Transcript:Commentary:Brannigan, Begin Again


 * Note: One question mark in bold (?) means that the speaker was not identified by the transcriber.
 * Note: Three question marks (???) means that the word in proximity to the question marks is a suggested word, but not necessarily correctly identified, or if there is no word near the question mark (a space away is not near), then no suggested word was provided.

Lewis Morton: Good evening, I’m “Lou” Morton, uh, I wrote this episode, and I’ve a story to say about this scene. Uh, this is, of course, uh, a parody of the, uh, chess scene in Star Wars. And, uh, apparently the Star Wars people saw it and I was invited to Skywalker Ranch to, uh, drink some of their wine and hang out and-and help them with, like, make their stupid marketing ideas, uh, because of this scene.

David X. Cohen: You're the guy who thought of Jar Jar, right?

LM: Yeah

DXC: While you were there?

LM: Did yo-did you like it?

Rich Moore: (sarcastically) Thanks a lot!

RM: Well, my name is Rich Moore, I’m the supervising director on the series.

Brian Sheesley: My name is Brian Sheesley and I’m guest directing this for Jeffry Lynch who directed this episode.

DXC: I am David X. Cohen, the executive producer.

LM: I’m Lou Morton again.

Christopher Tyng: I’m Christopher Tyng, the composer.

Billy West: Me llamo Billy West. I’m learning to speak Spanish.

Matt Groening: And this is Matt Groening.


 * [Leela tilts the couch, throwing Bender and Fry off]

MG: She’s strong.

?: She is.

MG: She’s strong, she can…how much does Bender weigh?

DXC/BW/LM: 500? 525 pounds? 25 pounds?

MG: And she can knock him offa couch?

DXC: We’re gonna learn that in episode 208.


 * [Hermes compares the DOOP to Star Trek’s Federation]

RM: He said the unspoken words…

DXC: Is this the first time we uh…we mentioned the DOOP? By name?

MG: Yes, it is, it is.

DXC: Ah. Is it the last time we mentioned the DOOP?

MG: “DOOP: Democratic Order of Planets”?

DXC: Yeah!

MG: No, we say DOOP all the time!

DXC: We do?…Cool.

MG: I do.
 * [Planet Express ship flies to the New DOOP Headquarters]

BW: The bootleggers are doopin’ off. [Chuckles]

MG: DOOP spelled upside down is DOOP.

DXC: There-There it is, look!

CT: Isn’t it “POOD”?

DXC: What is the name of those things, an ambigram right? When a word you can look at it a different way and it says the same thing?

LM: I know what I’d call it: Awesome.

RM: Totally.


 * [Fry makes small talk with a woman from Planet Amazonia]

LM: This lady, of course, came back with an entire episode devoted to her and her kind.

DXC: You mean the one right before this one?

Rest of them: Wellll no.

?: This is from season 3.

DXC: Oh, season 3! 301.

?: Yes.

DXC: Well I–I am rightfully shamed

?: All seasons are the same to David Cohen.

?: I remember the whole concept of the neutral people who spoke very boringly, that that would be funny, was, uh...there were many doubters. [All laugh]

?: You're right, it's funny

?: And David Cohen, as I recall, was–you were slapping your knees every time they said they were neutral.

DXC: That's true.

?: You thought that was the most…

DXC: The original script I kept telling you to put more and more–there were about 50 more scenes of the neutral guys saying neutral things…

LM: We could've, we could've chickened out and cut them all but, gentle DVD viewer, you get to see them because of David Cohen

DXC: There's–we left the right number in

LM: I think it's great–I think it's the best part of the show

?: Hmm?

?: What is the right number?

?: 4.

?: 4.

LM: The–the correct number is alpha naught: a mathematical concept that will be introduced in another, uh, in another episode

?: Like you said

DXC: As always, Billy West as Zapp Brannigan, Maurice LaMarche as Kiff. I actually like a lot of stuff where Zapp is talking about the neutral people in a hateful way.

MG: Mhmm.

BW: [as Zapp] Sociopath!

