The Cryonic Woman

Episode	References	Appearances	Transcript	Goofs	Gallery

The Cryonic Woman
Season	3
Episode	32
Episode Information
Air date	December 3, 2000
Opening subtitle	Not a Substitute for Human Interaction
Credits
Written By	J. Stewart Burns
Directed By	Mark Ervin
Guests	Pauly Shore as himself Sarah Silverman as Michelle
Episode Guide
Preceded by	War is the H-Word
Followed by	Parasites Lost

"Remember, when the tube opens, say..." [melodramatically] "Welcome to the world of tomorrow!"

―Terry

"Hey, I was frozen. I think I know what people wanna hear when they first wake up." [The freezer pings and opens. A man walks out, clutching his head. Fry points.] "Bathroom's that way."

―Fry

"The Cryonic Woman" is the third episode in Season Three of Futurama. It originally aired in North America on December 3, 2000.

Plot

In an attempt to entertain themselves, Fry and Bender borrow the Planet Express Ship. Unfortunately, the ship is anchored to the building using an unbreakable diamond tether. As the ship is piloted on a round-the-world joyride, the building is dragged behind it, smashing into a number of landmarks, including the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and the Great Wall of China. Professor Farnsworth has Hermes Conrad fire Fry and Bender, and fires Leela as well for leaving the keys in the ship.

While Leela re-implants her old career chip, she mixes her's with Fry's. Fry gets hired for Leela's old cryogenics counselor job; Leela is forced to be a delivery boy while Bender has the hand and the career chip from the Prime minister of Norway.

At Applied Cryogenics, Fry thaws out Pauly Shore, who was supposed to be thawed out in Hollywood, California. When Fry goes to greet the next thawed person, he is shocked to find that it is his old girlfriend, Michelle.

Fry introduces Michelle to the world of the year 3000, but she has problems adapting. She re-freezes both herself and Fry for another thousand years. They awake in a desolate wasteland. Trying to make a new life in the world of the future, they join a society of feral adolescents. Tired of Butch's girlfriend and her fancy coyote hide, Michelle nags Fry to take over as chief so they can have power in their new society. Butch challenges Fry to deathrolling and wins when Butch falls down and scrapes his knee. The children are picked up for Hebrew lessons by Butch's mother in a heavily armored SUV with wheels. A confused Fry, tired of Michelle's nagging, leaves her and wanders through the wilderness on his own.

After wandering through a cloud of green mist, Fry finds himself standing in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater. The Planet Express ship lands in the street, and the crew explains that Fry is in Los Angeles, in the year 3000. Fry was in Pauly Shore's tube, and when the delivery crew discovered en route to Hollywood that Pauly Shore wasn't in the tube, they tossed it overboard. A limousine passes by, revealing that Michelle has hooked up with Shore.

As the Planet Express ship flies home, Bender remarks that Fry was the one who ruined the spaceship and started the whole dilemma and reminds the Professor about his anger with him earlier. He hits a red switch, a trapdoor Fry is standing over opens and he falls through the aperture onto the ground, leaving him stranded there. As he hits the ground, the credits roll.

Foreshadowing

• Fry mentions that in the 30th century, "brains flew through space". Brainspawn, levitating brains, are introduced into the series in the episode "The Day the Earth Stood Stupid".
• While working at his new job, Fry asks why a guy froze himself. Man: Oh, well, I wanted to meet Shakespeare and I figured that time was cyclical.
  Fry: Nope. Straight line. Later in the series, we discover in "The Late Philip J. Fry" that time is in fact cyclical as Bender, Fry, and the Professor go so far into the future, time resets itself and everything starts all over again... twice.