I, Roommate

"I, Roommate" is the third episode of Futurama and of the first season. It aired 6 April, 1999 on FOX. Fry and Bender move in together as roommates, and they are established as close friends, but when Fry moves to another apartment Bender feels lonely and stops drinking.

Act I: "Somebody's been leaving food around... and it's attracting owls!"
Hermes complains about Fry living in the Planet Express Headquarters, since he leaves food around, uses too much water, bathes in the emergency chemical burn shower, drys his hair in the ship's engine and is really annoying. Everyone agrees, so Fry has to find a new place to live. At the Food-O-Mat, Bender invites him to stay in his apartment in Robot Arms Apartments and when Fry goes to see the apartment, it turns out to be a tiny space only a couple of feet across. Since this doesn't work well for Fry, Leela takes Fry and Bender apartment hunting. They visit a lot of apartments, including one underwater, one built in the style of an Escher picture and one in New Jersey (that's the reason it's bad). Since they are all bad, the pair give up. They finally find a nice rent-controlled place that belonged to a friend of the Professor. Fry stays in the main apartment while Bender stays in the closet because it's perfect for him.

Act II: "Fry, of all the friends I've had... you're the first."
Bender and Fry get settled in at their new apartment to watch All My Circuits with Leela, Amy, Hermes, Zoidberg and the Professor, but a problem arises - the TV reception is bad in their apartment and in all the building's residents' apartments. The neighbors come and want the problem solved so Hattie comes and looks for it. It turns out to be Bender's antenna that interferes with the entire buildings' TV reception. The neighbors want Bender and Fry out of the building but Fry doesn't want to give up the apartment, so Bender is forced to move out. He can't move back in with Fry unless he cuts off his antenna, so Bender moves back into his old place, becomes very depressed because his friend is not with him, and stops drinking.

Act III: "Bender, you're blind stinking sober!"
Staggering around in a stupor of sobriety, Leela discovers Bender has made a mess of himself and tries to make him promise he will drink, but he doesn't hear her and runs out. At the apartment, Leela trys to explain Fry that Bender misses him and he shows up at Fry's apartment with the idea of cutting off his antenna so he can live with Fry. He cuts it off and Fry feels guilty, so with help from Smitty and URL, they look for and reattach Bender's antenna and then move back into Bender's apartment. When Fry looks for light for the fruit tree that Leela gave him, Bender reveals there is a "closet", which is actually an entire apartment, and Fry decides to live in that part.

Production
After having shown some initial scripts to Fox, the company asked the writers for a more down to Earth episode. The idea of "I, Roommate" was to satisfy this need. The script, written by Eric Horsted, tried to distance itself from things that had scared the Fox people off, such as suicide booths, lobster creatures and Bender being anti-social. Unfortunately, their reaction to the script was "Worst. Episode. Ever".

As a result of the initial criticism, the show runners decided from thereon, they wanted to do the show they wanted. The story line itself was developed to establish Fry's living arrangements as well as the relationship between him and Bender, and obviously a method to get people to care for Bender, despite being anti-social.

Matt Groening, as it will not be too unusual, had not seen the , that the episode slightly parodies, especially during its montage. Originally though, the music over the montage was a more just an interlude. The episode also includes several sequences where the viewer gets a chance to figure it out before it is explicit said, as well as a slow thinker, because apparently, everybody likes those.

"I, Roommate" was a challenging episode to draw for the animators, especially several scenes involving the Planet Express ship were drawn before the 3D model was done and the animators had little go on, when it came to close ups of the ship. Especially a scene like the Food-O-Mat, with the rotating food was hard to do.

Reception
"I, Roommate" aired on 6 April, 1999. And it was the first Futurama episode that would air in its regular spot on Fox's Tuesday line up in a block of four sitcoms, previously, it had aired during its Sunday line up, between The Simpsons and X-Files. As expected, the moving of Futurama hurt its ratings.

Trivia

 * This episode was named #7 on TV.com's list of Top 10 Futurama Episodes.
 * Bender's apartment number, 00100100, is binary for $.
 * Bender's neighbor's apartment number is 9.

Allusions

 * Bender bending the clock and putting it on the edge of the table is a reference to Salvador Dal&iacute;'s painting, .
 * Fry hitting the TV and going "Aaaay" when it turns on is a reference to Fonzie, who used to do the same thing with a jukebox (and making the same two-thumbs-up gesture).
 * Bender and Fry's "Moving In" montage is a reference to "The Odd Couple."
 * The Unique Architecture apartment bears a striking similarity to 's . Fry quips that they don't want to pay for a dimension that they are not going to use, after which Bender falls through the stairs violating normal laws of gravity.
 * Bender's walk down the dark street in a "sober" stupor, because he has not had enough alcohol, is a reference to a scene from the 1945 film "." Bender almost exactly replicates a scene in which the main character, Don Birnam, stumbles drunkenly down the street as neon signs pass by him.

Goofs

 * Hermes' line "We'll bill ya for the couch" was added after the animation was complete, and his mouth doesn't move when the line is heard.
 * After Bender returns to his own apartment (time index 16:34), he casts a shadow on the back wall of his apartment, even though the light is in front of him (i.e. both the light and the shadow are in front of him).
 * Although in the next shot the bulb is glowing so the light may have just been turned off.
 * When Bender leaves to go yell at the manager, Dr. Zoidberg's coat is blue, but when he comes back, it is white again.

Characters

 * Amy
 * Bender
 * Debut: Boxy Robot
 * Debut: Calculon
 * Debut: Human Friend
 * Dr. Zoidberg
 * Fry
 * Debut: Hattie
 * Hermes
 * Debut: Huge Assed Woman
 * Leela
 * Debut: Monique
 * Prof. Farnsworth
 * Debut: Randy Munchnik
 * Debut: Suspiciously Fantastic Apartment Salesman
 * Debut: Underwater House Salesman
 * Debut: Unique Architecture Apartment Salesman

Episode Credits

 * Writer
 * Eric Horsted
 * Director
 * Bret Haaland
 * Voice Actors
 * Billy West
 * Katey Sagal
 * John DiMaggio
 * Tress MacNeille
 * Lauren Tom
 * Phil LaMarr
 * Maurice LaMarche