Love and Rocket

"Love and Rocket" is the fifty-seventh episode of Futurama, the third of the fourth production season and the fourth of the fourth broadcast season. It aired 10 February, 2002 on FOX. It guest stars Sigourney Weaver as the Planet Express Ship and reprises Lucy Liu as herself in a jar. As Valentine's Day approaches... Bender's romance with the Planet Express Ship puts the crew in jeopardy.

Act I: "U-R-2 Cute"


Shortly before Valentine's Day, Bender and the Planet Express Ship are having major differences, creating tension between them. Meanwhile, Professor Farnsworth informs the crew that Planet Express has landed a big contract with Romanticorp. The crew takes a trip to Romanticorp to finalize the deal, where they pick up to deliver to Lrrr and Ndnd. After making the deal, Farnsworth is able to afford some modifications to the ship, including an improved personality (female) software for the Planet Express Ship, whom Bender immediately falls in love with.

Act II: "I Wuv U"
While Bender dates the ship, Fry tries to find the perfect pickup line from the huge load of conversation hearts they are supposed to deliver in order to impress Leela with it. Bender has become tired of the Planet Express ship, and starts to date cheap floozies on the side. This arouses the ship's suspicions and makes her jealous. Bender keeps stalling the Planet Express Ship, and making her more suspicious.

As the crew delivers a load of conversation hearts to Omicron Persei 8 as a peace offering from Earth's government, the Omicronians get mad at the 'I Wuv U' hearts and chase the crew off the planet, and then attack them with a fleet of Omicronian fighters. Bender picks this moment to break up with the ship, because he likes a dump to be as devastating as it is memorable. The Planet Express Ship screams and shuts down its engines, as it starts to sob. Seeing the opportunity for a fatal blow, the Omicronians fire several missiles, which leave the ship in ruins.

Act III: "U leave me breathless"
The ship is surprisingly unharmed, save her feelings and some scorch marks, and despite Leela's best efforts to console her, is still deeply depressed. Losing all hope to get together with Bender, the ship decides to fly into the nearest quasar to unite her and Bender into a quantum singularity. The crew tries to stop the ship, which disables life support and artificial gravity. Bender offers to merge his programming with the ship's to distract it, while Leela tries shutting down the ship's brain.

While Fry and Leela are in the brain room, Fry continues looking for the ultimate heart line while Leela is busy shutting down the ship's brain. As Fry is searching, he notices that Leela's oxygen is running out. Unaware of the situation, Leela ignores Fry, thinking he is trying to give her a conversation heart. Fry secretly plugs his oxygen supply into Leela's helmet. Meanwhile, Bender is being chased around the matrix-like world of the ship's computer by her personality icon, but cannot evade merging their programming. Leela succeeds in shutting down the computer, which brings life support and gravity back online. This also stops the ship from flying into the quasar. Leela, cautiously optimistic, speaks to Fry, who does not respond. She discovers that he sacrificed his own oxygen for her. She attempts to resuscitate Fry, who has lost consciousness. While pounding on his chest to make him breathe, Fry coughs up the candy heart he has been searching for U leave me breathless. Bender separates himself from the computer's consciousness, but seems to have ingested part of her personality.

The crew dumps the now useless conversation hearts into the quasar, causing a mystical love radiation spreading across the universe, destroying many, many planets--including two gangster planets and a cowboy world. Earth, however, was exactly the right distance to not be destroyed by them, but rather to see the beautiful romantic rays, with coupless around the world, such as Leela and Fry (and Zoidberg, who is inexplicably narrating this section) who watch the romantic sky.

Trivia

 * According to the DVD commentary, Leela lights a vanilla-scented candle on the bridge while consoling the ship and feeds it several buckets of ice cream - her standard method of coping with romantic problems, judging from her feelings expressed by Bender in "I Second that Emotion".
 * Lucy Liu's lines were from an earlier recording session during the time she recorded her lines for "I Dated a Robot".

