The Six Million Dollar Mon

← Previous	Navigation in production order	Next →

Season 7 episode Broadcast season 9 episode
The Six Million Dollar Mon
Hermes - with an extendo arm and cycloscanner eyes - and LaBarbara in bed.
No.	121
Production number	7ACV07
Written by	Ken Keeler
Directed by	Peter Avanzino
Title caption	This Episode Worth 250 Futurama Points
First air date	25 July, 2012
Broadcast number	S09E07
Title reference	The American television series The Six Million Dollar Man and the fact that Hermes pronounces "man" as "mon"
Special guest(s)	Dan Castellaneta
Additional
Commentary (Transcript) Transcript Storyboard Pictures
Season 7
The Bots and the Bees A Farewell to Arms Decision 3012 The Thief of Baghead Zapp Dingbat The Butterjunk Effect The Six Million Dollar Mon Fun on a Bun Free Will Hunting Near-Death Wish 31st Century Fox Viva Mars Vegas Naturama Forty Percent Leadbelly 2-D Blacktop T.: The Terrestrial Fry and Leela's Big Fling The Inhuman Torch Saturday Morning Fun Pit Calculon 2.0 Assie Come Home Leela and the Genestalk Game of Tones Murder on the Planet Express Stench and Stenchibility Meanwhile ← Season 6 Season 8 →

"The Six Million Dollar Mon" is the one hundred and twenty-first episode of Futurama, the seventh of the seventh production season and the seventh of the ninth broadcast season. It aired on 25 July, 2012, on Comedy Central. It guest-stars Dan Castellaneta as the Robot Devil. Hermes replaces his body parts with mechanics after being fed up with his inferiority to machines.

Plot

Act I: "When I fight machinery, machinery always wins."

After conducting an annual performance review, Hermes discovers that he is the most inefficient employee of Planet Express and has himself fired and replaced by the robot accountant Mark 7-G. Surprisingly, Zoidberg is the only member upset by his departure, as he believed that Hermes' hatred for him was merely a friendly inside joke, rather than out of genuine malice, and shows open resentment towards the company's new accountant. After Hermes tells his family the news over his wife's extremely spicy goat soup, he and LaBarbara go for a walk, where they are attacked by Roberto, who wants to eat LaBarbara's skin. Smitty and URL come to their rescue at the last minute using URL's robotic chest harpoon, leading Hermes to conclude that he could use a robotic upgrade for himself. Because of his multiple escapes, Roberto is taken immediately to the electromagnetic chair and executed. Using Bender's help, Hermes finds the shadowy surgeon Yuri to perform the operation on him and returns home to show his family, much to their surprise and shock, that he now has a robotic chest harpoon.

Act II: "Nice shiny metal ass, Hermes."

The next day, Hermes shows off his new chest artillery to the Planet Express crew. Everyone is impressed and, upon demonstrating it to retrieve a box just out of Mark 7-G's reach, re-hires himself as the Planet Express accountant. Zoidberg is thrilled to have him back, and even though Hermes explicitly states that he is not Zoidberg's friend, Zoidberg laughs it off, saying how, "When he [Hermes] stops insulting is when [Zoidberg] worries." When Professor Farnsworth's dentures fall down the drain, Hermes' chest harpoon cannot reach it. However, Bender's extendo-arm can, leading Mark 7-G to consider getting the same upgrade. Hermes sees this as potential competition, and returns to Yuri for an extendo arm. When Hermes and LaBarbara are in bed, Hermes uses his extendo-arm to remove his glasses, but accidentally crushes them. Hermes then decides to get a bionic eye. LaBarbara is initially fine with his decision, but is shocked to discover that Hermes has upgraded his penis as well. Hermes agrees to LaBarbara's demands to cease upgrading himself, but behind his back, Hermes crosses his robotic fingers. Eventually, it comes to the point where the only thing left of the real Hermes is his brain, brain stem, and hair. Meanwhile, Zoidberg has taken all of Hermes' human parts and reconnected them, creating a ventriloquist's dummy that he calls Little Hermes. Zoidberg and Little Hermes hit the town, performing their routine to much applause.

