds like an english transport to america as well which i mean to americans i think that's why napoleon is an even funnier thing because you like you don't learn anything about him in history class really you're just like he he was a short guy right they had a complex his hand in his pocket i guess or his jacket that's all i have one more bit about this from The Straight Trope. So to continue their quote, the earliest film version of this gag

is almost certainly found in the 1917 Stan Laurel short, Nuts in May. No complete print survives, but the film historian, guy's name, says the story involves Laurel wandering around the grounds of an insane asylum doing the Napoleon bit. Hat, hand-tucked-in shirt, and everything. Wow.

Yes, and to the extent that Thinking You're Napoleon remains with us, of an insane asylum doing the napoleon bit hat hand tucked in shirt and everything wow yes and to the extent that thinking you're napoleon remains with us the bugs bunny cartoon napoleon bunny part is one of the most popular examples in pop culture and i looked up that cartoon and it's bugs bunny versus napoleon the way the cartoon ends is bugs bunny uh leads napoleon into an insane asylum and the guy's like i am napoleon and two guys in white coats come out and they go, sure you are, pal. Everybody here thinks they're Napoleon. I remember that. And they take him away.

I remember. Oh, my God. Wow. What a great history of that. Wow. That's interesting. And I also remember, this is not Napoleon, but in the movie Arsenic and Old Lace, there's a character in that who thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt.

Oh, okay. This idea of thinking you're like a dictator or a president is an idea in pop culture that has still kept up to the year 2001 at least. Yeah, that's amazing. Now, you know, that would be a popular TikTok. Like, hey, it's the Napoleon TikTok. What did Napoleon do today? I don't know if I've seen this in a while, though. Yeah.

I think it's fallen out. Like, I think that Psychonauts bit was the last time i saw it yeah well and i think like bender is doing it retro style as well like i maybe in american pop culture we're a little more sensitive to mental illness and we wouldn't mock it in that way and maybe too though if people see the napoleon hat they just think he's captain crunch it's like oh what a captain crunch reference here why is captain crunch in an insane asylum like yeah you don't want to know what he did uh man i totally for you know i was just playing the new psychonauts pretty good pretty good i'll believe it when i play it you know i only got it on game pass uh i would uh

it was so it just came into your home it did without any investment hey uh well you know it's 60 a year or whatever. It's totally worth it. This is now an ad for Game Pass. I'm not buying an Xbox Series X. I got enough crap in my house. You're correct to do that. Even though I play my Series X way more than I play my PS5.

So this is when Nurse Ratched appears again talking about these medication discs presumably being crammed in Fry's ass. We can only guess. And this is when Fry's pleading with the professor. And, of course, we get the opening line. Oh, don't worry, Fry. I, too, once spent a nightmarish time in a robot asylum. But now it's nearly over. So long.

So everyone abandons Fry. Bender, his best friend, won't help him. It's just the worst situation to be in. He's about to be tortured. That is one of my all-time favorite misdirect lines in the series. It gets me every time because you really think Farnsworth

is going to tell a story about how he, the same thing happened to him, and by the end of the sentence he reveals he considers the 10 minutes he just spent visiting Fry as a nightmarish time and now it's almost over like i don't think he had a line of dialogue outside of that he was just around for that line of dialogue there's one in deleted but yeah yeah in the film in the episode itself yeah i think oh no he talks about his his cut neck he does say all right right but

yeah just what uh one of the best misdirect lines in a series that's all about amazing zigzagging lines has to be one of the best. I love that so much. And then we get an exterior shot of the asylum with a very weird joke that is complained about on the commentary, but never actually examined or defined in which we hear a cricket outside. But then the cricket starts chirping really, really fast. And I was like, is it supposed to be like the cricket is making a modem noise? Is that what's going on? But on the commentary, David X. Cohen is like, we worked really hard to get this correct.

