Fry and the Slurm Factory

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Season 1 episode
Broadcast season 2 episode
Fry and the Slurm Factory
Fry and the Slurm Factory.jpg
No.13
Production number1ACV13
Written byLewis Morton
Directed byRon Hughart
Title captionLive from Omicron Persei 8
Title caption referencePrevious episode
First air date14 November, 1999
Broadcast numberS02E04
Title referenceCharlie and the Chocolate Factory
Opening cartoonThe Simpsons shorts - "Making Faces"
Special guest(s)Pamela Anderson
Additional
Commentary
(Transcript)
Transcript

Pictures

Season 1
  1. Space Pilot 3000
  2. The Series Has Landed
  3. I, Roommate
  4. Love's Labours Lost in Space
  5. Fear of a Bot Planet
  6. A Fishful of Dollars
  7. My Three Suns
  8. A Big Piece of Garbage
  9. Hell Is Other Robots
  10. A Flight to Remember
  11. Mars University
  12. When Aliens Attack
  13. Fry and the Slurm Factory
Season 2 →

"Fry and the Slurm Factory" is the thirteenth episode of Futurama, the thirteenth and last of the first production season and the fourth of the second broadcast season. It aired on 14 November, 1999, on Fox. It guest-stars Pamela Anderson as Dixie. Fry is obsessed with Slurm, and when a competition comes out for him to see the Slurm Factory, he cannot resist. However, at the Slurm Factory, the Planet Express crew discovers the horrible truth about Slurm.

Plot

The Secret Ingredient

Act I: "Whimmy wham wham wozzle... let's party!"

Fry, drinking a lot of cans of Slurm, and Bender are watching All My Circuits, when a commercial for Slurm comes on. The commercial advertises a new contest; the grand prize is a chance to party with Slurms MacKenzie at the Slurm Factory on Wormulon. Then one of Fry's teeth falls out and he discards it in a pile of his other teeth.

Act II: "I've never seen anyone so addicted to Slurm."

Fry starts guzzling Slurm like crazy looking for the winning bottle cap, hoping to win the contest, but to no avail. Bender doesn't feel so well, running a fever of 900 degrees. After Zoidberg fails to find anything, the Professor takes the opportunity to test his new invention, the F-Ray. The Professor's device allows the crew to see inside Bender and find the problem, Amy's watch. While the Professor takes his environmental suit to the decontaminators, he leaves the F-Ray with Fry and Bender "to be kept out of the wrong hands." They immediately start using it to see inside of things, including Fry and the beautiful "Fembot". At the 711 Fry gets an idea and they start to use the ray to search for the Slurm can with the winning bottle cap. They look inside hundreds of cans throughout the city. Back at Planet Express, where Leela and the Professor are playing 3-D Scrabble, Fry and Bender decide to give up. After declaring his disgust with Slurm, Fry immediately goes to the refrigerator and takes out some Slurm. He begins drinking but quickly start choking on the winning bottle cap lodged in his throat.

Act III: "Something's rotten on planet Wormulon!"

Fry and all of his friends arrive on Wormulon, and are greeted by Glurmo, who will lead them on the tour, and Slurms MacKenzie. Glurmo takes them inside the factory to a garden with Slurm cans plants, where they encounter the Grunka Lunkas, little people mixing the ingredients and singing across the Slurm river. Everyone gets on a boat and they see a mysterious door at the middle of the tour, which leads them to begin asking questions about the secret ingredient of Slurm. Fry notices the river they are navigating in is made of Slurm so he wants to drink it, he falls in and Leela jumps in to save him; Bender jumps as well, just to fit in. Sucked down the drain, they wind up lost in an underground part of the factory with the Slurm of the river pouring into a sewer. Fry tastes Slurm from the river, only to discover it's not Slurm at all, and they begin nosing around inside a tunnel where they see two doors marked "Real Factory" and "Fake Factory", which is the factory they had come from. Fry finally sees Slurm cans in a conveyor belt and immediately drinks it, but stops when they discover the disgusting secret - Slurm is a fluid squirted out by a giant worm: the Slurm Queen! Meanwhile The Professor, Hermes, Zoidberg, and Amy finish the tour at the gift shop, and Glurmo notices that the others are missing so he decides to look for them, suspecting they had found the "Real Factory".

Act IV: "That's the secret ingredient of Slurm? Ewwwwww!"

