Commentary:Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love?

Topics of Discussion

 * Rich Moore was in drag at a Futurama costume party.
 * Was Robo-Rooter's voice altered? John DiMaggio says no, he simply sung that low.
 * David X Cohen praises pitch alteration technology.
 * Pointing out "one of the dirtiest, but subtlest jokes on Futurama": the Kegelcizer.
 * Followed by a more explicitly "dirty" scene, the nude sauna, which took "countless hours" to make. The sauna scene was useful long after the episode's airing, as a counter to censors complaining about nudity in later episodes.
 * David asks Eric Kaplan what inspired the episode, but already knows the answer: the Star Trek episode "Amok Time".
 * Eric says that it's also "a parody of evolutionary biology as an explanation of human behavior".
 * Zoidberg's fin never appeared again (this was true until its reappearance in "Bender's Big Score"). Zoidberg has a lot of one-time features, because he's "every sea animal".
 * Randy is the birthing instructor in this episode. In Randy's original appearance, he was old and named "Man in Mob", but John gave him a flamboyant style, making him "someone worth bringing back" according to David. Later he's in a jewelry story.
 * Bender has a hatred of Zoidberg which is inexplicable except "for jokes".
 * Chitin is defined, "a hard shell-like substance".
 * Admiration of the Decapod scenery and sand effects, which are speckled with PhotoShop. Explanation of how the background is digitally repeated for car travel shots; David jokes that he'd never heard of the technique before (the non-digital version is very old in animation). The crab-car was hand-animated, not 3D.
 * The arena is primarily based on the one in the film Spartacus.
 * Bender fails to take over the episode. When characters like he and Zoidberg aren't at the center of the plot, all their lines can be funny. Bender is disgusted by humanity's basics.
 * Laughter at John's emphatic "Tress is the best."
 * It's terrible when women tell men they're genetically inferior, especially women with scary claws.
 * The Planet Express ship has ambiguous architecture, similar to that of the Simpsons house.
 * It's impressive how much emotion can be conveyed by an inhuman creature such as Edna the Decapodian.
 * The Red Primate restaurant is a riff on Red Lobster.
 * The story ending "And that's why they call me Honest Bender" is based on a W.C. Fields routine.
 * David admires the wallpaper — but it's not wallpaper, it's sand.
 * Fry calls Edna a "mud bug", which is a crayfish.
 * Zooming out from Fry and changing color is done with in-camera effects.
 * When David Herman first tested the Decapodian leader's voice, no one understood him, but they told him to use it. David had felt a particular take of one line, "One of the friends must die", could never be used, but it finally was, since he couldn't get it out of his head.
 * They usually try to shoot around crowds, making the arena difficult with "a lot of pencil mileage".
 * The third weapon, chosen by Fry, is the only one not inspired by the weapons in "Amok Time".
 * The National Anthem gag originally made Cohen laugh until he cried.
 * One 360-degree shot was "pretty simple", done with a combination of 3D background and 2D foreground.
 * Futurama takes a "stand against multiculturalism" in the form of Fry's dismissal of Decapodian customs.
 * Fry's arm-loss prompted lots of debate about the degree of violence to portray. "Ugh, what were we thinking? Why did you buy this DVD?"
 * It was the first of many times Fry loses a body part.
 * Zoidberg giving Fry morphine was Matt's idea, to lend plausibility to Fry not showing pain.
 * Bender is covered in guano, which David will define "later". Matt thought guano was only from bats, but "that's bat guano".
 * Keeping Fry's arm-on-wrong-side operation a surprise was a small animation challenge.
 * The final chop-and-splat was a last-minute addition.

Highlights / Quotes

 * Rich Moore: and I'm Rich Moore supervising director...of the series.                                                                                             John DiMaggio: And also the hottest man in drag at the Rough Draft Halloween Party.  Rich Moore: God bless you.