Act III: "He wants a brain. He wants a robot brain."

Hermes feels that he needs to perform the last upgrade, by replacing his brain with a computer. When Yuri refuses to perform the operation, Hermes travels with Farnsworth and Bender head to the robot graveyard to exhume a robot body for a processor card. Unbeknownst to them, the processor card they have obtained is Roberto's.

Just as Farnsworth is about to perform the operation, Hermes' family arrive to beg him to stop. LaBarbara goes as far as to threaten Hermes with a divorce. Seeing this, Farnsworth refuses to perform the operation. Hermes then locks his family and his co-workers inside the lab, threatening to kill Farnsworth unless Farnsworth performs the operation. Zoidberg then offers to perform the operation, with the help of Little Hermes. He performs the operation whilst singing a rendition of the song "Monster Mash" with new lyrics to fit the situation. After removing Hermes' brain, he places the brain into Little Hermes. Suddenly, Hermes comes back to life in his original body and realizes that he has given up his humanity for the pointless pursuit of perfectionism. The crew realize too late that Roberto's card has been installed into Hermes' robot body, and they are trapped inside the lab.

Still wanting to eat Hermes' skin, Roberto uses his new body to remove a piece of Hermes' skin off his forearm. However, he starts melting as soon as he eats Hermes' skin, as it has become extremely spicy as a result of years of LaBarbara's goat soup. Hermes ends up thanking Dr. Zoidberg for saving him and the crew.

Production

On 28 July 2011, it was revealed at the San Diego Comic-Con that, in an episode of the seventh production season, "Hermes [would] realize he [was] less efficient than a machine, so he [would] chop some unnecessary parts of his body and [would] become a cyborg". On 30 August, a photograph of the cover of the episode's production script was posted on a Tumblr blog - revealing the episode's title. On 29 February 2012, CGEF confirmed the episode's title and revealed its writer to be Ken Keeler and its director to be Peter Avanzino.

In June, Countdown to Futurama began releasing promotional material for the episode. It has so far released eight items: A promotional picture showing Leela, Amy, Zoidberg, Farnsworth, a mecha Hermes, Bender and Fry in the Planet Express employee lounge and a design of the mecha Hermes - together with the revelation that the episode was the one associated with the Hermes plot at the San Diego Comic-Con - on 6 June, a design of the cover of the magazine Astounding Tales on 7 June, part of the storyboard showing Bender suggest to Hermes getting an implant on 8 June, a design of a new character, Mark 7-G, on 9 June, a design of Hermes with an extendo arm and cycloscanner eyes and a design of four stages undergone by a ventriloquist dummy of Hermes on 10 June, a promotional picture showing Zoidberg controlling the Hermes dummy on 11 June and a video clip featuring Hermes - with the extendo arm and the cycloscanner eyes - and LaBarbara in bed on 12 June.

By 8 June, MSN TV had revealed the episode's air date.

Comedy Central's website released another promotional picture, showing mecha Hermes about to drive a drill into Farnsworth's head.

On 12 July, following the broadcast of the episode "Zapp Dingbat", the public were given the opportunity to participate in a live chat with the Futurama cast and crew. Several clips of "The Six Million Dollar Mon" were shown during the live stream.

Additional information

Trivia

• The voice of the Robot Devil, Dan Castellaneta, guest-stars in this episode, which is the seventh episode of the ninth broadcast season. He also guest-stars in "Calculon 2.0", which is the seventh episode of the tenth broadcast season. Both of these episodes are episodes of the seventh production season.
• The bridge that appears behind Hermes and LaBarbara during their walk is Gothic Bridge in Central Park.

Allusions

Click here to see cultural mentions made in this episode.

