Leela's Homeworld

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Season 4 episode
Broadcast season 4 episode
Leela's Homeworld
Leela's Homeworld.jpg
No.56
Production number4ACV02
Written byKristin Gore
Directors
Mark Ervin
Swinton O. Scott III
Title captionIt's like "Hee Haw" with lasers
First air date17 February, 2002
Broadcast numberS04E05
Opening cartoonIn a Cartoon Studio, Van Beuren Studios, 1931
Additional
Commentary
(Transcript)
Transcript

Pictures

Season 4
  1. Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch
  2. Leela's Homeworld
  3. Love and Rocket
  4. Less than Hero
  5. A Taste of Freedom
  6. Bender Should Not Be Allowed on Television
  7. Jurassic Bark
  8. Crimes of the Hot
  9. Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles
  10. The Why of Fry
  11. Where No Fan Has Gone Before
  12. The Sting
  13. Bend Her
  14. Obsoletely Fabulous
  15. The Farnsworth Parabox
  16. Three Hundred Big Boys
  17. Spanish Fry
  18. The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings
← Season 3Season 5 →

"Leela's Homeworld" is the fifty-sixth episode of Futurama, the second of the fourth production season and the fifth of the fourth broadcast season. It aired 17 February, 2002 on FOX. Down in the sewers, Turanga Leela finds out the truth about her origin.

The Story

Act I: "Get back in the sewer, weirdy!"

"Just make sure you get my nonchalant side."

Leela is named "Orphan of the Year" in the orphanarium she grew up in, the Cookieville Minimum Security Orphanarium, and attends a ceremony there receiving the award. At the same time, the Professor builds a new machine that produces glow-in-the-dark-noses, but also causes a great amount of toxic waste which Hermes wants the Professor to get rid of, so Bender disposes of into the sewers.

Act II: "Mu-tate! Mu-tate! Mu-tate!"

As Bender overdoes it, the Sewer Mutants strike back and pull Bender, Leela, and Fry into the sewers. All three are sentenced to be dumped into the Mutagenic Sewage Lake to be mutated (the liquid can't harm mutants as they already are mutated; nor can it harm robots because they don't have DNA-though the mutants get around this by stating they'll beat Bender up afterwards) and beaten up afterwards, but are rescued by two mysterious robed strangers who somehow know Leela's full name. While running from the mutants, the crew break into a house that has a complete biography of Leela pinned on the walls plus a lot of stuff she flushed down the toilet. They are caught by the mutants and sentenced to death, but the mysterious strangers intervene again and they are only banished from the sewers. Fry and Bender go to the surface, but Leela stays behind and dives into the Mutagenic Sewage Lake in pursuit of the strangers.

Act III: "Isn't that the same machine that makes noses?"

Leela finds that she is not mutated by the sewage and pursues the two strangers deep into the sewers. Fry, in the meantime, searches for clues on Leela's origins in the orphanarium, and acquires the note that was pinned to Leela's basket when she was abandoned. The note is written in an alien language, so he takes it to the Professor to analyze it. He uses the Nose Machine, pointing out that there's no reason it can't do other things. Although the Machine is unable to decode the language, it does find out that the note originated from the sewers.

Leela's parents are Sewer Mutants. Leela had so few mutations that they decided to give her up to the orphanarium to enable her to lead a real life on the surface. Her mother wrote the note in alienese to convince the warden Leela was an alien, not a mutant. Her parents chose never to reveal her true origins so she would not learn the shameful truth. The only connection between them is a bracelet they left with their daughter, of which her mother has a duplicate.

Meanwhile, Leela has caught up with the robed strangers and threatens them with a gun, desperate to retrieve information about her origins. She finds the duplicate bracelet on one of the strangers, and suspects they have taken it from her parents after they killed them. The strangers confess the deed, and Leela is about to kill them when Fry literally drops in from above and reveals the truth - the strangers are indeed Leela's parents. They were so desperate that their daughter should not learn her true heritage that they were prepared to die rather than reveal that piece of information, and they fear their daughter might despise them because of all they did.

Leela, realizing that after decades of searching she has finally found her parents, embraces them - the family is reunited.

