Meanwhile

"Meanwhile" is the one hundred and fortieth and last episode of Futurama, the twenty-sixth and last of the seventh production season and the thirteenth and last of the tenth broadcast season. It aired on 4 September 2013, on Comedy Central. Fry asks Leela to marry him, and they face their destiny together as the professor's latest invention alters the fabric of time.

Act I: "My little meatbag's growin' up!"
The episode finds Fry, Leela and Bender making a delivery to the moon and visiting the amusement park there. After a ride accident, Leela seemingly dies. Luckily, all is well. She was trapped inside a stuffed animal. The close call was too much for Fry to handle, and he announces to Bender that he's going to finally propose to Leela.

Meanwhile, Professor Farnsworth invents a device that lets him travel 10 seconds into the past: the time button. He uses it to steal money from Zoidberg whilst the rest of the crew watches from the time shelter that shields them from the button's effects. Fry takes the time button to steal diamonds, along with Bender.

He uses the stolen diamonds to fashion an engagement ring, which he hides in a clam. When he presents it to Leela, she reaches for the ring and the clam snaps shut, severing her hand and a bloody stump.

Act II: "Goodbye, my love..."
Fry uses the time button to go back to before Leela's hand is severed, he injures the clam and proposes once again telling Leela to meet him on the top of the Vampire State Building at 6:30pm to give her answer. Leela seemingly jilts Fry and, heartbroken, he jumps from the skyscraper.

While falling, Fry spots Leela arriving at 6:25pm; the time button did not account for Fry's watch making it seem as if Leela was late. Fry uses the time button to try and get back on the roof but is trapped in an infinite loop of falling from the top of building and and a terrified Leela looking up at him.

Meanwhile, the professor calls Bender, Hermes, Amy and Zoidberg into the time shelter, where Bender reveals that Fry took the time button to the Vampire State Building, they carefully make their way to the building and meet Leela, Fry loses the button and dies upon impact, left as a puddle of blood and guts. A distraught Leela uses the time button to send him back into the sky but the professor is seemingly killed at the same instant, having being inside of the shelter, less than 10 seconds prior to the button press meant his chronitons were scattered.

Leela uses the button over and again to hear what happened with Fry, who suffers death after death. Bender devises a plan to use his air bag to save Fry. He exits to be crashed into by Amy, Hermes and Zoidberg and his air bag successfully saves Fry. Elated, everyone begins to celebrate until Fry lands on the time button, leaving the entire universe save Leela and himself frozen.

Act III: "I was never lonely, not even for a minute."
After witnessing a strange glimmer travel across the air, Fry and Leela go on with their marriage, bringing along their friends and family to the wedding albeit frozen in time. They spend the rest of their lives travelling the world on the ultimate honeymoon: going to Africa, France, the, among other places, living a happy life, together.

The couple, now old and grey, return to the Vampire State Building to drink their engagement champagne, both feel as if they've lived the ideal life, with Leela pointing out that she was never lonely even in a frozen universe as she had Fry. The glimmer appears again before the couple, creating a tube-like tunnel to them and revealing to be the professor; he had been "tunnelling" his way around the frozen timeline in search of the time button, Fry gives it to him and the professor effortlessly repairs it.

The time button has been modified to send the universe back to before the professor conceived of the button so he can undo the whole affair, erasing their memory of the incident in the process. Fry asks Leela if she wants to "go around again", to which she responds "I do". Fry and Leela share their final kiss, content with the knowledge they have another wonderful lifetime together to come, and with one press of the time button the timeline is negated.

Production
This is the fourth series finale that writer and producer Ken Keeler wrote for the show. The other three are "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings", Into the Wild Green Yonder and "Overclockwise". The director of the episode &mdash; Peter Avanzino &mdash; also directed Into the Wild Green Yonder.

In 2012, Futurama writer Eric Rogers made two revelations concerning the episode. On 11 April, he revealed that " [ "7ACV25" and this episode] now [had] stories". On 20 April, he revealed that the episode was being "[pitched] out" and urged fans to buy merchandise in order for the show to "come back".

On 5 February 2013, released a preview clip for the tenth broadcast season, which contained footage from the episode.

On 22 April, it was announced that Futurama had not been renewed for an eight season, making this the series finale.

On 20 July, the cast read the episode's first act at.

By 29 August, Comedy Central had released a fifty-second preview clip featuring Fry and Leela alone in a time-frozen New New York.

By 1 September, Comedy Central had released a fifty-second preview clip featuring Fry, Leela, Bender, and Albert riding an attraction.

Reception

 * The following text was copied from .

"Meanwhile" has received positive reviews. Max Nicholson, for, wrote that "Meanwhile" was "a fitting end to a classic animated series". He gave the episode a 9 out of 10. Zack Handlen, writing for , said that "the first five minutes are passable but rushed, and the hook of Fry deciding he needed to ask Leela to marry him isn't all that exciting". However, he later went on to say that "this finale settles somewhere between the "too happy" and the "oh dear God when will it end," which makes it just about perfect. It has just about everything you could want from Futurama: there's a nifty time-travel plot, Fry and Leela get married, Bender is a jackass, Zoidberg loses $10, there's a nifty time-travel plot, and Fry dies". He graded the episode an "A".

IGN named this episode #9 on their list of the top 25 Futurama episodes.