• The episode's title is a reference to the American television series The Six Million Dollar Man - the title character of which is, like Hermes here, a cyborg - and the fact that Hermes pronounces "man" as "mon".
• Mark 7-G's name is a possible reference to Sector 7-G, the name of the area Homer Simpson works in at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant in The Simpsons.
• Mark 7-G is delivered to Planet Express by Bureaucrat Paul Lynde.
• Astounding Tales is a reference to the American science fiction magazine Analog Science Fiction and Fact - which was initially published as "Astounding Stories" - and the American anthology comic book series Astonishing Tales.
• The book Lady Chatterley's Janitor is a reference to the 1928 book Lady Chatterley's Lover. In keeping with the running gag of Scruffy only reading sexually explicit material, Lady Chatterley's Lover is well-known for containing explicit descriptions of sex.
• Hermes reads a book called The Invisible Mon - which is a reference to the H. G. Wells science fiction novella The Invisible Man.
• The song sung by Zoidberg is a parody of the 1962 song "Monster Mash" by Bobby "Boris" Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers.
• Hermes' response to LaBarbara during Roberto's attack paraphrases the chorus of John Mellencamp's "Authority Song."
• Zoidberg's reply of "Something wonderful" when Hermes asks what he's doing with his pieces is a phrase uttered several times by Dave Bowman in the 1984 film 2010.
• The cemetery has a tomb for Roomba, a real world vacuum cleaner robot.

Continuity

• While Hermes and LaBarbara walk through the city at night, they pass the bridge where Fry and Leela spent Leela's birthday in "The Late Philip J. Fry". Fry also fell off of this bridge in "Overclockwise".
• The gravestone of Helper, a short-lived replacement for Bender first seen in "Godfellas", is seen in the robot graveyard.
• The episode is the second episode of season 7 where a recurring character has been killed, the first being Calculon in "The Thief of Baghead".
• Yuri, the surgeon from the episode "My Three Suns", makes his sixth appearance in the series. His name is also revealed in the episode.
• The electromagnetic chair first seen in "A Tale of Two Santas" that nearly executed Bender, who masqueraded as Robot Santa, reappears to execute Roberto.
• Amy wears the same dress she wore in "Amazon Women in the Mood".
• Amy refers to herself as a "harpoon snob" when examining Hermes' harpoon implant. This traces back to her backstory in "Möbius Dick", which reveals she has extensive experience harpooning giraffes in the Serengeti, a skill she used to hunt the four-dimensional space whale.
• Fry passing up the chance to shower with Amy and Leela to eavesdrop on Hermes and Bender is similar to Fry ignoring Amy and Leela's girl-on-girl fight to prepare for the revival of his dead dog in "Jurassic Bark".

Quotes

Hermes: No more implants. I don't want to end up a cold, emotionless machine like you.

Zoidberg: You don't understand. He was the only one who cared enough to insult me.
Leela: I insult you, you fat sack.
Zoidberg: Sure, when it's convenient.

Hermes: I will be evaluating each of you, and the lowest rated employee, possibly Zoidberg, will be fired at sundown - Zoidberg.
Zoidberg: [He chuckles to himself.] Classic Hermes!
Hermes: Let the interviews begin! Good luck everybody but Zoidberg.

Hermes: Now then, while many of you do half-assed jobs, and the rest do jobs whose ass ratio ranges from 42 to a mere 11 percent, only the most pathetically useless employee will be fired today.