?: 3D graphics.

DXC: That's the nimbus: Zapp's ship. Nimbus is either a type of cloud or the halo around the Greek god, if I remember my dictionary definition correctly.


 * [Zapp gets ready to cut the ribbon with the ship’s lazer]

RM: Complicated 2D animation moves really fast.

?: In the hands of a pinhead like him.

?: Great sound effects, by Travis Powers.


 * [Laughs at DOOP being destroyed]

LM: That could be one of my most favorite animated explosions ever.

?: That's pretty!

BW:(as Zapp)Oops, I did it again.
 * [Zapp tells the Judge that he is “absolutely 99 percent not guilty!”]

LM: Is that the only O.J. joke in the history of the show?

DXC: Yes.

DXC: This is a great character. This Chicken Lars first appearance too?

?: Yes.

BW: Hyper-chicken.

DXC: Maurice LaMarche.

BW: So, uh, we were doing a Gerry Spence or something.

DXC: and Billy, just to prove that you can do that voice of like, ???PeePie there?

BW: Yeah?

DXC: You gotta, you gotta do it now--this is no processing on Billy’s voice. Listen to this.

BW: [in Small Glurmo #1 voice] I’m not doing any dog and pony show for you guys!

DXC: There you go.

BW: [in Small Glurmo #1 voice] Eeeeeeee! I’m your annoying alarm clock that used to be before the digital ones eeeeee get upppppp! [laughing]

?: Shut up! [All laugh]

?: Oh my god.

DXC: The noises that come out of Billy West's mouth.

RM: Now Chris Tyng? You do a voice. [Laugh]

CT: Not hired for that job, I’m afraid.

BW: It's all I’m good for; basically I’m an empty vessel.

DXC: Good thing we have a lawyer on staff, Patric Verrone, to help us with the—the idiosyncrasies of the law so we're always accurate.

?: This is future space law.

DXC: Squeaky shoe.

BW: Nice!

DXC: Matt Groening always insists on a squeaky shoe when the opportunity arises.

MG: [long silence] Well, that's true.

DXC: I thought you were going to try to deny it

?: This could be the only character on the show I’d be very happy—I, I enjoy that voice

?: A spinoff!

DXC: That, that character started in—

BW: [as Glurmo] A Me Show!

DXC: —he appeared in another Lou Morton-penned episode.

?: He appears every time you can write him in the episode.

DXC: He’s half of Glurmo—he’s half of the character Glurmo from the Slurm factory. The name of the character is Small Glurmo #1.

BW: Yeah. They’re all like little buzzsaw voices.


 * [Kif sighs]

BW: Aww, poor guy.

?: For a while, it seemed like every act of every show ended with Kif sighing. That was the golden age of the show.

BW: [as Zapp Brannigan] Original, or extra crispy?

DXC: Great. Perfect. So good. You don’t see those “rack focuses” too often in a cartoon.

?: Nuh-uh.

?: You gonna tell people where this-this referencing?

DXC: You are!

?: No!

?: Please, don’t, I can’t, I can’t, tell.

DXC: Midnight Cowboy?

BW: Midnight Cowboy, with Dustin Hoffman and John Voigt?

?: That’s the one.

BW: And John MacGyver, the English actor, the bald guy who played the religious nut.

DXC: That’s Hattie.

?: A limo! [laugh]

?: She’s rich! [laugh]

?: She’s having a time—

?: Playing the slots! [laugh]


 * [Leela: Alright, this is the third hose fight I've broken up today and the second one using actual hoses.]

[All hoot enthusiastically]

?: Lou Morton! Right there!

MG: That would be a really good DVD commentary, just a hooting audience

LM: Let’s do it!

[All hoot enthusiastically]

?: Yayyyyy.
 * [Zapp: Perhaps I could paint a fence, or service you sexually—]

[All hoot enthusiastically]

?: Alright.

BW: [weird voice] He wants to service us sexually! Mmmhm!