Additional Info

Trivia

  • The eagle on Hermes' badge holds a folder saying "To Be Filed".
  • One of the orphans who won an award for "Often Seen in the Background of News Spots" appears in the background of Leela's interview one minute later (see picture).
    • Other awards include "Diligent Flosser", "Has Tasted Every McDonald's Sandwich" and "Successfully Switched from Heroin to Methadone".
  • The closing song for this episode is "Baby Love Child" by Japanese pop-rock band Pizzicato Five. Link
  • Although the commentary states that the dead whale Bender stuffs into the sewer is Mushu, this is impossible, since Mushu doesn't appear for fourteen more episodes, and since that whale is a completely different type of whale than Mushu (probably an orca).
  • The orphanage offers espresso to the orphans.
  • The pedestrian crossing sign in the sewers had an image of a person with two heads and three legs.
  • Fry was lifting his shirt at Space Mardi Gras.
  • When the mutants gave the gang a tour, all of the buildings behind Fry said "Dry Cleaners".
  • Alien code: When Leela looks down at her bracelet, you see the first official appearance of Alien Code 3. The code hasn't officially been translated.
  • At grade-school, Leela was shown doing math homework. One of her answers is wrong.
  • This episode was named #23 on IGN's list of Top 25 Futurama Episodes.
  • Warden Vogel claims nobody on Earth, not even Brainzilla, can translate AL1 (Alienese), yet many other episodes contain AL1 written in places on Earth. For example, in "Bendin' in the Wind", Utah has been renamed Human Farm, written in AL1.
  • This is one of the only episodes to have no debuting characters.

Continuity

Goofs

  • When the screen pans over the orphan's awards, the "often Seen in the Background of News Spots" orphan is on the far left, but appears on the right as Warden Vogel hangs Leela's photo.
  • The bracelet on Leela's mother's tentacle only appears when Leela notices it and snatches it from her.
  • At the end of the episode, it shows Leela as an adult sleeping and before her parents tuck her in, you can see that she is not wearing her Wristlojackimator. In previous episodes, when you see Leela go to sleep or get out of bed, she normally has it on.
    • She could've just decided to take it off that night.
  • When they are in the hot-air balloon when they "fire up the sewer gas," Fry, Leela and Bender start coughing. Bender shouldn't cough when he is a robot who doesn't breathe or have a nose.
    • He may still have a sense of smell (one of his many senses), or he is just trying to fit in.
  • There are no ladders to reach the sewers, unlike in "Space Pilot 3000", "The Mutants Are Revolting" and "I Second that Emotion".
  • The baby Leela in the basket has a card hanging around her neck saying "Hello! My name is Turunga Leela". Later on when her parents remember leaving her there, she doesn't have it anymore.
  • After Leela's mother puts her bracelet back on when Leela is yelling at her, the bracelet vanishes in the next scene.
  • In "Mother's Day", Leela's Wristlojackimator abandoned her and there was no bracelet under it.
    • The other times we have seen Leela without the Wristlojackimator she had opportunity to remove the bracelet as well, so those are not considered goofs.
  • Hermes' badge says "Federal Bureaucracy", yet in "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back" and "Lethal Inspection" he was working for the Central Bureaucracy.
  • Raoul Inglis is previously shown and said to have only one ear, but is now shown with both ears intact.
    • Maybe he is constantly mutating since it is only in "I Second That Emotion" where he has one ear.
      • That's impossible since it's been confirmed that mutants cannot mutate more.
        • Hey, you know what? I bet mutants undergo cosmetic surgery from time to time. Maybe he felt having one ear made him look weird?
  • Although the orphanarium was renamed the "Bender B. Rodriquez Orphanarium" in "The Cyber House Rules", it seems to have reverted to the original name "Cookieville Minimum Security Orphanarium".
  • During most shots of the Leela's basket, the screw that connects the handle to the rest of the basket is silver. However, during the close shot where Vogel noticed her letter in Alien Language 1, the screw is brown.

Allusions

Quotes

    Warden Vogel: It is not easy being an orphan. Not if I've anything to do with it!

    Hermes: It looks like toxic waste. [He sniffs.] And it smells like toxic waste.
    Fry: What does it taste like?
    [Hermes tastes it.]
    Hermes: Delicious fig pudding! Ooh, that's good! But a distinct after-taste of toxic waste.

    Amy: Wow! Cool!
    Bender: Now I can punch you in the nose in the dark! [Professor Farnsworth sneezes and turns the light on. The glow-in-the-dark nose is on Bender.] Where did it go?

Alien Language Sightings

Time:3:32
Location: Note attached to Leela
Language: AL1
Translation: YOUR PARENTS LOVE YOU VERY MUCH

Characters

(In alphabetic order)

Episode Credits