And Mike Rainey's like, maybe you worked hard to get this correct. I never liked this, this crazy cricket. And he's just like, well, I got it right, didn't I? And like, they won't explain what it means. But I guess the cricket is crazy because it's cricketing too much i don't know what the i guess it means that it's in an insane asylum so it's a crazy cricket and it's uh or the crickets are skipping are they robot crickets that are in the yeah i still don't get it i david x cohen worked really hard to get that sound correct but matt graining is just like i don't like this i

don't know what it means. And they don't explain it on the commentary. If we ever interview Cohen or, or Odin Kirk, Bill Odin Kirk, we got to ask them like first question, explain this cricket joke to us. We don't get it.

This call is over. You know what? Yeah. We got to ease them into it. That'll be like one more question. One more question. What's up with that cricket? Yeah.

So Fry thinks he's being released uh okay actually the horror continues because fry is like clearly losing his mind he is muttering to himself uh not sleeping in this dark uh booth and here's a knock at the door and his response is like oh god what is it now like he's ready for more pain and torture oh And then I can see why this finally breaks him is that he is teased with freedom and it's taken away from him one more time. I just you again, hilarious, but also you can't not feel bad for your main character. Like you feel awful for him at every second. Yeah, he thinks he's being released, but it's actually malfunctioning Eddie. And Eddie goes, what a surprise. And Fry shields his

face. But then you see one tiny explosion on his shoulder. And he goes, oh, look, I barely exploded at all. And apparently they can control that with medication. So he just needed to be medicated. I also love the line, sweet, juicy justice. And now we hear Fry's new

roommate. Things are getting much worse for Fry, unbelievably. Fry, are we ready to meet our new roommate? Hi, Red. Roberto, what are you doing here? I got busted robbing that bank again. Why would you hold up the same bank twice? Ah, that first time was just a case to joint and rob it a little. What's the matter? You scared? Noticeably? I'll say. Now stand back. I gotta practice my stabbing.

No, please. Help. Stop it. Please. Hey, keep it down in there! I'm tooting my banjo! Jeez, Red, quit cowering. You call yourself a robot? I'm not a robot! I'm not a robot! Definitely a Billy West, Brandon Stimpy-style insanity scream. insanity scream oh god that again it's so

stressful to me just like the idea of he's he's now being he's trapped in there with the person who scares him the most who is trying to stab him everyone's telling him he's a robot this is the moment he breaks like this is the too far moment for for him. And I'm glad this is when he finally breaks because I couldn't stand to see him suffering any longer in this. Yeah, I mean, like, especially in terms of the animation, it really underlines the suffering because just the animation is amazing. The camera angles are also amazing.

The lighting is great too. All in this very confined space. They have to find new ways to work around Fry and Roberto. There's no room in this little booth. And I i mean there's some joke lines in there like him fry failing to say the word no and roberto taking it as noticeably i'll say but it's not a joke when fry is just saying like no please help yeah that's just a man earnestly screaming for help and in desperation and again bender refuses to help him. Bender is next door and won't help.

Yeah, he's he's doing his banjo. Like, again, in fact, Mad Fry is making noise with his screams for help. And there are rarely ever fade outs in Futurama. I think you need one after this scene just to be like, all right, all right. Yes. New scene. Let's calm down. Give me a break please and i love the purposeful awkwardness

of setting up the next scene in which uh the doctor says to answer your question hermes yes your friend is cured because they have to say oh we're just picking up where we left off in the scene that you didn't see an indeterminate amount of time has passed in between these and hermes is the one who's asking for some reason yeah that's great that it was her me it should be lila asking that's why it's great that hermes asked off screen and uh yes uh fry comes in uh he no longer suffers delusions of humanity and he goes affirmative i am a robot beep beep beep and fry thinks uh being a robot is saying beep and words like ye that's great that it is a good concept uh the the middle of the episode is the most memorable but the concept of fry getting everything wrong about being a robot but it makes

