Godfellas
From Futurama Wiki
| Godfellas | |
|---|---|
| |
| Episode | 52 |
| Production Code | 3ACV20 |
| Season | 3 |
| Air date | March 17, 2002 |
| Running Time | 30 minutes |
| Directed By | Susan Dietter |
| Written By | Ken Keeler |
| Opening subtitle | Please turn off all cell phones and tricorders |
| Preceded by | "Roswell that Ends Well" |
| Followed by | "Future Stock" |
- "Behold the one commandment! [holds up a stone tablet which reads, "God needs booze".] "
- ―Malachi Sr.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
During a noisy space pirate attack, Bender, trying to find some peace and quiet in the torpedo tube, is launched into interstellar space beyond the reach of Fry and Leela. As they were going top speed when they fired Bender, Bender was therefore going faster than the Planet Express ship's top speed. After an asteroid crashes into him, a civilization of tiny humanoids, the Shrimpkins, grows on Bender and they begin worshiping him as a god. At first, Bender enjoys his new-found status, and has his followers brew what for them are vast quantities of "Lordweiser" beer. The tiny denizens living on him begin praying for rain, sun and wealth; Bender attempts to heed their prayers, failing comically and harming the Shrimpkins in the process. Eventually, the Shrimpkins who migrated to his backside feel their prayers are unheeded and become atheists. The micro-civilization is ultimately and simultaneously destroyed when the front- and back-side factions build and use atomic weapons out of Bender's nuclear pile.
Bender soon floats toward a cosmic entity who can signal in binary. It behaves somewhat like a sophisticated cosmic computer resembling a galaxy with colored stars, who is "user friendly...my good chum". The God Entity is nearly omniscient: when Bender mentions his experiences with the Shrimpkins, the God Entity responds, in an encouraging tone, "Yes, I saw... you were doing well until everyone died". The God Entity advises that the use of godlike powers requires a "light touch" so that those one intends to aid will neither lose hope nor become dependent on supernatural intervention.
During Bender's encounter with the God Entity, Fry and Leela search for a way to contact Bender. His odor couldn't be detected by the Smell-O-Scope and everyone tries to tell Fry to get over Bender, even bringing in Helper. After consulting with Father Changstein Al Gamal at the First Amalgamated Church, they track down the Monks of T'shuva, a sect of secretive monks who use a combination radio telescope/amplifying transmitter to search for God in space and with which the monks hope to contact God so that they may "utter unto him a short prayer". They refuse to delay their search for God to allow Fry to search for Bender, whereupon Leela overpowers them. Fry spends the next three days searching for Bender, while the imprisoned monks eat their own shoes for sustenance. Fry gives up the search for Bender and hits the telescope controls, which happen to aim the telescope at the God Entity, who hears Fry say, "I wish I had Bender back". The entity then throws Bender all the way back to Earth, with a parachute and a peremptory farewell, just as Fry and Leela are leaving the monastery. After a sizzling embrace, Bender is convinced from his encounter that "God" does little to help people, and insists on traveling back to the monastery to free the trapped monks. The God entity chuckles and repeats the advice he gave to Bender: "When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."
[edit] Quotes
[Scene: Gypsy's Caravan.]
Gypsy: Sure I hold séance, channel your friend, no problem. Insert coin.
[Fry inserts 5 cents and the Gypsy moans as she "channels" Bender.]
Gypsy: I am your friend, Bonder.
Fry: Bonder? Is it really you?
Gypsy: Yes. I am fine. Give the gypsy $10.
Fry: Wait a minute! Bender's name isn't Bonder, it's Bender. You're a fraud!
Gypsy: Look, you want false hope or not?
Fry: Only if you don't have any real hope.
Gypsy: Well, there is perhaps one way. Have you heard of the Monks of Deshuba?
Fry: ...I've..not heard of them...
Gypsy: They are an ancient order that believes God exists somewhere in the depths of space. They have built the universe's most powerful radio telescope, high in the Himalayas, to search for him.
Fry: You think they'd let me use it to look for Bender?
Gypsy: What am I, psychic? I mean, yes! Yes, I'm-I'm sure they will. Yes.
[Scene: Monastery of Deshuba. The radio dish tilts as the monks search the sky.]
Monk #1: A member of our brotherhood sits at these controls every hour of every day, scanning the heavens for God.