BW: Hehe, look at the SLAM button. [laughter]
 * [23 seconds go by without commentary]

LM: We’ve totally run out of energy.

[all laugh]

MG: We’ve put in four of these—this is the fourth—

LM: I know.

MG: —commentary we’ve recorded today.

LM: The first one…was gangbusters.

?: Oh my god.

?: When you listen we were—

BW: Define gangbusters.

?: —We were on fire.

DXC: We, in fact, we were watching an episode of gangbusters…or was that only a radio show…?

MG: You know we should do a commentary on the commentary.

?: Oh boy.

LM: Now, now note in this scene [others laugh, thinking he’s making a joke] the Planet Express ship is at a right angle—

DXC: To what?

?: And what does that…

LM: —to itself. It’s an L-shaped planet express ship.

?: Yeahhhh. This is, this is all screwed up.

BW: (gets it) Ohhhhh!

?: This is just a mess.

LM: This very long room goes east west, and the, the bridge goes north south.

?: It’s a mess!

BW: Who started those angles in the movies, you know, filming stuff sideways?

?: What are you, you’re thinking of--

?: Not those kind of angles!

BW: Dutch angles!

?: I like that they work on the ship, we should bring them back.

DXC: Yeah.

BW: He’s so humble and appreciative.

LM: I have a cold.

BW: Who does?

?: Need a tissue?

LM: I do.

?: Ew!

MG: One of those things that always bothered me---

?: I do. I’m not making excuses.

MG: —You know when we were talking about the show, and trying to make it make some sense and, we thought, “Oh, they’ll deliver stuff throughout the universe!”…and they’re deliverin’ pillows!

DXC: Do you know what, this is true, I’ve bought some, uh, some weights, you know, that you exercise with, lead, genuine lead weights, and then I noticed they said “Made in China’ on them. So apparently, it was worth shipping lead weights across the ocean to sell to me for 2 dollars. So therefore, it might be worth shipping pillows across the universe, I say.

?: Well, actually I think with the oversea shipping, it’s how many you can fit in one of those containers. It’s not about the weight.

DXC: This is kinda cool, like Star Trek, they rarely visited a planet on Star Trek with gravity different from Earth.

BW: And oxygen.

DXC: Striking new—we’re, we’re, we’re hitting new Sci-Fi ground here.

BW: They always wound up on a planet with oxygen.

?: All science fiction takes place on planets with oxygen.

?: Red skies.

DXC: Wasn’t there a scene coming up here that we cut at this hotel?

?: Yes, They actually get to the Stumbos hotel and deliver the pillows, and get a tip of one Stumbonian coin, which weighs about 50 tons.

DXC: I always loved, like, my favorite thing in the Guinness Book of World Records when I was a kid was the world’s largest coin, which was like an ???Nambookin stone coin, or some some island tribe’s stone coin

?: It was ???Lambookin.

DXC: ???Lambookin? It was like ten feet in diameter made of stone and it could be exchanged for—

?: No, you’re right. ???Nambookin.

DXC: (laughs) It could be exchanged for a canoe or a wife.


 * [Transcriber’s note: Rai stones from the Island of Yap fit this description of currency perfectly]

BW: Bring it into Starbucks and see what happens.

?: Get a wife and a canoe.

DXC: Oh yeah. Well, if you’re a two coin-inaire. [laughter]

DXC: His potbelly hangs out a little more in high gravity.

BS: Well his belly was supposed to like, develop, each scene, fro-from show to show, he was supposed to grow, but after we did it, the first show, the first season, Love’s Labour’s Lost in Space, when he and Leela actually, made love, it was hanging out and we got it bigger and bigger and then after we showed it to you guys, you were pretty grossed out, so you said to keep it to one size!

?: The hell went on there?

BW: I love that he has a “lovenasium” on his ship.

DXC: A brig would be a waste of space on a spaceship, right?

MG: Exactly.

?: It’s the laundry room.

?: Big laundry room…[laughter]

?: It’s being used!

DXC: Yes it is!

?: All the big, wall-to-wall machines…[laughter]

DXC: Which one of the characters is doing their laundry right now?