him both um broken mentally and stupid still like he it's it's his conception of a robot which again fry is an idiot so it makes it even funnier and also it's kind of horny yeah because when he gets pressed into leela's chest he starts beeping more i think that's the way to let the audience know he's not completely broken and then he can still be horny uh i liked hearing on the commentary they said they had uh they worked on that chest shot many times they're like bigger smaller and then and then uh gratings like we said smaller like we we would ask for smaller boobs and when you ask animators to draw breasts they will they say how high and uh yeah the act break is bender uh scooting by on his wheelchair uh with a banjo talking about waterloo with his

little banjo song that banjo he was uh tuning up in the last shot now is getting used and we come back to uh planet express uh Zoidberg is trying to reason with Fry saying, you know, just because you're a robot, just because you think you're a robot doesn't make you a robot. I'm not a doctor because I think I'm a doctor. These fancy clothes make me a doctor. That's all the confidence Zoidberg needs. And I have a deleted

scene from this little bit here. So, assuming we want to get Fry back, how can we help him? Oh, quite simple really first we'll brainwash him into believing he's a hippo then brainwash the hippo into believing it's human why not just brainwash him to believe he's a human hippos are easier to brainwash so there you have it i can see why it was cut though yeah no the funniest line in it is amy saying like assuming we want to have the old

fry back because she's not fully she's like hey is everybody else want the old fry back if not i understand and fry is trying to argue his case he goes i must be a robot why else would human women refuse to date me and lila goes oh lots of reasons i love how she lovingly tousles his hair when when she tells him that like great yeah because it shows like she does feel something for fry but also she knows like there's lots of reasons you're undateable right now fry and you need to fix those but that's a story for another time uh fry wants the bio units to terminate the noise exchange and he tries to give them sandwiches from his compartment which is the crotch of his jeans they say it on the commentary and i agree zoidberg would eat

those sandwiches he would not be grossed out by them you know fry is trying to be helpful in his new role as a robot at least yeah it's a good it's a good part of act three is that uh fry in his new robot role is in a quest for identity he's like oh i'm a this robot i'm a that robot it's uh it's a nice it makes it more complete at the end once he finally discovers who he is as a robot. So we're back at the asylum and Bender has altered Norm's mouth to get horse racing results. Lasty. And we get some fun horse name jokes like Daddy's Little Grandpa and also Lasty, which is coming at last. And apparently Bender placed money on Lasty.

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Hey, Banda. Stop, Roberto. Oh, what a surprise to see you in here. Especially because I didn't squeal on you, remember? Remember all that squealing I didn't do? Remember, do ya? Yeah, yeah. Now lie down and play dead. And don't ham it up.

Uh, sure. Anything for you, buddy! Wait here, Bender. I need to get a disguise. Ah, what's with the getup? I'm in disguise because I'm thinking of escaping. You in, or do I gotta kill you so you don't scream? I'm in, I'm in. So when were you planning the breakout? I'm thinking maybe a few seconds ago. Quick, let's keep escaping. I love that. Quick, let's keep escaping.

I love that. Quick, let's keep escaping. Did he kill Dr. Perceptron to take his skin? I choose to believe that, yeah. I mean, he ripped off his head and his chest, which really, at the very least, you get some spiritual justice for all the mistreatment he did to our favorite character, Fry.

You're like, well, at least Perceptron was murdered yeah by a guy that if perceptron had probably listened to fry would know is too dangerous to be in here but i also like how easily they're breaking through all the walls just because they're giant metal monstrosities the the free and that he's doing it while he's thinking about it like i i looked on the wiki perceptron does appear in in later episodes so it seems like more background roles i choose to believe that those are other models of dr perceptron and the one we saw was killed by roberto i i prefer that i i also think that uh what bender is doing now with roberto is why bender callously liked fry being around fry got to be the sponge for roberto's abuse and once fry is gone now roberto turns to bender and now bender's like