Allusions

 * Much of the episode is inspired by the epic Sci Fi movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, like the computer's eye and Bender singing "".
 * Leela's comment about Six Flags is a reference to a Coca-Cola promotion where specially marked cans would give the drinker a free ticket to Six Flags.
 * When Bender is trapped after having merged programming with the Planet Express ship, Bender cannot continue because he has run into a.
 * The scene in which the lady chooses between the two talking wire mesh dummies is a reference to psychologist 's maternal-separation and social isolation experiments on.
 * The concept of gangster planets may be a reference to the Star Trek episode "".

Goofs

 * Bender crosses a diode in the chase sequence, meaning he supposedly can't go back across it. However the diode is actually pointing the wrong way. Pointing the way it does in the episode, he should have been blocked from crossing it in the first place.
 * It's explained in the DVD commentary that the diode represents the wall that Bender runs into, not that he can't cross over it again.
 * The sign on a diode shows the way a theoretical "electric current" made of positive particles would flow (from + to -). So if Bender is a "negative particle" in this circuit....
 * The quantity of candy hearts are referred to as "trillions," then "20 billion," and finally "millions."
 * Though these are likely referring separately to: the trillions of hearts in the Romaticorp warehouse, a delivery of 20 billion to the Omicronians, and whatever millions are left on the ship for other contracted deliveries or were undelivered due to the Omicronians becoming infuriated.
 * In the first scene, the fuselage of the Planet Express ship is incorrectly colored gray.
 * Turning off the oxygen instantaneously makes Fry and Leela choke until they get their rebreathers. However, when the supply is turned off, there would still be plenty of oxygen left in the ship for them to easily breathe for several hours without even noticing the halt in oxygen.
 * The hissing sound that can be heard when the Planet Express Ship "turns off the oxygen" might indicate that the entire air (or at least the oxygen) is actively removed from the room, rather than just the supply of fresh oxygen being shut down.
 * When the Planet Express Ship comes to Fry's window, it is much smaller in proportion to Fry than in all other scenes in the show.
 * During the close-up of Fry holding the candy heart that says "You're my man," his index finger is on the right side of the heart from the viewer's perspective. However, during the shot immediately afterward, his index finger is on the left side of the heart.

Continuity

 * Some items in Fry's and Bender's cabin refer to earlier episodes, among them are: a sword (probably nicked from Alcazar) leaning on the wall, a DOOP uniform on the ground, a model of the Titanic on a shelf, the helmet Fry wore in "When Aliens Attack", a Mars University pennant on the wall and a suitcase. The same gadgets are already there in "The Deep South", and some of them can be seen in other episodes as well, like the sword in "Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch". The pink cloth on the hilt of the sword looks suspiciously like Gender Bender's tutu from "Raging Bender".
 * Bender sings "" in this episode. The song was previously referenced as the title of another episode.
 * Leela says to Fry : I'm not impressed by a guy's message, Fry. I'm impressed by the guy...or not? . This hesitation probably refers to the episode Time Keeps on Slippin' in which Leela was impressed by Fry's message I love you, Leela spelled with stars. It was enough for them to be married, but only during a short time skip.

Characters

 * Amy
 * Bender
 * Elzar
 * Professor Farnsworth
 * Floozies
 * Fry
 * Debut: Gwen
 * Hermes
 * Leela
 * Lrrr
 * Lucy Liu
 * Kif
 * Mayor Poopenmeyer
 * Ndnd
 * Planet Express Ship
 * Debut: Sheldon
 * Zoidberg

Episode Credits

 * Writer
 * Dan Vebber
 * Director
 * Brian Sheesley
 * Voice Actors
 * Billy West
 * Katey Sagal
 * John DiMaggio
 * Maurice LaMarche
 * DVD Commentary
 * Matt Groening
 * David X. Cohen
 * Rich Moore
 * Dan Vebber
 * Brian Sheesley
 * Billy West
 * Maurice LaMarche
 * Guest Stars
 * Sigourney Weaver
 * Lucy Liu