Leela: How long have you been at it?
Monk #1: 700 years. We've not yet examined one-ten-millionth of the sky. But we will go on until we find the Almighty, even if it takes till the end of time.
Fry: And then what?
Monk #1: Then we utter unto him a short prayer. You see, the telescope is also an amplifying transmitter.
Fry: Hmm. Finding God. That-That's important, yeah. But you know what might be a treat for everyone? If you let me use the telescope to find my lost friend, Bender.
Monk #2: He speaks out of love for his friend. Perhaps that love in his heart is God.
Monk #1: Oh, how convenient! A theory about God that doesn't require looking through a telescope. Get back to work!
[edit] Trivia
- The episode's title is a reference to the 1990 film "Goodfellas".
- When Bender says "Ask not for whom the bone bones, it bones for thee," he is referencing John Donne: "never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee,"; the famous passage from Donne's Meditation XVII begins with another quotable phrase, "No man is an island". Ernest Hemingway referenced J.D.'s first phrase in the title of, For Whom the Bell Tolls.
- An asteroid collides with Bender, and immediately afterward, the Shrimpkin civilization appears on his metal casing. This references the theory, known as Panspermia, that life can spread across vast distances of space by "hitching a ride" on space debris. [1]
- Fry and Leela visit the "Monastery of Teshuvah". Teshuvah is the Hebrew word for repentance.
- The use of a technologically advanced telescope to search for Bender is similar to the use of Professor Farnsworth's Smellescope in A Big Piece of Garbage. The Smellescope is also used, but dismissed as too low powered to locate Bender.
- An observatory located in a monastery is also a reference to The Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C. Clarke.
- Coolio, who guest starred in the third season episode "A Tale of Two Santas", appears on the 2996 quarter.
- Bender's godlike influence upon the diminutive Shrimpkins is expanded to include more serious implications in the "Microcosmic God" by Theodore Sturgeon and the The Twilight Zone episode The Little People. The tiny creatures in Alan Dean Foster's short story, Gift Of A Useless Man depend on the main character in a way similar to the Shrimpkins building their civilization 'on' Bender. The God Entity appears almost identical to the God Entity portrayed in Stanislaw Lem's "Voyages of Professor Tarantoga" screenplay.
- Bender: But why would God think in binary? Unless ... you're not God, but the remains of a computerized space probe that collided with God.
"God": That seems probable.
This references the first Star Trek movie, in which a massive and powerful, albeit emotionally immature alien intelligence, was found to be human technology that had been found, modified with extremely advanced technology, and sent back. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier posits the concept of a being godlike in power that is nonetheless not God as humans conceive of it, i.e. not the creator of the universe, nor in fact good. - Billy West states on the audio commentary that the voice of "God" was based on the opening announcer from The Outer Limits.
- This episode is one of only a few that deals with the religious issues of the Futurama universe. After Bender's unsuccessful attempt at godhood he encounters a god-like entity in space. During the conversation between these two the episode touches on the ideas of predestination, prayer, and the nature of salvation in what Mark Pinsky, who wrote a book on Futurama and Religion, referred to as theological turn to the episode which may cause the viewer to need "to be reminded that this is a cartoon and not a divinity school class". By the end of the conversation, Bender's questions still have not been fully answered and like many of the conversations between humans and God in the Bible, Bender is left wanting more from the voice than it has given him.
- The astronomically long distance backwards pan as the God Entity becomes aware of Fry's plea to have Bender back is similar to one in the movie "Contact" and a short short 1968 film "Cosmic Zoom" by Eva Szasz.
- Ken Keeler, writer and executive producer, said, "I took great pains in the script never to say that the Galactic Entity (as we called it) was in fact God, and fought some battles over that point during the rewrite. [1]
- The piece Bender plays on the piano is Chopin's Polonaise in C Minor. Ken Keeler performed the piece. [2]
- This episode won the first Writers Guild of America Award for animation in 2003
- Series creator Matt Groening cites it as one of the best episodes of the series and was quoted as saying he planned to explore the idea of the "God" figure in a DVD movie, 19 months before Bender's Big Score was released.
[edit] Gadgets and Inventions
The radio telescope at the Monastery of Deshuba is also said to be an "amplifying transmitter", the combination of which only exists in Futurama.