Trivia

 * The episode aired on cast member John DiMaggio's forty-fifth birthday.
 * In "Forty Percent Leadbelly", which was also written by Ken Keeler, a Bender duplicate says that his audience deserves better than some crappy, formulaic ending. This may be a reference to the fact that Keeler wrote the finale.
 * The episode revisits Luna Park, from "The Series Has Landed", which was also written by Ken Keeler and directed by Peter Avanzino. Another episode written by Ken Keeler and directed by Peter Avanzino is "The Six Million Dollar Mon".
 * Bender tells Fry that he told Leela that he loved her "like 140 times". This episode is the one hundred and fortieth episode of Futurama.
 * The number of seconds that the time button sends the universe into the past is the same as the amount of money that Zoidberg finds.
 * The censored couple, Richard Nixon's head, Smitty and URL are the only characters besides Fry, Leela, Bender and Professor Farnsworth to appear in both this episode and the first episode, "Space Pilot 3000".
 * The professor says "time-space continuum", but the usual term is "".
 * The woman holding the caviar resembles Nixon's campaign manager.
 * This is the only time that Agnew appears without Nixon.
 * The first airing of the episode was immediately followed by the airing of "Space Pilot 3000". Futurama writer Patric M. Verrone initially suggested for the characters to, at the end of the episode, go back to 31 December 1999, the day on which "Space Pilot 3000" is set.

Fry and Leela's list
These appear to be locations for Fry and Leela to have sex in.


 * Front Steps ✓
 * Professor's Desk ✓
 * In the Road ✓
 * Back of Police Car ✓
 * Ice Cream Factory ✓
 * Bank Vault ✓
 * Lincoln ✓
 * Rhino Cage ✓
 * Vicinity of ✓
 * Monument Beach ✓
 * Middle of ✓
 * Big Ben ✓
 * On a Mammoth ✓
 * Random Dark Alley ✓
 * Eiffel Tower ✓
 * Random Dark Alley ✓
 * Eiffel Tower ✓
 * Random Dark Alley ✓
 * Eiffel Tower ✓
 * Eiffel Tower ✓

Allusions

 * Petunia says "I'll have what she's having", a famous line from the 1989 film .
 * The crew delivers a copy of 's .
 * A -like robot can be seen when time is frozen.
 * Fry falling on and breaking the time button is an allusion to the Twilight Zone episode "", where a man has a stopwatch that can stop time, which he proceeds to break and get stuck alone in a frozen universe.
 * Fry and Leela's decades-long honeymoon is set to the first movement of 's.

Continuity

 * When the ship is flying towards Luna Park, once can see the moon buggy that Fry abandoned in a crater in "The Series Has Landed".
 * When Fry is staring at the time button, his eyes narrow. This is a reference to a scene from "The Lesser of Two Evils", which originated an internet meme.
 * Fry's tuxedo and Leela's wedding gown are both from previous episodes. The tuxedo is from "Calculon 2.0", and the gown is from "Time Keeps on Slippin'".
 * The episode features Fry and Leela's third wedding. Their first wedding was seen in "Time Keeps on Slippin'", and their second was in Bender's Big Score; when Leela was going to marry Lars, a time-paradox duplicate of Fry.
 * Leela was previously seen with grey hair in "The Late Philip J. Fry".
 * The man and woman in Paris were previously seen in "Game of Tones".

Goofs

 * After the clam cuts off Leela's hand, Fry takes more than ten seconds to press the button.
 * In the stands at the basketball match, some characters are seen twice.

Characters

 * 20th-century lecturer
 * 21st-century girl
 * Abner Doubledeal
 * Abraham Lincoln
 * Albert
 * Amy
 * Auctioneer
 * Dr Beeler
 * Mrs Beeler
 * Bender
 * Brett Blob
 * Bubblegum
 * Censored couple
 * Charles
 * Craterface
 * Curly Joe
 * Dandy Jim
 * Elzar
 * Professor Farnsworth
 * Flamo
 * Fry
 * Globetrotters
 * H.G. Blob
 * Hattie
 * Hermes
 * Hyper-Chicken
 * Debut: János
 * Kif
 * Last clone of Agnew
 * Leela
 * Debut: Luna Park carny
 * Mom
 * Moon Patrol
 * Morbo
 * Nibbler
 * Nixon (on 10-dollar bill)
 * Nixon's campaign manager
 * Petunia
 * Roberto
 * Sal
 * Scoop Chang
 * Scruffy
 * Smitty
 * Space Pope
 * Sweet Clyde
 * Turanga Morris
 * Turanga Munda
 * Debut: Ultra Guy
 * Underwater-house salesman
 * URL
 * Victor
 * Zapp Brannigan
 * Zoidberg
 * Zoidberg

Places

 * Apartment 00100100
 * Big Ben
 * Debut: Bronx Zoo
 * Eiffel Tower
 * France
 * Luna Park
 * Debut: Luna Parking
 * Madison Cube Garden
 * Monument Beach
 * Moon
 * Paris
 * Planet Express hangar
 * Planet Express headquarters
 * Planet Express conference room
 * Planet Express employee lounge
 * Robot Arms Apartments
 * Debut:
 * St. Koch's Cathedral
 * Debut: Ultra Guy's Custom Diamonds
 * Debut: Vampire State Building

Miscellaneous

 * Buggalo (stuffed animal)
 * Chronitons
 * Curious Pussycat
 * Currency
 * DOOP hovercopter
 * Fry-Leela relationship
 * Giraffe
 * "Hi-yah!"
 * Debut: Mecha-Hexadecapus
 * Owls
 * Spice weasel
 * Debut: Taste of NNY Gourmet Food Fair
 * Thundercougarfalconbird
 * Debut: Time button
 * Debut: Time shelter
 * Tube Transport System