has to be afraid of him too like oh remember all that squealing i didn't do right buddy right and bender is forced to just go along with his plans because he's terrified of roberto yes yeah as i mean as he should be he's like do i you in or do i gotta kill you to see you don't squeal and this is when we have our famous chase scene based on the chase index card we heard about where uh it's just some cute uh robot based uh chase antics where uh cops are setting dogs after uh bender and roberto they get them to sniff nuts and bolts in their hand to take off and there's this fun mislead where they see a rowboat tied to a dock and they're going to jump in it but then they just plunge through it because they're they would they weigh a ton each a ton

each and smash right there that's a great joke about the just the weight of robots and really their plan was to sink under the water and run across the water or run under the water to the other bank yeah and they fly into sorry they go into barn. They fly a plane out of the barn. They loop to loop to go back into the barn and crash. So there was no point to any of that. They just walk out of it. Run back out. That's a great visual gag. I love that.

It's a good time waster. And meanwhile, Fry is trying to figure out his purpose. Hermes is at his desk. I love this joke because it's very low key and that Hermes is doing math on a calculator and he goes, carry the one. And he hits a carry the one button. You don't have to say carry the one when you're using a calculator because it's doing that for you. It's right.

So there shouldn't be a carry the one button. Even. Wow. That's that's great. That is great. Yes. That's even better joke than I thought. And I like how there is a wall mounted incinerator that Fry throws his calculator into.

And apparently Hermes, that was his anniversary gift to his wife. That's great too that he's like well then why are you using it that's hers it's also a shitty gift for an anniversary i bet la barbara's had to settle for a lot of bad gifts like that that's why she really dreams of that mahogany god barbado slim and but i love fry's accuracy of flinging that thing into the incinerator and then again is i wish there was a third incinerator joke but both are great when i i forgot there was a second and then when there was a second i was hoping there'd be a third but there isn't a third uh but just as like

robots don't say ye like that i'll show ye that's you know it's not there's obviously the greatest squinting fry but that squinting fry is pretty great i love that shot too yeah fry wants to help with hermy's math but he does not know what a plus sign is because just because fry thinks he's a calculator doesn't mean he's smarter than he was before yeah that's this is you know the second joke about uh in cyber house rules there was a joke about how bender isn't a good calculator either and has to use his own. Because I think it was an internal argument in the offices. Like, being a robot doesn't mean you're necessarily good at calculation.

That means you'd have to be a good computer inside a robot. To be a calculation bot or something like that. Yes, a Calcul-tron. Something like that. Oh, Calculon. There you go. Well, he chose acting instead of being an evil robot. Though he started

as a machine that built robots or built cars for some reason. I guess you need to be able to add to do that. Count all the cars. I don't know. That's for them to explain. Leela is struggling with her own task. She's trying to turn this nut with a wrench and this is when Robo Fry shows up and

throws her wrench in the incinerator a different incinerator because it's a different room but there's open air incinerators in every room and in the building i guess and he calls himself a tool box and uh he takes lila's pie in one oil and uh puts some under his arms and he sticks the oil in his inside jacket pocket remember that because i the first time i saw this i thought fry got stabbed at the end of this episode i did you know they play it fair here it's a it's just a straight ahead shot and you see him put it in his pocket if they did an insert shot of it it would be too obvious you would mark it in your head like oh that's important later but instead it's just

them straight ahead showing here's him putting in his pocket you see it so if later you're wondering why it's such a giant cheat that he survives that stabbing we did show you he put it in his breast pocket and this is when lila tries to help you're not a tool bot you're not a food motron you're not a robot of any kind. Yes, I am. I simply haven't discovered my primary function yet. Okay, this has got to stop. I'm going to remind Fry of his humanity the way only a woman can. You're going to do his laundry? Fry, this is for you. Beep.