Goofs

• Hermes's robot body starts talking in Roberto's voice before Roberto's brain is inserted.
  • This can, however, be explained with the fact that if robots die a certain way, their software is uploaded into the computational cloud and the deceased robots become capable of taking-over other electronic devices (6ACV19). Although, in this case, Roberto's ghost could enter any machine and chase Hermes forever.
• The magnetic waves from the electromagnetism chair would have fried Roberto's brain.
  • However, magnetism, even at that power, would only cause severe damage to a hard drive; Roberto's brain shows more resemblance to a motherboard with no indication of any kind of storage device on it.
    • But with powerful magnets, capable of tearing a robot into two halves, it is likely that Roberto's brain would have been torn into several pieces as well.
• Hermes' robot body goes from having a hole in its head, where the brain was taken out, to not having one when Roberto attacks.
  • The reshaping of the head could have closed the opening, however.
• Hermes stated Zoidberg did not reattach his nerves in which case he would have died the moment he tried to move.
  • It is possible, however, that the autonomic nervous system was reengaged, but the parts of the somatic nervous system (i.e. pain receptors in the skin) were left separate.
• Bender wears a spacesuit with an oxygen hosepipe attached to it while releasing ash into space, despite the fact that previous episodes establish that he can easily live in the vacuum without a spacesuit and that he does not need air to breathe.
  • However, the hosepipe may have just been attached to Bender to anchor him to the ship, an important function that prevents the events from "Godfellas" from happening again.
• Fry's spacesuit explodes, leaving him naked in the vacuum. This should have led to immediate death.
  • The Professor probably used the birthing machine.
  • A human can survive for at least half a minute in vacuum (perhaps longer) if he doesn't try to hold his breath (as Fry is unlikely to do because of the suddenness of the explosion). Not terribly healthy, though - but if he was brought back inside the ship soon enough...
  • The vacuum would have caused Fry to immediately exhale and have a super shart, from all the air in his body immediately getting sucked out.
  • Perhaps Professor Farnsworth had developed an anti-vacuum suppository similar to his anti-pressure pill.
• Professor Farnsworth appears to look worried when Hermes shows his firing tie, despite the fact that Farnsworth actually owns the company.
  • He may have been worried about the other employees.
    • He was fired and replaced by That Guy in "Future Stock", showing he can be replaced.
• The curried goat soup drops right down to Robot Hell, despite the fact that Hermes lives in New New York and Robot Hell is in New Jersey.
  • Robot Hell might expand all the way to New New York.
• When Hermes pulls out his stamp to become rehired, you can read the word FIRED and REHIRED on the bottom of the stamp. This means that when he stamps the paper, the word and all the letters should be backwards.
• When Hermes stamps over the word FIRED, the top of the F still should have been visible with the H stamped over it. So the F and the H should have created an A, making it REAIRED.
  • In the episode "Viva Mars Vegas" it is shown that the technology to erase ink already exists, so it is therefore not unreasonable to believe that in the 31st century, a rubber stamp that has an option of stamping two or more things can also erase the ink that would otherwise ruin what is trying to be stamped.
• After Roberto eats Hermes skin and melts, only one set of keys is left in the puddle. However, there are three sets of keys hanging on the chest door. All three should have been left in the puddle, although it is more likely all three would have melted.
  • That key may be heat resistant due to its importance, unlike the other two.
• In the episode, it is revealed that Zoidberg has perfectly reassembled Hermes' body parts. The problem is that in Bender's Big Score, Zoidberg reattached Hermes's head backwards. This suggests that Zoidberg is incompetent enough that reassembling Hermes' body parts would be impossible.
  • It is, however, possible that Zoidberg learned from his mistakes in Bender's Big Score.
• When Zoidberg says "Thank you ladies and gentlemen. I'll be here forever!", the exits are still locked, however when he scuttles away, there is no barrier over the door.
• Just before LaBarbara and Hermes turn their lights out, there are two books on the bed, but when LaBarbara turns on her light again, the two books disappear.
• In that same scene, LaBarbara turns on her light and Hermes' light turns on by itself, without clicking on its button.

Alien language sightings

• Time: 06:46
• Location: Alley wall next to Yuri's store
• Language: AL1
• Translation: If you lived here you'd be homeless by now

Characters

(In alphabetic order)

• Amy
• Bender
• Center Square Guy
• Dandy Jim
• Dwight
• Professor Farnsworth
• Florp
• Fry
• Gus
• Helper (mentioned in text only, headstone in robot cemetery)
• Hermes
• LaBarbara
• Leela
• Debut: Little Hermes
• Debut: Mark 7-G
• Mayor Poopenmeyer
• Roberto
• Robot Devil
• Sal
• Scruffy
• Smitty
• URL
• Judge Whitey
• Yuri
• Zoidberg

References

← Previous	Navigation in production order	Next →