Benderama

"Benderama" is the one hundred and fifth episode of Futurama, the seventeenth of the sixth production season and the second of the eighth broadcast season. It aired 23 June, 2011 on Comedy Central, with "Neutopia", which actually follows it in production order, immediately preceding its airing. Bender gains the ability to self-replicate, threatening to overrun Earth with vast swarms of copies of himself.

Act I: Do you see a robot in this room named "Folder?"
The Professor opens the episode by unveiling his latest invention, the Banach-Tarski Dupla-Shrinker (which resembles an overhead projector), a duplication machine that is able to scan an object and then produce two exact yet smaller copies. The Professor explains that as he ages, his frame grows shorter, and he becomes more susceptible to the cold; therefore, he needs twice as many sweaters, in a smaller size. He demonstrates by scanning a full-size sweater, explains that the duplicator uses matter for fuel (and "any old useless matter will do"--in this case, Zoidberg's wedding photos), and produces two identical, smaller sweaters. The Professor asks Bender to fold his new sweaters, and Bender grudgingly complies, although the lazy robot complains about having to perform two separate tasks. Bender spots the unattended duplicator and, devising a way to more efficiently complete his chore, places the machine inside his torso, eats several pieces of lab equipment to power it, and produces two miniature Benders, whom he then asks to fold one sweater each (although they don't actually do this).

Bender and his duplicates get along well, hanging out together, causing mischief, and even going on a Planet Express job to deliver hygiene products to an unattractive, self-conscious alien giant. The three Benders make a litany of crude jokes at the giant's expense, insulting his appearance, although the mild-mannered alien does not respond to their taunts... until Fry, attempting to be compassionate, remarks that the giant's looks are probably hereditary, inadvertently insulting his mother. This sends the giant into a rage, and he attacks the fleeing Planet Express ship, although the crew manage to escape.

Back on Earth, Bender and his duplicates fondly reminisce about mocking the giant. When Bender asks his duplicates for a pair of cigars, they move to oblige him, but when he changes his mind and asks for four, they bristle at the idea of having to carry two cigars each. Instead, they activate their own duplicators (since Bender had the original duplicator inside him when he used it to scan himself, all of his duplicates have one as well), creating another four, slightly smaller Bender clones. This process repeats itself, rapidly escalating until Planet Express headquarters is infested with an army of increasingly smaller Benders.

Act II: This place is crawling with yous!
Bender is unconcerned with the steadily increasing number of his clones, as this simply means "there are more Benders around", which he considers to be a good thing. However, the Professor displays a mathematical equation projecting the Benders' population growth, explaining that they will continue to replicate ad infinitum, multiplying exponentially; because they need matter in order to replicate, they will eventually consume the entire planet. The Professor calculates that the Benders are currently in their eleventh generation, making 2,046 Bender duplicates that must be destroyed. The crew scour the Planet Express building, exterminating the tiny Benders like vermin, and are able to account for them all, but Amy realizes that one of the dead Benders is actually a doll, a piece of merchandise left over from Bender's television career. Bender is not worried that a single duplicate managed to escape, believing it could do little harm, only for his couch to be eaten out from under him by a swarm of microscopic Benders, which appear as a "grey goo". The Professor laments that the Benders will eat all the matter on Earth, but when they also consume Bender's beer, Leela points out that all Benders, like the original, are powered by alcohol; they will exhaust the world's supply of booze long before they are able to destroy it.

Sure enough, the Benders soon drink all the alcohol in the world, and with none left to replace it, they begin to die off. As the professor is bathing, however, he notices that his bath water has somehow been transformed into alcohol; the Benders, which have miniaturized to the atomic level, have begun rearranging water and carbon dioxide molecules into alcohol molecules in order to provide themselves with more fuel. Within hours, there will be no fresh water left on Earth.

Act III: Big Bender starts right now!
As a result of all the drinking water on the planet being converted into alcohol, everyone in the world becomes severely intoxicated. Shortly afterward, the alien giant arrives on Earth to apologize for his earlier attack on the Planet Express ship, but the drunken crew berate him with savage insults (a situation that does not improve when Zapp Brannigan begins firing on him from a tank). When the giant, struggling to control his temper, is unable to reach his therapist, he goes on a rampage, and begins to destroy New New York. Fry pleads with Bender--who, as a robot, is the only member of the crew to remain sober--to stop the giant. The slothful Bender is reluctant, but when Fry offers to fold the Professor's shirts in exchange for Bender saving the world (which Bender computes as Fry performing two tasks against his one), Bender agrees, believing that he got the better end of the deal.