Oh, for God's sake! By a scallop's forelocks! What's with all the beer, Fry? Alcohol fuels my power cells. And as a mighty robot, I... Beep. Thanks for helping me escape, Bender. It was nothing. It was not nothing! I want to repay you. Let me get

you something in here. So Fry has to be passed out for the rest of the scene to work when Roberto comes back to planet express with bender that's because he's got to wake up and see them being held hostage but you don't even think about it's just a good joke about billy about fry being passed out drunk like that i also god compliments to billy west all through this episode but like here he was given the tricky assignment of okay you're Fry, who thinks he's

a robot, who then gets drunk. So you have to do drunk acting, but drunk acting of a guy who thinks he's a robot. Like that's, that's why you hire Billy West. And also that's kind of a sequel to there's many snoo snoo jokes, which are like, you say something sexist and you have to injure the person who says a sexist thing. Like it lets them, okay, we get to do a sexist joke, but to injure the person who says a sexist thing like it lets them okay we get to do a sexist joke but the man has to be hit after he says it instead of being clubbed he slapped yes yeah uh so yeah they're going back to big apple bank to rob it a third time and bender

admires his style i love i yeah that it's uh just already he was he went there to case the joint and rob it a little like uh and also what a futurama gag of saying somebody warning you that something is laser proof and then cursing that it's laser proof when it comes back you know like so perfect it's great that uh roberto has robbed this place twice and uh when he robs it the third time he's like i want the remaining cash and also some calendars and that pen and try to tear it so most of the beads are on my side. Oh, so great. So great. God.

You know, COVID ended the era of those bank pens on chains. Oh, man. I hadn't considered that. Oh, yeah. You're right. Now, you know what? I've gone to not a bank, but I went to some grocery. I went to a place where you needed to sign for something. And they just had a thing of like clean pen and dirty pen.

And it was just like a dozen pens, which I don't know how. I didn't watch them clean those pens. How clean are these pens? I mean, I just take advantage of the still very copious amounts of hand sanitizer everywhere anyway. Yeah, I mean, this is not a scientific podcast in any way even though we're talking about futurama but like the the likelihood of you getting covet from touching something is very very very very very minuscule especially if you're vaccinated yeah yeah so lick every pen and put them in your mouth touch your face all day touch the pen to your face

i was sick of not rubbing my eyes for four months i stare at computers all day i rub my eyes all the time now and it's great i know i feel free again i felt i felt like i was in an insane asylum trying to not touch my face all day it's a very clever thing that they do though because uh the cops are waiting for roberto like you said henry the glass is laser proof so they can't fire at him with their lasers but roberto has a knife so he knifes his way through the window and then pulls the window off to use as a shield that's to block the lasers oh that's so great bouncing the lasers off as they run away and i love to bender says that he has a place he goes after crimes which is like yeah he's you should think i think now anytime you see bender at the planet express

it's probably because he's there after committing a crime he needs to hide out everyone's looking over fry he's passed out they're just reminding you fry is out of the picture for now because he can't be a hostage when everyone else is yes and amy's like oh he looks like a sleeping drunken insane angel they think he's so cute uh and and again bender being an asshole to his friends again in this episode he brings a dangerous knife wielding maniac directly to where they are and they're immediately hostages in our next clip back off i got hostages hooray i'm helping do you have any better hostages to show them who's crazy i'll execute some of you how about you ouch that's going to bleed when my heart beats. Wait! Take me first! Yes! Take her first!

Shut up! Stop telling me how to do this! Oh no, she's bleeding! Oh, the fear! I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 10. Guess it, and you die first. Go! Um, okay. Fifty...six...ish? Fifty-six? Fifty-six-ish. Fifty-six?

Fifty-six? Oh, man. Now that's all I can think about. I'm going to kill you, you no-good fifty-six-ish. Don't kill me yet. I'm starting to come down with Stockholm Syndrome, handsome. So the thing about Roberto that makes this more disturbing is at this point in the series, or in the story before this,

Roberto was very confident and crazy, where he's just like, I'll do whatever I want, and you can't stop me. But in this one, where he's like, don't tell me what to do, stop it.

