Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles

Episode	References	Appearances	Transcript	Goofs	Gallery

Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles
Season	5
Episode	63
Episode Information
Air date	March 30, 2003
Opening subtitle	Now interactive! Joystick controls Fry's left ear
Credits
Written By	Jeff Westbrook
Directed By	Bret Haaland
Episode Guide
Preceded by	"Crimes of the Hot"
Followed by	"The Why of Fry"

“	Fifty-three years old? Oh... now I'll need a fake ID to rent ultraporn!	”
–Farnsworth

Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles is the sixty-third episode of Futurama.

Plot

Pazuzu, Farnsworth's gargoyle breaks out of the Planet Express building. Professor Farnsworth shouts at him, saying, "Pazuzu you ungrateful gargoyle. I put you through college and this is how you repay me!" before gargoyle droppings hits his face. He heads to the ship, forcing Fry and Leela to strap themselves completely to their seats and Bender bolts himself to the wall. The Professor flies out into space but is slowing down traffic, everyone scolding at him. Farnsworth inadvertently has the high beams on, incinerating a direction sign and blowing up Deep Space 9 while searching for Pazuzu.

Forgetting about Pazuzu, Farnsworth redirects to Florida for a nice lunch. Unfortunately, his lifetime discount is expired and he activates his nuclear-powered teeth, which runs amok after tasting human blood. Fed up with his senility, the Planet Express crew take him to a day spa, where he is properly massaged. Because he is 161 years old, he is put in the anti-aging pits. But Bender pumps the pits too hard and the Professor is tossed up and down until the tar sinks into the ground. The ground gives way beneath the crew and they all fall in. Everyone climbs out and gets cleaned up; the Professor is looking middle aged, but the others are teenagers.

While Farnsworth tries to fix things, the others try to settle into their teenage lives. Amy goes home to Mars where her mom is angry cause she wants a grandchild, and her dad makes fun of her fat physique; Hermes goes home with LaBarbara and Dwight; Leela tries to enjoy a normal teenage life in the sewers while Bender, Fry and Zoidberg stay at Planet Express. Fry (who has a cracked voice) soon begins dating Leela but in a sewer race with Mandy and Moose, they destroy a Martin Luther Thing, Jr. High School.

Soon, the Professor discovers time-altering chronitons on their DNA and Bender's RNA and finds a way to get them back to their normal ages; Leela declines, and continues her teenage life. The others get into the Bacterial Spew Chamber which "coughs" a gas on them. Unfortunately, the machine has the opposite effect - they are getting younger by the minute. Farnsworth tries to think of another solution but the kids' constant whining leads him to hire Leela as the babysitter. She discovers the existence of the Fountain of Aging from a story book and contacts the Professor. He picks up the kids while Leela stays grounded, willingly, until she sneaks out at night. She guides the now-much-younger Farnsworth to the fountain, which is on top of a burnt-out sun. As time is running out, they locate it.

Norman, one of Zoidberg's siblings, jumps in, growing older until he dies and crumbles. Worse, the others have become fetuses and Bender is a blueprint disc. Farnsworth quickly gets them in but the current carries them off as they age. To save them, Leela jumps in to save them and gives up her teenage appearance. They emerge in their underwear but the Professor is still stuck. Just then, Pazuzu rescues him. Scans indicate that Farnsworth is even older and Leela and Amy feel a bit younger. The Professor then repays the gargoyle by freeing him. The final scene shows Pazuzu has moved to Paris, had a son and that he has been telling him the events of the episode.

Ongoing Themes

Death, Injury, Dismemberment

• Farnsworth destroys a presumably staffed space station with the high beams of the Planet Express ship.
• Fry is bitten on the finger by Farnsworth's nuclear-powered dentures.
• Child-Amy punches Child-Hermes a couple of times.
• Bender shoots Fry in the head with a giant spitball.
• Farnsworth predicts that the chronotons will cause everyone to get younger and younger until they experience "pre-life", then death.
• Zoidberg, in his larval stage resembling a parasitic lamprey, latches onto Farnsworth and sucks his blood.
• On the way to the Fountain of Aging, Hermes and Amy disassemble Bender and play with the individual parts like toys.
• Zoidberg falls into the Fountain of Aging and withers away to dust, but it turns out not to be Zoidberg, rather his clone-sibling Norman.
• Farnsworth appears to drown in the Fountain of Aging, but Pazuzu saves him.
• Farnsworth injures himself by celebrating the fact that he has come out of the fountain older than before.

Character Arcs

• Farnsworth pronounces the words "wait" and "while" correctly.
• Sal's speech impediment is at 50%, meaning that 50% of the words he says are garbled by adding (or removing) a plural.

Doppelgängers

• The entire crew are transformed into childhood versions of themselves that grow younger as time goes on.
• Leela's Wrist LoJack-a-mater serves as a wristwatch.
• Bender serves as a children's toy.

Fry and Leela

After quite a few episodes in which Fry and Leela seem hardly to notice each other, teenage Fry goes to the sewer-home of teenage Leela to take her out on a date. Fry puts his arm around Leela while they race Moose and Mandy, but she swerves the car to get him to move away from her. After Leela has saved the crew from "pre-life", as she reflects that she is happy with her choice to return to adulthood with her friends, she and Fry share a meaningful glance, but nothing more. It seems once again that Leela is open-minded but not really interested, and Fry has added to his list of shallow reasons for liking Leela: lust, loneliness, the excitement of Valentine's Day, and now simple teenage hormones (lust again).