Bender walks into the street and calls upon the assistance of his many microscopic duplicates, overcoming their inherent laziness by explaining that if they all cooperate to complete their single job, they will each only have to contribute one-quintillionth of the required effort. The numerous copies swarm around Bender, taking the form of a single, gigantic "Big Bender" who engages the giant in a fistfight. Bender initially has the upper hand, but after he insults the giant's mother, the giant begins to pummel him. The giant appears to have won, only for the Benders to swarm across him, devouring him until only dust remains. Exhilarated by his victory, Bender asks his copies to use their powers to help him defeat other "monsters", such as poverty, disease, and "unliteracy"; the Benders, however, are repulsed by the idea of having to do more work, and leave the planet in search of a place where they "won't have to do one-quintillionth of a thing all the time", leaving a battered, partially eaten Earth behind.

The next morning, the Planet Express crew are all recovering from a collective hangover, although the Professor is in high spirits, as someone finally folded his sweaters. The crew were all too drunk to do this, prompting Fry to ask Bender if he finally learned a lesson about being lazy. Bender replies that maybe he did, but adds with a chuckle that perhaps he rescued one of the mini-Benders solely for the purpose of folding the sweaters for him. Bender exhales the smoke from his cigar toward the camera, revealing that it is not smoke at all, but a cloud of countless mini-Benders, all laughing maniacally.

Production
During May and June 2011, Countdown to Futurama released six items of promotional material for the episode: concept art of the unattractive giant monster (together with confirmation that he would be voiced by Patton Oswalt) on 9 May, a promotional picture featuring various copies of Bender on 10 May, part of the storyboard showing the Planet Express crew prepare to deliver a package to the monster on 11 May, a promotional picture featuring three Benders riding a bicycle on 12 May, a promotional picture featuring a fight between a giant Bender and the monster on 13 May, and a video clip featuring the crew discussing the many Benders by the conference table on 15 June.

On 21 June,  posted another video clip, this one featuring the monster destroying New New York.

Reception
In its original U.S. broadcast on 23 June, 2011, "Benderama" scored a 1.1 share among adults 18-49 and 2.47 million viewers.

In a preview of "Neutopia" and "Benderama", Katie Schenkel from CliqueClack TV commented that these two episodes "[weren't] [her] favourite". Reflecting on "Benderama", Schenkel commented that the end of the episode had its own plot, after the main plot had been resolved, as if the main plot wasn't long enough, in addition, Schenkel commented that she felt that the guest star, Patton Oswalt – while excellent in his performance – was given a throwaway role. Of the two episodes, Schenkel preferred "Benderama" over "Neutopia".

Trivia

 * Benderama is among the few one-word titled media and one of only four season 6 episodes to include the full opening sequence, the other three being "Rebirth", "That Darn Katz!", and "All the Presidents' Heads".
 * The song played during the montage of the Planet Express crew killing all the Bender clones is version of "Rock and Roll Pest Control" by the.
 * This is the third time that Futurama gets away with almost dropping the S-bomb on the show. In The Beast with a Billion Backs, Bender says, "No shklit."  In "Lethal Inspection", a member of the sith is named Darth Ithead, and in this episode, Morbo says that everyone is "tetty much protally fitshaced," a drunken spoonerism on "pretty much totally sh*tfaced".

Allusions



 * The title is a portmanteau of "Bender" and "Futurama".
 * The Scary Door narrator says "A picture of yourself in a boat on a river", a play on the first line of ' song "" - "Picture yourself in a boat on a river".
 * The plot of the Scary Door episode is somewhat similar to that of the  episode "".
 * The duplicator's name is a reference to the . The real Banach-Tarski paradox involves cutting up one object into (non-measurable) pieces and gluing the pieces back together to make two new objects of the same size without using any extra material. The professor dispenses with this aspect since he does need more material, and the new objects are smaller. This may be deliberate: since the paradox relies on the axiom of choice, this may indicate that the Futurama universe does not choose to allow this axiom.
 * Bender says, "Hi, I'm Bender, this is my robot Bender and this is my other robot Bender." This is a reference to the TV series , specifically the character of Larry and his brothers Darryl, whom he always introduced, "Hi, I'm Larry, this is my brother Darryl and this is my other brother Darryl."
 * Farnsworth asks Scruffy what the tiny Bender is doing in his soup. This is a play on an old vaudeville joke where a customer asks a waiter what a fly is doing in his soup, and the waiter usually replies, "The backstroke."
 * Farnsworth refers to the bathroom as "the situation room", most likely a reference to the  or the.
 * After 50 foot Bender falls and "dies", Fry falls to his knees and screams "no", similar to the vision in the What-If Machine from "Anthology of Interest I". The scene is a reference to .
 * Bender compares the alien giant to who had a starring role in the television show.
 * The concept of the duplicate Benders threatening the world is a reference to the hypothetical end-of-the-world scenario called the theory, involving molecular nanotechnology originally described by mathematician.

