The Route of All Evil

"The Route of All Evil" is the forty-fourth episode of Futurama, the twelfth of the third production season and the third of the fifth broadcast season, being the episode airing furtherest from when it was produced. It aired 8 December, 2002 on FOX. Cubert and Dwight form a competing business to Planet Express.

Act I: "We can all fight when we're drunk!"
When Fry, Bender and Leela are unable to decide on which beer to buy, Leela suggests that they brew their own. Meanwhile, the Professor, Hermes and LaBarbara are yelling at Cubert and Dwight for being suspended from boarding school for salting a bully. While the crew brew beer in Bender, the kids wander the office. After Cubert and Dwight trick the crew into wasting a week on a fake delivery to Dogdoo 8 (the universe ends after Dogdoo 7), Hermes and the Professor force their sons to get jobs. They start a delivery company, Awesome Express.

Act II: "Those newspapers won'ts delivers themselveses!"
The kids order a pedal-powered space ship from a magazine for use on the deliveries, and start a paper route. Bender is now swollen with beer. Sal drops off the papers for delivery and the boys get to work. A montage later and they are very successful. Awesome Express becomes more profitable than Planet Express, but this fails to impress Hermes or the Professor. Rejected, the boys decide to crush Planet Express instead, and hire away the crew. The fathers hope to fight back with their loyal dregs, namely Scruffy and Zoidberg. Before they get very far, Cubert is able to inherit Planet Express after discovering the Professor had been declared legally dead three years ago. They rename the entire company Awesome Express.

Act III: "You rotten kids!"
Hermes and the Professor leave the building, depressed. Bender "gives birth" to an ale (Benderbrau). Dwight and Cubert's failure to actually deliver the newspapers becomes apparent, they go to their fathers, who had been feeling sorry for themselves, for help. The four gather up the undelivered papers and deliver them. They head to the Blob household to apologise for breaking the window. Hermes and the Professor fight Mr. Blob and take a severe beating, ending up in hospital. Mr. Blob visits them to apologise, Bender shares some of his beer with the men, and Brett learns to be more like his father, by digesting Dwight and Cubert.

Trivia

 * The commentary for this episode was recorded before it aired on television, due to the actor who played Dwight being out of the country. They had to wait for his return to re-record some lines.
 * When the beer is growing inside Bender, the process is compared to pregnancy.

Outside References

 * The prince on the small asteroid, who is later knocked out by paper and speaks French is a reference to the.
 * The dog chasing Dwight and Cubert (Awesome Express) as they fly through an asteroid field is eaten by a giant space slug extending from a asteroid, a parody of a scene in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, in which the Millennium Falcon flies out from inside a similar beast as it tries in vain to re-eat the ship.

Goofs

 * The periodic table seen on Dwight's lunchbox has been outdated since 1997 when the elements Hassium and Meitnerium were added; whoever was responsible obviously wasn't aware of the additions. Further elements have been added since the episode was made, and at least one of the many scientists on staff would have been aware of the growing nature of the table, so perhaps they chose to omit these elements.
 * The Little Prince speaks a few words of French when hit by a newspaper, despite several previous references to French being a dead language.
 * A "dead language" doesn't mean that it is no longer spoken. It means that the language is no longer changing. Think of Latin.

Characters

 * Amy
 * Bender
 * Debut: Brett Blob
 * Cubert
 * Debut: Dwight
 * Fry
 * Hermes
 * H. G. Blob
 * LaBarbara
 * Leela
 * Debut: The Little Prince
 * Professor Farnsworth
 * Sal
 * Scruffy
 * Zapp (on lunchbox)
 * Zoidberg

Episode Credits

 * Writer
 * Dan Vebber
 * Director
 * Brian Sheesley
 * Voice Actors
 * Billy West
 * Bumper Robinson
 * Dawnn Lewis
 * Katey Sagal
 * Kath Soucie
 * John DiMaggio
 * Maurice LaMarche
 * Phil LaMarr
 * Tress MacNeille
 * DVD Commentary
 * Dan Vebber
 * Maurice LaMarche
 * John DiMaggio
 * Billy West
 * Matt Groening
 * Rich Moore
 * Brian Sheesley
 * David X. Cohen