And then we hear the thing about his mother torturing him and stuff. The inner darkness is coming out because the stress levels are high. He's stuck in the situation you know maybe roberto was correctly put in that insane asylum but not that it helped him but no no yeah i i also love uh whenever bender has a heretofore uh unused ability his neck line that he can just pop his head out of his neck and just float around uh also he doesn't seem to give a shit that Leela almost is stabbed

in his dodging of stabbing. I mean, which Bender wouldn't care. No, he wouldn't. He doesn't. Bender barely cares if anyone dies. I think of it every time when Bender says, not even a little. So this is when Fry wakes up,

says, halt, fellow robots. And Roberto asks him which side of the hostage crisis he wants to be on. And he goes, the side that kicks your twisted metal ass. He gets a badass action hero line. That's really fun that Fry actually gets to be like a savior. And I also love that he calls Leela negative bossy meat creature. Yeah. So let's hear Fry's primary function in our final clip i know now what my

primary function is i am a battle droid sworn to protect the weak from crazy robots i'm not crazy don't call me crazy i'm just not user friendly fry don't be a hero it's not covered by the let's see how much of a robot you really are! No knife can penetrate my skin-tanium armor. Help! Help! He is a battle droid! Somebody help me! Mommy!

I'm sorry, I spilled the transmission fluid, Mommy. No, no! Don't weld me to the wall, Mommy! Help! Help! We're willing to listen to your demands hey baby wash that off before you put it back it's a nice touch that you actually kind of feel bad for roberto at the end because he's so traumatized that he just he tries to kill himself you're right in this moment of uh of tension he's just like oh i can only kill myself now that's it if somebody's about to hurt me like my mother hurt me growing up then i'll kill myself or that you know to take it in that direction it's a very dark ending for roberto there yeah it really is it's a lot like

fried knocks him out of the window he turns around and jumps out of the window i guess too that makes fried blameless and like even injuring so i i think they didn't want fry to actually hurt somebody intentionally it's more that his his bravado did it and and also yeah the the arm spinning thing uh cohen on the commentary is like well yeah we did that on the simpsons because that's what i did growing up with my sister and we put it in the simpsons so i don't feel like this is them stealing a simpsons joke so much as just cohen using more of his real life experience like well this also happened to me so it can go in this one too yeah uh but the moment where fry is stabbed i mean the animation this episode is fantastic uh for like a few frames you believe it yeah and the way the knife pulls away and you see the jacket being pulled back and the can of oil behind it it's very masterfully done but for like when i saw this for the first

time i forgot that fry put that in his pocket i was like oh my god that's fry gets stabbed in the heart i know i know he's not going to die but was he seriously stabbed in the heart the way the close-up of fry with his like unchanged face so he's like see i'm fine i because i knew i'm a robot and yeah that through just the motion of action of pulling his knife out the can and jacket move away from his body ever so slightly so you can see what happened. Like, yeah, instead of having to do like an x-ray shot or have to have somebody say it out loud, it is just clearly presented in a way anybody could get. It's really well done. And I mean, Fry has been battered around plenty in three seasons. He's been like hit with clubs and, you know, electrocuteduted but being stabbed in the heart feels not like cartoon violence to me which is why it

was shocking it is though again in the comedy central seasons he gets worse oh for sure by far but this is back when they're like you know we don't have to horribly injure fry all the time do we then later they're like no we do have to uh i mean also talking about how violently flora is treated later on seeing just a tiny cut on his arm and he sees the blood of it yeah i was like oh that he's bled so much more since then that's uh this is before he lots his hands yeah i had to get one one hour hands at hand crafters or whatever but i love uh it's funny that fry just seeing a tiny bit of blood, that's what snapped him out of it. Nice and easy.