Continuity



 * A new episode of The Scary Door appears. The Scary Door was first seen in "A Head in the Polls".
 * Braino, a respected genius and one of the Professor's idols, appears on the $30 bill. Braino previously appeared mentioned, on a bust and on a Vincian statue in "The Duh-Vinci Code".
 * When the Professor shows the mathematical formula, showing how the Benders multiply, the only ones understanding it are Amy and Hermes. Amy has studied advanced mathematics and physics at university, and became a doctor of applied physics in "That Darn Katz!". Hermes is a bureaucrat and is often seen calculating.
 * The fembot Ruth, who previously appeared alongside another fembot in "The Futurama Holiday Spectacular", appears in minimal size, tricking a small Bender into purchasing her promiscuous services, only to have him killed by a mousetrap. Seeing as "The Futurama Holiday Spectacular" in entirety was non-canon, this is her first canon appearance.
 * Zoidberg correctly identified Hermes' genitalia, having previously thought it was his "tail" in Bender's Big Score and was his umbilical cord in "Rebirth".
 * He was drunk at the time though.
 * The scene with big Bender fighting the unattractive giant monster, big Bender's near-death experience, and Fry's reaction to it, is highly reminiscent of a similar scene in "Anthology of Interest I". Both scenes are a reference to - among other films - .

Goofs



 * Hermes' buttons disappear when he says the crew has to be respectful of the unattractive giant monster's appearance.
 * When Bender watches the unattractive giant monster destroy New New York on TV and he meanwhile is seen just outside the window, a helicopter visible outside is missing on the TV, in spite of the exact same angle.
 * The number of Benders is incorrect near the beginning. 2*2(4)*2(8)*2(16)*2(32)*2(64)*2(128)*2(256)*2(512)*2(1024)*2 or 2^11 = 2048, not 2046, as Farnsworth said. Also, when the Professor says there is 11 generations of Benders, he would be wrong if he was including the original, which would make sense considering he shot him when he asked if he was included.
 * This is not a goof, the correct calculation is 2^1+2^2+2^3+2^4+2^5+2^6+2^7+2^8+2^9+2^10=2046, which excludes the original Bender (2^0) who was only shot due to the smaller Bender within him.
 * Farnsworth doesn't specify they all multiplied in sync, so it could be any (even) number. Each Bender could have decided to multiply on its own. But if they did, computation is: 2, 4, 8, 16, etc, sum being 2046 for 10 generations (not 11, but if we consider the original to be the first generation, math is correct. Farnsworth says "according to my calculations, there are 11 generations at the moment" hinting that there are 11 total, original plus 10).
 * 11th generation benders are shown manipulating water atoms that appear to be about the size of a softball. A bender of this generation would be much larger than a water molecule (three atoms).
 * This is not a goof. A sufficiently long amount of time happens between the mentioning of the 11th generation and that of the manipulating of molecules to assume that these are later generations Bender reaching an atomic scale.
 * It is pointed out that Bender could consume all matter of the Earth and it is never cited a shrink effect on atoms (if so series shown would be summation of original mass multiplied number of Benders in each generation), so replicas are probably composed of ordinary mass and it could not be replicated at atomic scale as operating robot and replication had to be arrested at some point.
 * When the Benders at the atomic scale are altering water molecules, their molecules should be visible, as there are few molecules smaller than water.
 * The Benders may have gotten so small that they are no longer made of atoms. Instead, they might be made directly of protons, neutrons, electrons, or other very small particles.

Characters

 * Amy
 * Bender
 * Debut: Bender duplicates
 * Braino
 * Professor Farnsworth
 * Fry
 * Gus (deleted scene)
 * Hermes
 * Debut: Dr. Judy Lesterman
 * Kif
 * Leela
 * Linda
 * Debut: Linda's children (mention)
 * Morbo
 * Ruth
 * The Scary Door narrator
 * Scruffy
 * Debut: The unattractive giant monster
 * Debut: The unattractive giant monster's mother (mention)
 * The underwater house salesman
 * Zapp
 * Zoidberg