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.

Plot
Act I

The Professor opens the episode by unveiling his latest invention, the Banach-Tarski Dupla-Shrinker (which resembles an overhead projector), a duplication machine that is able to scan an object and then produce two exact copies at a 60 percent scale. The Professor explains that as he ages, his frame grows shorter, and he becomes more susceptible to the cold; therefore, he needs twice as many sweaters, in a smaller size. He demonstrates by scanning a full-size sweater, explains that the duplicator uses matter for fuel (and "any old useless matter will do"--in this case, Zoidberg's wedding photos), and produces two identical, smaller sweaters. The Professor asks Bender to fold his new sweaters, and Bender grudgingly complies, although the lazy robot complains about having to perform two separate tasks. Bender spots the unattended duplicator and, devising a way to more efficiently complete his chore, places the machine inside his torso, eats several pieces of lab equipment to power it, and produces two miniature Benders, whom he then asks to fold one sweater each (although they don't actually do this).

Bender and his duplicates get along well, hanging out together, causing mischief, and even going on a Planet Express job to deliver hygiene products to an unattractive, self-conscious alien giant. The three Benders make a litany of crude jokes at the giant's expense, insulting his appearance, although the mild-mannered alien does not respond to their taunts... until Fry, attempting to be compassionate, remarks that the giant's looks are probably hereditary, inadvertently insulting his mother. This sends the giant into a rage, and he attacks the fleeing Planet Express ship, although the crew manage to escape.

Back on Earth, Bender and his duplicates fondly reminisce about mocking the giant. When Bender asks his duplicates for a pair of cigars, they move to oblige him, but when he changes his mind and asks for four, they bristle at the idea of having to carry two cigars each. Instead, they activate their own duplicators (since Bender had the original duplicator inside him when he used it to scan himself, all of his duplicates have one as well), creating another four, slightly smaller Bender clones. This process repeats itself, rapidly escalating until Planet Express headquarters is infested with an army of increasingly smaller Benders.

Act II

Bender is unconcerned with the steadily increasing number of his clones, as this simply means "there are more Benders around", which he considers to be a good thing. However, the Professor displays a mathematical equation projecting the Benders' population growth, explaining that they will continue to replicate ad infinitum, multiplying exponentially; because they need matter in order to replicate, they will eventually consume the entire planet. The Professor calculates that the Benders are currently in their eleventh generation, making 2,046 Bender duplicates that must be destroyed. The crew scour the Planet Express building, exterminating the tiny Benders like vermin, and are able to account for them all, but Amy realizes that one of the dead Benders is actually a doll, a piece of merchandise left over from Bender's television career. Bender is not worried that a single duplicate managed to escape, believing it could do little harm, only for his couch to be eaten out from under him by a swarm of microscopic Benders, which appear as a "grey goo". The Professor laments that the Benders will eat all the matter on Earth, but when they also consume Bender's beer, Leela points out that all Benders, like the original, are powered by alcohol; they will exhaust the world's supply of booze long before they are able to destroy it.

Sure enough, the Benders soon drink all the alcohol in the world, and with none left to replace it, they begin to die off. As the professor is bathing, however, he notices that his bath water has somehow been transformed into alcohol; the Benders, which have miniaturized to the atomic level, have begun rearranging water and carbon dioxide molecules into alcohol molecules in order to provide themselves with more fuel. Within hours, there will be no fresh water left on Earth.

Act III

As a result of all the drinking water on the planet being converted into alcohol, everyone in the world becomes severely intoxicated. Shortly afterward, the alien giant arrives on Earth to apologize for his earlier attack on the Planet Express ship, but the drunken crew berate him with savage insults (a situation that does not improve when Zapp Brannigan begins firing on him from a tank). When the giant, struggling to control his temper, is unable to reach his therapist, he enters a rampage, and begins to destroy New New York. Fry pleads with Bender--who, as a robot, is the only member of the crew to remain sober--to stop the giant. The slothful Bender is reluctant, but when Fry offers to fold the Professor's shirts in exchange for Bender saving the world (which Bender computes as Fry performing two tasks against his one), Bender agrees, believing that he got the better end of the deal.

Bender walks into the street and calls upon the assistance of his many microscopic duplicates, overcoming their inherent laziness by explaining that if they all cooperate to complete their single job, they will each only have to contribute one-quintillionth of the required effort. The numerous copies swarm around Bender, taking the form of a single, gigantic "Big Bender" who engages the giant in a fistfight. Bender initially has the upper hand, but after he insults the giant's mother, the giant begins to pummel him. The giant appears to have won, only for the Benders to swarm across him, devouring him until only dust remains. Exhilarated by his victory, Bender asks his copies to use their powers to help him defeat other "monsters", such as poverty, disease, and "unliteracy"; the Benders, however, are repulsed by the idea of having to do more work, and leave the planet in search of a place where they "won't have to do one-quintillionth of a thing all the time", leaving a battered, partially eaten Earth behind.

The next morning, the Planet Express crew are all recovering from a collective hangover, although the Professor is in high spirits, as someone finally folded his sweaters. The crew were all too drunk to do this, prompting Fry to ask Bender if he finally learned a lesson about being lazy. Bender replies that maybe he did, but adds with a chuckle that perhaps he rescued one of the mini-Benders solely for the purpose of folding the sweaters for him. Bender exhales the smoke from his cigar toward the camera, revealing that it is not smoke at all, but a cloud of countless mini-Benders, all laughing maniacally.

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