Futurama/Roswell That Ends Well

Roswell That Ends Well
Season 4, Episode 1
Airdate	December 9, 2001
Production Number	3ACV19
Written by	J. Stewart Burns
Directed by	Rich Moore
← 3x15 I Dated a Robot	4x02 → A Tale of Two Santas
Futurama — Season Four

Roswell That Ends Well is the first episode of the fourth season of Futurama, and the forty-fourth episode overall. This is the most award studded episode of the series with an Annie and an Emmy. When the crew mistakenly travels back in time, Zoidberg is captured and Fry meddles with his own very existence, getting back to their time is the least of the Planet Express crew's worries.

Guest Stars: David Herman (Sarge), Maurice LaMarsche (President Harry S. Truman)

Plot Overview

The episode begins in space with Fry, Leela, Zoidberg, Bender and the Professor watching a supernova. Bender asks Fry to make some popcorn, but he mistakenly puts a metal container of Iffy Pop in the microwave, causing it to emit a strange blue wave. At the same time, the star supernovas, emitting a red wave. The two colors meet in the middle of the ship, forcing it into a wormhole and backwards in time. The crew crash lands in a desert wasteland and Bender is tossed out of the ship because he wasn't wearing a seatbelt. Zoidberg is left to pick up Bender's pieces, but is captured by the military and brought back to their base with the remaining pieces of Bender.

The crew learns of Zoidberg's capture in the paper and decide to split up. Leela and Professor Farnsworth go to town in order to find a microwave while Fry and Bender's head go off in search of the rest of Bender and Zoidberg. In the military base, Fry meets his grandfather Enos. He takes it upon himself to protect Ennis from harm no matter what, even though he's never put into harm's way until Fry comes along. The Professor and Leela aren't having much better luck, as they're attempting to find a microwave before it was invented. Meanwhile, Fry is getting increasingly worried about his grandfather's well being and locks him in a shed in the desert until he can make it back into the future. Unfortunately, the shed was on the site for a nuclear bomb test.

Back at the diner, Leela and Professor Farnsworth lament over being unable to find a microwave oven and Fry alerts them that he accidently killed his Grandfather. Fry walks his grandmother-to-be home to comfort her over Enos' death. Meanwhile, at the military base, President Truman is flown in disguised as a box of canned food where he interrogates Zoidberg. At Mildred's house, she seduces Fry into sleeping with her--much to the disgust of his friends who explain to him that he is his own grandfather. Ultimately, they decide to steal the radar dish from the military base and use it to go forward in time, back to their present. Leela and Fry proceed to break into the base, steal Bender's remains, rescue Zoidberg and steal the dish. But, they lose Bender's head as they're flying away. Back in the present, the crew goes back to Roswell and dig Bender's head out of the sand.

Notes

Alien Language Sightings

• No alien language words make an appearance in this episode.

Characters

• Fry: Fry literally fathered his own father in this episode, after accidentally killing his grandfather.

Referbacks

• 3x07 - The Day the Earth Stood Stupid: It was mentioned that Fry was missing the delta brainwave and thus was immune to the brains' power without any explicit explanation being given therefor. A later episode Futurama/The Why of Fry establishes that Fry is missing the brain wave because he's his own grandfather ("I did do the nasty in the past-y."/"Yes, and because of that past nastiness....").

Trivia

The Show

• Opening Caption: Fun For The Whole Family (Except Grandma And Grandpa)
• Bosco on TV: While Fry and Enos are walking to the diner, you can see a Bosco cartoon on the television in a store's window display.
• Time Travel: When Futurama was in its earliest stages, the crew decided that there would be absolutely no time travel. They recanted for this episode, but they made the circumstances of time travel so rare that it couldn't be done again.
• Empire State Building: Near the phone in the diner is a tiny picture of the Empire State Building, alluding to Mildred moving to New York City after the episode and that's why the Fry family ended up in New York.
• Ten Commandments: There's a copy of the ten commandments hanging on the wall, it was put there because so many commandments are broken in this episode.

Behind the Scenes

• Emmy Awards: This episode won the Emmy award for Outstanding Animated Program (For Programming Less Than One Hour) at the 2002 awards. This win broke the Simpsons' 7 year win streak.
• Annie Awards: Rich Moore win the Annie Award for Outstanding Directing in an Animated Television Production atthe 2003 Annie Awards.
• Alternate Title: This episode was originally titled "All's Well in Roswell."
• Cut Scene: In the time rift, originally there was a bit where a chicken turned into a chick, which turned into an egg, which was "reverse layed" into a chicken.
• Cut Scene: Also in the time rift, originally a bit with a thin woman in fat pants gradually regained all of the weight she had lost.
• Cut Scene: Fry originally got into the military base by claiming that Bender's head was a communist detector.
• Symbolic Staging: In Rich Moore's episodes, he directs it so that whenever something wrong is happening, the characters play to the left but whenever progress occurs, they move or face to the right.

Allusions and References

• 2001: A Space Odyssey: The close up on the Professor's glasses that reflect the worm hole is a direct reference to the end of 2001 where Dave goes through a wormhole and the same effect is done on his eyes.
• Gomer Pyle: The character of Enos was based heavily on Gomer Pyle, particularly his way of speaking and mannerisms. The idea that he's only liking girls because he's "supposed to" was taken from Jim Nabors, who played Gomer Pyle in the TV series.
• Star Trek: the Next Generation: In the two-part episode "Time's Arrow" (S.T.:t.N.G. 226-227), Data's head lies beneath the Earth (in an old mineshaft) for about five-hundred years after an incident attendant to time-travel, and is then re-attached to his body. Melvar has spoken

Memorable Moments

• Fry driving away from the shack he left Enos in, seeing the nuclear explosion in the rearview mirror.
• Fry sleeping with his grandmother, making him his own grandfather.
• Zoidberg going under the knife at the alien autopsy, eating the contents of his stomach that the surgeons remove.

Quotes

• Prof. Farnsworth: Your grandfather? [He leaps up.] Stay away from him you dimwitted monkey. You mustn't interfere with the past. Don't do anything that affects anything, unless it turns out you were supposed to do it. In which case. for the love of God, don't not do it!
  Fry: Got it.
  Prof. Farnsworth: If for example you were to kill your grandfather, you would cease to exist!
  Fry: But existing is basically all I do!

• Bender: Fry! Stop interfering with history! I don't wanna have to memorise a lot of new kings when I get back!
  Fry: I had no choice. I was about to not exist. I could feel myself fading away, like Greg Kinnear's career.

• Leela: Well, settle in. Without a microwave we're trapped in this time period.
  Prof. Farnsworth: Oh Lord! We'll have to endure the horrible music of the Big Bopper, and then the terrible tragedy of his death.

• Truman: Bushwa! Now what's your mission? Are you planning on making some sort of alien-human hybrid?
  Zoidberg: Are you coming onto me?
  Truman: Hot crackers I take exception to that!
  Zoidberg: I'm not hearing a no.

• Fry: But... Won't that change history?
  Prof. Farnsworth: Oh, a lesson in not changing history from Mr. I'm-My-Own-Grandpa! Let's get the hell out of here already! Screw history!

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