Law and Oracle

"Law and Oracle" is the one hundred and fourth episode of Futurama, the sixteenth of the sixth production season and the fourth of the eighth broadcast season. It aired 7 July, 2011 on Comedy Central. Fry quits his job and becomes a police officer assigned to the Future Crimes Division.

Act I: "I'd like to enroll in Police Academy."
After being sent on yet another prank delivery, Fry becomes disillusioned with his job as a delivery boy. At Planet Express, the crew witness officers Smitty and URL subdue Roberto, and Fry decides that joining the police force would be a more fulfilling role. He resigns at Planet Express, and applies at the Police Academy, from which he graduates.

Act II: "Ever heard of the Future Crimes Division?"
Upon joining the force, Fry is paired with URL. The pair soon make a major arrest, and are rewarded with a promotion to the Future Crimes Division. The division works to prevent crimes from occurring, by using an "oracle" named Pickles to calculate the future and predict crimes in advance.

Meanwhile, at Planet Express, the crew struggle with the loss of Fry. Leela and Bender are sent on a delivery to Pandora, the "3-D planet" (meaning that it's depicted as an anaglyph image). Without Fry accompanying them, the two find it difficult to be in each other's company. Professor Farnsworth, Amy, Hermes and Doctor Zoidberg find working at Planet Express to be boring without Fry's antics. At the precinct, Fry receives a vision of a future larceny, and discovers that the culprit is Bender.

Act III: "Are you the calloused working man I ordered?"
Fry questions Bender about the details of the crime, hoping to prevent him from committing it. Instead, Fry inadvertently informs Bender about the target of the crime; a priceless bottle of strong malt liquor stored in Hedonism Bot's wine cellar. Upon examining the vision in closer detail, Fry sees that he will fatally shoot Bender to prevent him from stealing the bottle. He decides that he will deliberately not shoot Bender, which causes a vision of an alternate future to be created, in which Bender escapes. The alternate vision shows that Bender will share the stolen liquor with the crew at Planet Express, poisoning and killing all of them.

Bender arrives at Hedonism Bot's mansion, and proceeds to the cellar. Bender obtains the bottle, but is stopped by an armed Fry. Bender declares that he will not steal anything, and Fry exclaims that the oracle was wrong. Suddenly, Pickles appears, aiming a gun at both Bender and Fry. Pickles reveals that both visions were a set-up to allow him to steal the liquor, and frame Fry and Bender for the robbery. Pickles states that he wants the liquor to destroy his human brain cells, as he finds his precognition to be an unbearable burden. Fry attempts to shoot Pickles, but the bullet strikes Bender, knocking him down. Pickles shoots Fry down, and proceeds to drink the liquor, successfully damaging his brain and precognitive abilities. The Chief and URL choose this moment to appear, and Fry and Bender stand up and expose their bulletproof armor. They reveal that they became aware that Pickles was intending to commit a crime, because Bender would never share anything with anyone, thus realising the vision Pickles had shared was an attempt to deceive them.

Fry receives his investigator's shield for stopping Bender, but is also fired for tipping off Bender in the first place. The Professor welcomes Fry back to Planet Express, promoting him to "executive delivery boy". Hermes notes that the "executive" title is simply a psychological trick to make Fry feel good about himself (and immediately after, the end credits show the Executive Producers).

Production
During May and June 2011, Countdown to Futurama released three items of promotional material for the episode: concept art of the police station's future crimes division on 20 May, part of the storyboard showing Fry be pranked by Ipgee, Terry and Lou on 21 May, and a video clip showing Fry and URL in a chase in Circuit City on 16 June.

Reception
In its original U.S. broadcast on 7 July, 2011, "Law and Oracle" scored a 0.7 share among adults 18-49 and 1.548 million viewers, down about 400,000 viewers since "Ghost in the Machines", making it the second lowest rated episode of season 6 after "The Futurama Holiday Spectacular".

Trivia

 * The high scores on the Delivery Command video game are:
 * BBR:
 * NIB:40565
 * HJF:00254
 * 65535 the upper limit of an unsigned integer, consequently the maximum score in many games. The joke being that Bender had reached the highest score.
 * In the cryogenic lab the silhouette of one person in a cryogenic pod has a cigarette.
 * A couple listed as being 'wanted' at the police station is also seen walking in front of the police station obliviously.
 * After Fry says he got fired for tipping off Bender, Bender's unblurred.
 * The gloves used in the future crimes division are Nintendo Power Gloves.

Allusions

 * The title of the episode is a parody of the long-running legal drama television franchise .
 * Above the stage on which Chief O'Mannahan is standing during the Police Academy graduation ceremony, there is a sign reading TODAY: POLICE ACADEMY GRADUATION, TONIGHT: POLICE .
 * Pickles, the colored balls, the screens controlled by hand movements, and the overall concept of trying people for crimes committed in the future, are all obvious references to the 2002 film .
 * The concept of a "hybrid" machine floating in a liquid container resembles the of.
 * The Chief describes Pickles as being the collection of various great investigators and their experiences. A similar description was given to the Timelord Matrix on.


