Forty Percent Leadbelly
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Season 7 episode Broadcast season 10 episode | |||||
Forty Percent Leadbelly | |||||
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No. | 128 | ||||
Production number | 7ACV14 | ||||
Written by | Ken Keeler | ||||
Directed by | Stephen Sandoval | ||||
Title caption | Any Resemblance To Actual Future Is Purely Coincidental | ||||
First air date | 3 July 2013 | ||||
Broadcast number | S10E04 | ||||
Title reference | A running gag and the late American musician Lead Belly | ||||
Opening cartoon | Unknown | ||||
Additional | |||||
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Season 7 | |||||
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"Forty Percent Leadbelly" is the one hundred and twenty-eighth episode of Futurama, the fourteenth of the seventh production season and the fourth of the tenth broadcast season. It aired on 3 July 2013 on Comedy Central.
Story
Bender meets his hero, a famous folksinger who has been in jail 30 times, and wants to duplicate his success. This means duplicating his guitar too, which he tries to steal from a maximum-security prison, but fails, so instead resorts to 3D-printing technology to duplicate the guitar — again resulting in horrible consequences.
Production
On 27 January 2012, assistant director Aimee Steinberger commented that she could not go to the FOX-lot screening of the first full-color animation for "7ACV01"[1] due to her work on this episode.[2] On 14 February 2012, she said that the animatic for the episode was "done" and would be screened "[on the next day] at the FOX lot".[3] On the next day, she stated that she thought that it had gone "pretty well".[4]
As late as 8 January 2013,[5] it was revealed[6] that the title "Forty Percent Leadbelly", which had been, in February 2012, added to the Copyright Catalog[7] and said by show writer Eric Rogers to be the title of something "supergood",[8] was the episode's title.
On 12 April 2013, a preview clip for the episode was revealed on a HuffPost Live interview with Futurama writer Patric Verrone, showing Bender using the help of Ben Beeler to bring a guitar image stored in his file system into reality by use of a large 3D printer-like device. The air date for the second half of season 7 was also revealed.[9]
Image gallery
Promotional picture of Fry in carbonite.<ref> Countdown to Futurama: Fry in Carbonite. (Comedy Central's Tumblr page.) 10 May 2013. Retrieved on 26 June 2013.
Concept art for the Make-O-Matic 3D printer.<ref> Countdown to Futurama: Make-O-Matic. (Comedy Central's Tumblr page.) 11 May 2013. Retrieved on 26 June 2013.
Concept art for Big Caboose.<ref> Countdown to Futurama: Big Caboose. (Comedy Central's Tumblr page.) 12 May 2013. Retrieved on 26 June 2013.
Promotional picture of Bender in bed with Jezebel.<ref> Countdown to Futurama: Bender in Bed with Jezebel. (Comedy Central's Tumblr page.) 13 May 2013. Retrieved on 26 June 2013.
Additional information
Trivia
- Bender's porn drive has a memory size of 100,000 terabytes and his main drive has the memory size of only 1 terabyte.
- Ramblin' Rodríguez's birth year is given as 2996. This may be Bender's birth year.
Allusions
- Click here to see cultural mentions made in this episode.
- The episode's title is a reference to a running gag that has Bender claim to be 40% of something that keeps changing and the late American musician Lead Belly. In the game, Bender is 40% lead.
- Fry is trapped in a block of carbonite, a reference to the Star Wars franchise. Han Solo was also trapped in carbonite in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.
- Bender's stage name, Ramblin' Rodríguez, may be a reference to the 1962 song "Ramblin' Rose".
Continuity
- The Awesome Express uniforms, from "The Route of All Evil", appear once again.
- Fry previously did karate in "Attack of the Killer App".
- When Dr. Beeler accesses Bender's main drive in his file system, two folders can be seen within it, "Main Personality" and "Penguin Personality", a reference to when Bender was rebooted in penguin mode in "The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz".
- Funnily enough, his main personality file has a memory size of 3 MB, whereas his penguin personality has a memory size of 150 MB.
- A few penguins attend Bender's funeral.
- Bender previously rapped during the end credits for "Free Will Hunting".
Goofs
- In the scene where Fry and Leela are watching TV in Fry's and Bender's apartment, the shot depicting the television set is clearly the one used for the Planet Express employee lounge.
Quotes
[Bender has the rotating image of a guitar projecting from his eyes. He and Ben Beeler are looking at it.]
Ben Beeler: Using my fancy technology, I can make an exact copy of this guitar.
[Ben Beeler points to the copy.]
Bender: Tell me Doctor Beeler, will I need to threaten you?
Ben Beeler: Not at all! You see nowadays, we can take a unique and beautiful object, and easily reduce it to a formula for mass production! I call the process: science!
[A large 3D printer-like device called the Make-O-Matic begins to create a guitar downloaded from Bender's memory.]
Ben Beeler: By laying down layer after layer of nano plastic, it can turn your wildest dreams into ordinary reality!
Bender: Witchcraft! Sorcerer! Neat.
Bender: I failed at my life-long dream again. How can I be so bad at everything I try, and still be so great?
Appearances
Characters
- Amy
- Ben Beeler
- Bender
- Debut: Big Caboose
- Debut: Cookie
- Debut: Dr. Brutalov
- Dandy Jim
- Professor Farnsworth
- Debut: Fast Frank Brogan
- Fry
- Gus
- Helper (cameo, 10:10)
- Hermes
- Humorbot 5.0 (cameo, 10:08)
- The Hypnotoad
- Debut: Jezebel
- Leela
- The male nurse
- The Robot Chef (cameo, 9:03)
- Debut: Silicon Red
- Zoidberg
Characters at the funeral
Places
- Debut: 11-Worth Variable-Security Prison
- New Hampshire (mentioned in speech only)
- The Planet Express conference room
- The Planet Express headquarters
- The Planet Express kitchen
- The Robot Arms Apartments
- Debut: The Rusty Rail
- The technology lab
- The Temple of Robotology
- Debut: T.G.I. Folky's
- The Wong Hotel & Casino
References
- ^ Aimee Steinberger (27 January 2012). aimeekitty. (Twitter.) Retrieved on 27 January 2012.
- ^ Aimee Steinberger (27 January 2012). aimeekitty. (Twitter.) Retrieved on 27 January 2012.
- ^ Aimee Steinberger (14 February 2012). aimeekitty. (Twitter.) Retrieved on 15 February 2012.
- ^ Aimee Steinberger (15 February 2012). aimeekitty. (Twitter.) Retrieved on 16 February 2012.
- ^ Eric Rogers (08 January 2012). EricRogersLA. (Twitter.) Retrieved on 15 January 2012.
- ^ FoxFast: Futurama. (FoxFast.com.) Retrieved on 09 January 2013.
- ^ "Just Fan" (08 February 2012). "Futurama: Futurama News after 6ACV26 (Reincarnation)" (page 18). (PEEL.) Retrieved on 15 January 2013.
- ^ Eric Rogers (08 February 2012). Kitchelfilms. (Twitter.) Retrieved on 15 January 2013.
- ^ 'Futurama' Writer Shares Exclusive New Clip. (HuffPost Live.) 13 April 2013. Retrieved on 13 April 2013.