Time Keeps on Slippin'

Production Number: 3ACV14

Title Caption: For Proper Viewing, Take Red Pill Now

First Aired: May 6, 2001

Act I: I am Ethan Bubblegum Tate
While visiting Central Park, a spaceship lands and the Harlem Globetrotters emerge and challenge earth to a game of basketball simply to embarrass them if they lose. Professor Farnsworth offers to play them and plans to build a team of mutant atomic supermen, however when he builds them they are only babies. To speed up the growth, Farnsworth sends the crew to collect Cronotons. While collecting the cronotons, Fry tries but fails to impress Leela. Professor gives the supermen the cronotons and they grow into adults, including a man with a cannon in his chest and a giant spider. The basketball game starts held by Marv Albert’s head. The supermen are winning 48-42 and while playing a strange flash happens and everyone is in a different position. Another flash happens and Professor times the game out and says that time is lurching forward randomly and it is because of the interference with the cronotons, and that time and space are ripping apart. In addition the fifth man is killed and Fry offers to play to show Leela his skills. However in two minutes he allows the globetrotters to win 200 points causing earth to lose the game.

Act II: By Wednesday it will be August
The leader of the globetrotters, Ethan Bubblegum Tate offers to help find out what is happening with time and space. The Professor concludes that by Thursday it will be the end of existence. Time continues to skip forward and the professor says that everyone acts normally during the time skip, but they have no memory of it. Bender shows that he is a big fan of Bubblegum Tate and that he wants to be a globetrotter, and Fry shows Leela a special room that will stop time skips. However it is just a romantic chamber and this annoys Leela. She explains to Zoidberg that Fry is sweet but very immature.

Act III: So are we dating now?
Through the smellescope, Farnsworth finds out that time is leaking, causing time skips on earth. Bubblegum thinks that moving a cluster of stars to a certain area will cause time skips in the empty part of the universe. A machine is built using all of earth’s money to move the stars. After Leela successfully moves the stars Bender shows Bubblegum his homemade globetrotter uniform and Fry again tries to impress Leela. A time skip occurs and Fry and Leela are on their wedding day. The time skips carry on and Leela thinks that Fry tricked her into marrying him and divorces him.

Act IIII: Perhaps we could explode the whole damned nebula
Farnsworth realises that Bubblegum’s theory was impossible. The rest of the globetrotters decide to cause an implosion in the cronoton nebula which would create a black hole. Farnsworth has a doomsday device for that to work and the Globetrotters say that Bender isn’t funky enough to be one which upsets him. Fry tells Leela he is sorry if he did trick her, only to find out he did it by spelling “I love you Leela” with the stars, which are sucked into the black hole and Leela never finds out what happened.

Outside References

 * The front cover of the pop singer Wendy's album is a reference to one of Britney Spears' albums