 * The opening scene is a direct reference to the opening scene of "Space Pilot 3000".
 * The video game Delivery Command resembles . It's name could be a reference to Missile Command.
 * The Sound Effects 5000 is a direct parody of Sgt. Larvelle Jones from the ' films. The sign in front of the police academy also states that they are not affiliated with '.
 * Bender and Leela make a delivery to the 3-D planet of Pandora, and Leela asks if they can use their avatars. This is a reference to the 2009 3-D blockbuster film , which largely takes place on a planet called Pandora.
 * Leela moves the ship back and forth as she tries to land in front of the giant tree on Pandora. This is a reference to cheap gags in some 3-D movies where objects seems to jump out of the screen at the audience.
 * At the end of the 3-D sequence, Bender throws his sandwich at the screen, to similar effect.




 * Circuit City is a reference to the American retailer of the same name,.
 * The light cycle chase scene, featuring Fry and URL in Circuit City, is an obvious reference to the 1982 science-fiction movie ' and its sequel, '.
 * Fry mentions to URL that he learned his light cycle skills from a commercial for juice drink.
 * The man being chased in the light cycle scene is Erwin Schrödinger, a 20th-century Austrian physicist known for his paradox.  The cat is found alive in a box inside Schrödinger's car, along with a lot of drugs. Schrödinger had also suggested in his book  that DNA is closely related to reproduction of biological organisms.
 * The door of the Future Crimes division has a sign that says, "We know what you did next summer." This is a parody of the thriller film .
 * Fry makes two references to "", a 1970's Hanna-Barbera cartoon similar to about a mystery-solving trio of teenagers and their talking car, Speed Buggy.
 * The Maltese Liquor is a reference to the priceless stuffed falcon known as the Maltese Falcon, which is also the subject of attempted thievery in the.


 * Leela says that she and Bender had to listen to Bender's album, and Bender says, "It beats talkin' to you, ."
 * In the alternate future, URL mentions that it is fatal for anyone other than robots and to drink the Maltese Liquor.  This is most likely a reference to Williams' appearances in commercials for  malt liquor.
 * After Fry is named "Executive Delivery Boy", Hermes whispers to Leela that "executive" is a meaningless title that helps people with low self esteem feel better about themselves. This is a fourth-wall break that mocks the numerous "Executive Producer" and "Co-Executive Producer" credits on the show, including a direct jab at Matt Groening and David X. Cohen whose "Executive Producer" credits appear right after Hermes finished talking.

Continuity

 * The beginning of the episode is a reenactment of the cold opening of the first episode of the series, with Zoidberg in the role of the boy who calls Fry a loser and Leela replacing Mr. Panucci. Fry is once again delivering a pizza to a prank name at Applied Cryogenics, while being frustrated about his dead-end job.
 * Delivery Command appears to have been produced before the formation of Earthican government as it contains an FBI warning instead of an EBI warning.
 * This is the second time Roberto uses Zoidberg as a hostage, the first being in "Insane in the Mainframe".


 * This is the first time Dandy Jim is seen alone, after only having been seen with his hobo friend Gus before.
 * Schrödinger's career chip is the first one mentioned since Into the Wild Green Yonder, and the fourth appearance of career chips in the series. Oddly, no mention is made of Fry's chip, which would prevent him from simply leaving his delivery job and starting another.
 * This is Wash bucket's first cameo appearance since her introduction in "The Prisoner of Benda". Apparantly, she still works together with Scruffy.
 * Leela had trouble with 3-D previously, in "Fear of a Bot Planet". Also, this is not the first delivery Leela and Bender have done without Fry. They had a very successful delivery in "The Why of Fry", even being awarded medals at some point during.


 * Fry had previously been promoted to "Executive Delivery boy" by Morgan Proctor in "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back".

Goofs

 * In "The Silence of the Clamps", it is clear that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been replaced by the Earth Bureau of Investigation, thus it does not make sense that the game in this episode has an FBI warning.
 * The game might have come out before this replacement happened.
 * Another possibility is that "The Silence of the Clamps" is wrong, as the tooth fairy is the head of the FBI in "Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles".
 * Fat-bot is drawn with a closed grin on his face instead of a light-up mouth.
 * When the Police Academy graduates throw their lightsticks up into the air, way more fall down on them then were thrown up. Also, the lightsticks fall onto the people in the stadium as well, even though they only should have fallen in the area where the graduates were.


 * While likely a joke, it is impossible for alcohol to be 210 proof, since is twice the percentage of alcohol per volume in a liquid. 210 proof would be 105% alcohol per volume.
 * Hattie McDoogal's hair is tan instead of grey when the scene first starts.
 * Pickles does not predict his own capture. The whole area is NOT prediction proof, just the back room.
 * A likely answer is that Pickles doesn't possess the ability to see the future. It seems plausible to assert that his incredible mind is able to calculate how the future will go, based on all the data he is given, which is theoretically possible. However, if a variable is deliberately removed from his field of vision (the projection proof glass), it may impair his calculations and cause them to fall apart.
 * URL has no "Police" in white on his suit, it's gone and never reappears in the episode.

Characters

 * Bender
 * Debut: Bert O'Mannahan
 * Debut: Connor O'Bocop (deleted scene)
 * Dandy Jim
 * Fat-bot
 * Debut: Gretsky
 * Fry
 * Hattie McDoogal
 * Hedonism Bot
 * Hyper-Chicken (on sign)
 * Ipji
 * Lou
 * Debut: Chief O'Mannahan
 * Debut: Pickles
 * Roberto
 * Debut: Erwin Schrödinger
 * Scruffy
 * Smitty
 * Debut: Sound Effects 5000
 * Spotty Teen Robot
 * Terry
 * URL
 * Wash bucket