No more therapy needed to deprogram. He's like, wait, I'm a human. Yay. And that's it. He needs therapy for the trauma he experienced while being in prison at the Robot Insane Asylum. Maybe that's why he gets stupider after this, that he just, he's going further inside of himself to hide from his trauma. Bender says, you're a credit to my race and you're right henry this is when uh fry believes finally he's a human and he gets a kiss on the

cheek from leela and he goes i'm going to continue never watching this cheek again because fry is gross gross guy he smells he smells like a mule and in this uh they just get out of this really quick with a joke this episode i love this yeah yeah i love it uh and i have the deleted scene that is the cut ending which is much worse uh but uh the ending is just like bender's telling fry like just prove that inside of you you've got the heart of a robot just like inside of me i've got the heart of a human and everyone is gross grossed out by him pulling a human heart out of his chest he's just like what what yeah that's so great that bender bender wouldn't understand that because human life is that cheap to him that's so much better than just a funny song that's not very funny yeah let's hear this okay so this is the original ending uh unfortunately john dimaggio did not record most

of it so a lot of this is a temp track by david cohen so just imagine it probably makes it funnier hearing is the bad version of it in a way if you think that david cohen auditioned to be bender imagine if this other voice you hear on the track is a potential bender in a different universe so let's hear it buddy you may be a pile of rotting meat but inside you've got the spirit of a robot ah thanks bender just like inside me i've got the spirit of a singing Napoleon. If I may. Got a friend named Fry, he's a pretty nice guy. But rip out his lungs and he might well die if there's two things he's not. It's a cool robot or the emperor of France.

What a showman. See, he does have a funny voice. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that song, it's not like you weren't waiting to hear the callback to end this show with like, he sings again as Napoleon. It wasn't so funny at the end of Act Two that you're waiting for a callback. You're like, yay, he's back in that character. Yeah, the Napoleon stuff wasn't great and that should not have been the ending and I'm glad it wasn't. The ending they decided upon was a lot punchier and they like backed out of this crazy story as fast as possible but you can tell from

the commentary i think evan zeno and his team weren't happy that they fully animated in color yeah i see song and dance scene and then afterwards like actually it should just be a very deflated thing of him pulling a heart out of his chest and that's it like and then it just cut to black like they worked hard on that song and dance number but hey at least he got to live on it as a deleted scene on the dvd preserved on millions of dvds yeah in in very poor quality they didn't remaster those uh those deleted scenes no no i think they're just taken from like vhs tapes that's what they look like that's what it feels like yeah you know at least at least it feels like they remastered the the deleted scenes that are on the simpsons ones once they finally get it but

someday they're gonna have to fox and by fox i mean disney they gotta buy claskey chupos they can finally get their hands on the season one through three deleted scenes there's so many we haven't seen gabor's just sitting on him with his big hungarian ass that has to be his real retirement play his retirement plan instead of scratch offs hey i brought it back yes it's all coming full circle this is such a stressful episode to me that if it wasn't so funny i wouldn't call it one of my favorites because it's just such a a nightmare scenario for me like i've had stress dreams like this but it is so funny the way that fry all of the asylum jokes act two is the best but and roberto

hilarious character just a a wonderful episode of the show and it's unfortunate that in the production order it is sandwiched between two of the worst futurama episodes from this era and uh in air order it doesn't matter because this aired in season three bugalo aired in season four in uh root of all evil uh aired in season five yes yeahuggalo aired in season four. And Root of All Evil aired in season five. Yes, yeah. It's three years apart. Listeners, you're going to have a real jump around in history here for the next one. Yeah, but this one, yes, I love how in terms of like pure jokes, it's hilarious.

But I like things that are this dark. I think horror and comedy, they're a great match together. And this does it so well. They're like a perfect pairing in terms of tones that surprisingly don't clash. Yeah. Because horror and comedy are all about surprise. That's true, yeah. It takes a masterful creator to

really make that all work, which they do in this, for sure. And we'll see you next time, just in time for the holidays, one of the worst episodes of Futurama, The Root of All Evil, and we'll see you then. And this is Frankie. He's convinced he's a lunchroom worker, so they put him to work in the lunchroom. How is work in the lunchroom, Frankie?

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