How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back

"How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back" is the twenty-fourth episode of Futurama, the eleventh of the second production season and the fourteenth of the second broadcast season. It aired 2 April, 2000 on FOX. It guest stars Nora Dunn as Morgan Proctor. Having ruined his hopes getting his bureaucrat rating raised, Hermes attempts to kill himself, but Proctor forces him on paid vacation on Spa 5. Meanwhile Fry finds himself in a secret relationship with Proctor.

Act I: "I only gamble with chumps"
Hermes finishes his work for the day and receives a letter from the Central Bureaucracy. He's happy to learn that there will be an inspection tomorrow, potentially allowing him to be promoted from grade 36 to grade 35.

Leela invites Fry and Bender to a poker game she's having with her former co-workers from Applied Cryogenics. Zoidberg invites himself. As the guests arrive Ipgee informs Leela that she's fired for being over a year late for work. The Applied Cryogenics staff catch Bender cheating and beat him up in Hermes' office.

When he arrives to work the next day, Hermes is horrified by the mess. The inspector, Morgan Proctor, arrives and Hermes threatens to kill himself by jumping off the Planet Express building. Bender recommends that he do a flip.

Act II: "Mr. Bender, about last night..."
Hermes is talked out of suicide, and Zoidberg suggests he visits Spa 5 to recover. LaBarbara and Hermes learn, too late, that Spa 5 is actually a forced labour camp.

Morgan takes over Hermes' job while he's off. She complains that Fry is a slob, but falls in love with him because of it. Morgan gives the crew worse jobs, except for Fry, who gets a promotion. She then turns up at Fry and Bender's apartment to have sex. Bender catches them, and the next day he tries to blackmail her, but Morgan removes Bender's brain and sends it to the Central Bureaucracy for filing.

Act III: "Stop hogging that healthy liver!"
Fry along with Leela, Amy and the Professor head off to recover Bender's brain. The crew heads to the Central Bureaucracy's filing room, but Morgan says that it would be impossible to find the brain within the master "in" pile.

Meanwhile, Hermes begins organising the forced labour camp. Zoidberg delivers Hermes to Central Bureaucracy; having organised the forced labour camp all the work is now carried out by a single Australian man. Hermes has four minutes to sort the pile or be fired. Launching into song, he beats the clock, but was too fast and so he is demoted to grade 38. Hermes then points out a mistake that Morgan made, which gets him a promotion to grade 37 and his job back.

Trivia

 * The forced labour camp's sign reads "Spa 5 Fitness camp: recommended by Dr. Zoidberg". This, as well as the Australian slave's admission, suggests that most of the workers were provided by Zoidberg, who openly admits that he gets a free bucket of krill for every person he sends there.
 * Grade 1.0 seems to have been used in order to leave a possibility for higher ranks with lower decimals, though the dialogue in the episode contradicts this; Hermes says he "will finally be promoted to grade 35, the 35th highest grade there is".
 * Fry's "outer space potato man" quote may be a reference to the Sontarans in Doctor Who.
 * While possible, considering that the Sontarans were first seen in 1973, references to them being potato-like are from the revived series of Doctor Who, which makes the reference unlikely.

Continuity

 * The Australian man reappears in "A Pharaoh to Remember".
 * This is the last appearance of the Number 9 Man until Bender's Big Score.

Allusions
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 * The floating head is based on a creature from Dungeons and Dragons, a so-called Beholder.
 * The filing cabinet lined walls of the central bureaucracy are a nod to the Terry Gilliam film 'Brazil', which is set in an inefficient bureaucracy. (picture)
 * When Hermes mentions "Stampytown", it's a reference to "Funkytown."

Goofs

 * The hover-car and Number 1.0's plane screech to a halt. Which shouldn't be the case as they are hovering, and do not touch the ground.
 * Hermes' badge number occasionally fluctuates incorrectly.
 * It is shown in this episode that Bender's mind and memories can be downloaded into a disk inserted in the neck of any Bending Units. In "Lethal Inspection", however, Bending Unit minds are saved daily into a backup body, which Bender was made without.

Characters

 * Amy
 * Debut: Australian Man
 * Debut: Beholder
 * Bender
 * Fry
 * Hermes
 * Ipgee
 * LaBarbara Conrad
 * Leela
 * Lou
 * Debut: Morgan Proctor
 * Debut: Number 1.0
 * Number 9 Man
 * Debut: Old man
 * Prof. Farnsworth
 * Scruffy
 * Terry
 * Zoidberg

Episode Credits

 * Writer
 * Bill Odenkirk
 * Director
 * Mark Ervin
 * Voice Actors
 * Billy West
 * Katey Sagal
 * John DiMaggio
 * Tress MacNeille
 * Phil LaMarr
 * Lauren Tom
 * David Herman
 * Dawnn Lewis
 * DVD Commentary
 * Matt Groening
 * David X. Cohen
 * Rich Moore
 * Bill Odenkirk
 * Paul Calder
 * John DiMaggio
 * Special Guest
 * Nora Dunn