Benderama

"Benderama" is the one hundredth 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, immediately following "Neutopia", which actually follows this episode in production order.

Story
The Professor invents a machine called the Banach-Tarski Dupla-Shrinker that takes in any object and creates two half-sized copies, consuming matter provided to it in order to do so. He uses the machine to create a number of sweaters suited to his shrunken, old-aged self and sets Bender on the task of folding them. Bender looks for a shortcut and creates duplicates of himself using the machine to do the job for him. This soon escalates and eventually there are trillions of increasingly smaller copies of Bender creating copies of themselves until eventually they threaten to consume all of the matter on Earth.

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 will 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, this one featuring the monster destroying New New York.

Reception
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

 * It is among the few one-word titled media.
 * "Benderama" is one of only three season 6 episodes to include the full opening sequence, the other two being "Rebirth" and "That Darn Katz!". In the other episodes, the opening sequence is abridged and the opening cartoon is cut to save time.
 * The song played during the montage of the Planet Express crew killing all the Bender clones is "Rock and Roll Pest Control" by.
 * The formula that the professor shows is incorrect. The total mass of all of the Benders should be the sum of the number of Benders in each generation times the mass of each Bender in that generation.  The number of Benders in each generation is twice the number of Benders in the previous generation, thus there are 2^n Benders in the nth generation.  Mass changes as the cube of the scaling factor, thus each Bender weighs 0.6^3=21.6% of what its parent weighs.  If we assume that the mass of the original Bender is M_0, then the mass of an nth generation Bender is M_0*0.216^n.  Thus the mass of all of the Benders after an infinite number of generations is the sum of terms of the form 2^n*(M_0*0.216^n), where n goes from 0 to infinity.  This series does converge.

Allusions



 * The title is a pun 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 "".
 * 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."
 * 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 .
 * The duplicator's name is a reference to the.
 * 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.

Continuity



 * A new episode of The Scary Door appears. The Scary Door was first seen in "A Head in the Polls".
 * Braino, a respected genious 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.

Characters

 * Amy
 * Bender
 * Debut: Bender duplicates
 * Braino
 * Debut: Dr. Judy Lesterman
 * Fry
 * Galactic entity (voice only)
 * Hermes
 * Kif
 * Leela
 * Linda
 * Morbo
 * Professor Farnsworth
 * Ruth
 * The Scary Door narrator
 * Scruffy
 * Debut: Unattractive giant monster
 * Debut: Unattractive giant monster's mother
 * Underwater house salesman
 * Zapp
 * Zoidberg