Leela's Homeworld
From Futurama Wiki
| Leela's Homeworld | |
|---|---|
| |
| Episode | 56 |
| Production Code | 4ACV02 |
| Season | 4 |
| Air date | 17 February, 2002 |
| Running Time | 30 minutes |
| Directed By | Mark Ervin Swinton O. Scott III |
| Written By | Kristin Gore |
| Opening subtitle | It's like "Hee Haw" with lasers |
| Opening cartoon | In a Cartoon Studio, Van Beuren Studios, 1931 |
| Preceded by | "Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch" |
| Followed by | "Love and Rocket" |
Leela's Homeworld is the second episode in Season Four of Futurama. This episode reveals Leela's true origin as a mutant, not an alien as previously believed.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
The Professor announces that Leela's childhood home, Cookieville Minimum-Security Orphanarium, has named her Orphan of the Year. In another announcement, he shows off a machine that makes phosphorescent glow-in-the-dark noses. Unfortunately, the machine produces enormous amounts of toxic waste. The Professor hires Bender to dispose of the waste, and he does so by dumping it into the sewer.
At the orphanarium's award ceremony, the headmaster presents us with a flashback of Leela's arrival. We see that she was left with a note written in Alienese, and a bracelet. Back at the Planet Express building, Leela is in tears over not having parents. Fry takes her for a walk, and she looks up to the stars, wondering which alien world her parents were from. The camera pans back down, and we see two one-eyed sewer mutants looking up from a drain.
Meanwhile, Bender has expanded his one-time dumping into a full waste management service. The mutants grow angry with Bender's disposal technique, and make a rare surface trip, capturing Bender, Fry, and Leela. The mutants sentence the crew to be lowered into a lake of chemicals, which will turn them into mutants as well. Bender, who was still scared, had no DNA; but the mutants said they were going to beat him up later.
Two hooded mutants call out to Leela, then swing the crane around, dropping the crew on the far side of the mutagenic lake. The mutant mob, immune to the effects of the lake, dive in and swim across. Fry, Leela, and Bender take refuge in a mutant home, where they find a shrine to Leela's life. The mob captures them, but after a whispered word from the hooded mutants, the crew's sentence is commuted to exile. They ride a hot-air balloon to a surface access ladder hanging over the lake. Fry and Bender emerge on the surface; but Leela, determined to find out what the hooded mutants know, dives into the chemical lake.
She swims to shore, and finds she is unaffected by the chemicals. Fry heads to the orphanarium to try to get some clues as to what's going on, and the headmaster gives him the note that was left with Leela. Fry takes the note back to the Professor for analysis. As they read the analysis output, we learn the truth: Leela is actually a mutant, but was born "the least mutated mutant ever". Her parents, realizing she could pass as an alien, decided to leave her at the orphanarium and using Munda's background in exolinguistics, left an Alienese note. They agreed that they would rather die than ever let her find out the "shameful" truth.
Meanwhile, an armed and irrational Leela has pursued the hooded mutants through the sewers, back to the home with the shrine to herself. Leela comes to the irrational conclusion that the mutants killed her parents, leaving her an orphan. She plans to kill her parents, and both are willing to let her rather than reveal the truth. Fry falls through the ceiling at the last second and reveals the truth. He takes off the mutants' hoods revealing two middle-age one-eyed mutants. A tearful reunion ensues, and the episode closes with a montage of scenes of Leela's parents watching over their daughter during her life. As a baby, they saved her from falling. As a child, they gave her cookies. As a teenager, they gave her a present for her birthday. As an adult, they covered her with the quilt.
[edit] Trivia
- Among the parts of parade balloons used in creating the hot air balloon that returns to the surface is made from Underdog, Bart Simpson, Bullwinkle J. Moose and Garfield's owner Jon Arbuckle.
- Professor Farnsworth says that deciphering the alien language on Leela's note could take an hour or a hundred million years. This is a reference to the halting problem in computability theory.
- Among the buildings Leela passes while running through the sewers is a Starbucks.
- The wall upon which Leela's parents have chronicled her life is a reference to Being John Malkovich.
- When Leela comes across the wall with her chronicled life, she gasps "Great Cheech's ghost!", which is a reference to the Superman character Perry White, who often says "Great Caesar's ghost!" when angry, exasperated or surprised. A similar reference was also made in Bender Should Not Be Allowed on TV.
- Leela says "Or some kind of even more boring Truman Show?" when she asks the hooded figures about the Time line of her life. The Truman show is a film about a guy who was on live television watched by many all over the world.
- The computer on the Warden's desk appears similar to the personal computers used in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
[edit] Quotes
Leela: "My whole life has just been a show for some perverted mutant!"
[edit] Foreshadowing and Continuity
- The revelation of her true origin in this episode was previously foreshadowed when Leela's parents appeared in a crowd of mutants in "I Second That Emotion".
- Fry references the garbage ball they destroyed in "A Big Piece of Garbage".
[edit] Goofs
- Raoul is previously shown to have only one ear, but is now shown with both ears intact.
- Although the orphanarium was renamed the Bender B. Rodriquez Orphanarium in the episode The Cyber House Rules, due to Bender's gift of twelve orphans and a Government check for twelve hundred wingwangs, it seems to have reverted to the original name "Cookieville Minimum Security Orphanarium".
[edit] Background Notes
- The idea for the character Leela and her back story were conceived of by Matt Groening and David X. Cohen before they even pitched the series to FOX. Because they knew from the beginning that Leela would later be revealed to not be an alien, they intentionally included a shot of Leela's parents in the previous episode I Second That Emotion.
- As the plot for this episode developed though realized that the design of the characters needed to change to look less normal. In the original design, Morris had a normal mouth; and Munda had normal human arms, one of which was visible in her original appearance. For a while the idea was thrown around to stay true to some aspects of this design and Munda had a normal human arm and a tentacle arm. Eventually it was decided to make both arms tentacles and work under the assumption that in the previous appearance she had been wearing something similar to a human flesh colored glove.
- There was a large amount of debate amongst the writers as to whether the truth of Leela's origin should be revealed to the viewer before Leela realized it or if it should be a surprise for the viewers as well. The final decision was made based on the idea that it would be easier to make jokes if the viewer were in on the plot.
- The song playing during the scenes of Leela's childhood is "Baby Love Child" by Pizzicato 5.
[edit] Alienese
- The note Turanga Munga left on Leela's basket reads, "Your parents love you very much" in Alienese.