BW: (as Zapp) And don’t forget fabric softener!

DXC: It’s not Bender since he’s naked.

?: And it’s not Fry because he never wears anything but what he’s got on.

DXC: You know Leela, the other two are in their uniforms.
 * [Zapp’s back in his old uniform]

MG: Here he’s fatter.

BW: [as Zapp] Bring back my other truss!

?: No way! More neutral commentary coming up!

MG: Hehe, yes!

?: We didn’t forget!

DXC: They were while you were talking…some of it.

MG: Oh there’s much more.

BW: I like being neutral…they’re so different.

BW: We’re not promoting, uh…

MG/DXC/LM: [almost at same time] Sex? Killing? Alcoholism? Neutralism? Anti-neutralism?

DXC: Which of society’s ills are you more concerned about

DXC: This is really nice, the animation here.

DXC: Billy did this crazy performance and then, they animated it perfectly.

MG: That was Dwayne Carey-Hill that animated that.

DXC: And he’s the director now, so he got promoted!

MG: For that!

DXC: For that scene. Good work, Dwayne!


 * [Zapp Brannigan: "Fly the white flag of war."]

MG: See?! [laughter]

DXC: Actually that was a surrendering…

MG: Huh? Huh?

BW: I love it!

DXC: “Live free or don’t”: that’s neutralist humor.

MG: That’s neutralist humor. [laughter]

?: Grey.

?: Yeah…that’s neutral.


 * [Neutral Leader: [episode] All I know is my gut says, “maybe”.]

?: See there? [laughter]

DXC: If you ask me…we did not put enough neutral humor in it.

?: I know, I, I absolutely agree. [laughter]


 * [Fry and Bender run into the laundry/brig]

?: And they’re gonna help him! I love it.

DXC: No, they’re not!

?: They’re not?

?: They’re not.

?: The ole’ switcharoo.


 * [Zapp brings out child’s spacesuit for Kiff]

DXC: That was handy.

?: It was here! Off screen.

?: Did I see a handle on the back? [laughter]

?: It’s a comedy handle!
 * [Bender takes out his banjo]

DXC: That was a saxophone for a long time

?: It was, it was a French horn for awhile.

DXC: French horn, French horn, sorry, but then we remembered that Bender liked the banjo from episode, what, 102, was it or…?

?: Something like that. Bender, Bender goes on play the banjo a lot in coming episodes.

BW: He does it with 105 pound hands. [laughter]

?: The neutral are very neutrally alarmed.

DXC: Yeah. That was it, baby! Neutral comedy is in the house!

?: My house!

?: His house!

DXC: I like that we kept the dark matter alive, now and then, from episode 104, that it powers the ship.

?: Neutral comedy!

?: Tonight on FOX!

?: Tonight on our all new neutral planet

?: It all starts with an episode of Futurama.

?: [about Neutral jokes] I think there’s one more. Prepare yourselves.

?: Wait for it.

?: Oh wait, is that it?

DXC: I don’t think there’s anymore.

?: Oh, there is no more.

?: No more neutral jokes.

DXC: But this joke is not, doesn’t take a very strong stand on anything, maybe you’re thinking of this joke.

?: That’s true.
 * [Bird squawks in court audience]

?: That was it.

DXC: We knew there was a callback to some joke from earlier in the episode that you didn’t know.

LM: I think in some version of the script they asked the neutral planet president if it was okay to reinstate, uh, uh, Zapp, and I don’t remember what he said…[laughter]'…but it, he might not have had a strong opinion! [more laughter]

BW: At the end there, did, uh, Zapp just get bigger? At the end of the last scene?

DXC: You animators, did he?

?: Uhhhhhh.

?: I wasn’t paying attention.

BW: Good work.

?: Yes, yes he was.

BW: He’s out of control.


 * [Episode credits]

?: The password is mutiny.

LM: Thank you for buying our DVD.

BW: Take ‘em while you can get ‘em. Big credits.

RM: You don’t get that on TV.