Despite knowing the secret, Fry continues drinking Slurm and Leela knocks the can out of his hand, which makes the Slurm Queen see them. They try to escape, only to run in a circle and wind up back in the room with the Slurm Queen, where Glurmo captures them. The Slurm Queen wants them destroyed so they can't tell anybody about the secret ingredient. Bender is to be made into Slurm cans, Leela is to be dipped into a vat of Royal Slurm, transforming her into a new Slurm Queen. Fry is allowed to go free after being force-fed a taste of concentrated Super-Slurm, which is so addictive he can't stop eating it, even to save his friends. Still eating, Fry doesn't know whether to continue or to save his friends. He drags the vat over until he can release Leela. She saves Bender, and then dumps the Super-Slurm down a sewer grate, to Fry's horror, so much so he tries to bite his arms off to fit through the grate. They make their escape, and run into Slurms MacKenzie, who wants to escape with them, saying he is tired of partying all the time. When the Slurm Queen finds them, Slurms sacrifices himself to allow the crew to escape with the babes he had partied with for 40 years. As the Planet Express crew escape on the ship, the Professor contacts the authorities, who vow to shut down the Slurm factory. Fry realises this would spell the end for his favorite drink, and so tells the authorities to ignore the Professor, saying that "Grandpa's making up crazy stories again." The Professor points out the truth - that Fry's really his uncle from the 20th century - but in doing so only makes himself look more insane, meaning that the factory gets to stay open. As the Professor grumbles, the rest of the crew and Slurms' babes end the episode by partying away and Fry enjoys the Slurm for him.

Reception

This episode was named #21 on IGN's list of top 25 Futurama episodes.

Additional Info

Promo pic of this episode

Lyrics

Trivia

  • According to audio commentary, Glurmo's name was originally to have been "Slurmy Slonka" - furthering the references to Willy Wonka.
  • Mixing Hydrogen molecules, with oxygen atoms to create water, as the Grunka Lunkas supposedly do during Slurm production, would actually cause a massive fire and blow up the tanks. Whether this was a hint to observant viewers of the upcoming plot twist or actually a goof is unknown.
    • Perhaps the hydrogen atoms are passed through a semipermiable membrane, one which only allows protons to pass through, and the remaining energy, which would be seen as combustion if the reaction was triggered as such, would now be transferred to the electron, both creating the pure water and electricity at the same time, with no explosion neccessary.
  • During the scene where Leela and the Professor, are playing 3D Scrabble, the Professor's current letters are F, U, U, T, A, M, and R (one A short of FUTURAMA due to 7-letter rack limit) in that order.
    • Also the words on the other boards are One, Eye, Matt, Area, Prop, Only, Donut, One, and Emu.

Continuity

Allusions

Click here to see cultural mentions made in this episode.
  • The episode's plot is a parody of both Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Soylent Green.
  • The Factory, the Grunka Lunkas, and Glurmo are references to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, more specifically the 1971 film adaptation, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.
  • The Slurm Queen's plan of marketing Leela's Slurm as New Slurm, and when everyone hates it, bring back Slurm Classic and make billions is a reference to what Coca-Cola did with New Coke.
  • Slurms MacKenzie is a reference to Spuds MacKenzie, a former Budweiser advertising mascot.
  • The Soylent Cola is the first of many references to Soylent Green in the show.
  • 3D Scrabble, the game played by Leela and Professor Farnsworth, is a reference to Star Trek's 3D Chess.
  • The translation mentions "the elusive yak-face". Yak face is a rare Star Wars figure of Saelt-Marae not released in the USA. Mint figures have sold for thousands of dollars. It was added because David X. Cohen owns one.
  • When the Professor uses the F-Ray on Bender, his brain is shown to be powered by a 6502 CPU (a common CPU from the 1980s used in the Apple II, Nintendo Famicom/NES, and Commodore 64 computers).
  • In the gift shop, the shirt Zoidberg wears says Slurm in Hebrew, adding to the Jewish persona of Zoidberg.
    • One of the more popular souvenirs from Israel is a t-shirt with the Coca-Cola logo in Hebrew.
  • Towards the end, as the cave-in is occurring, Bender turns back and says "Party on, Slurms" who responds "Party on, Contest Winners". This is a reference to Wayne's World, where Wayne and Garth would say "Party on, Wayne" "Party on, Garth".

Quotes

    Advert Voice: Odds of winning mathematically insignificant.
    Fry: Hey, I like those odds!

    Amy: You should try homeopathic medicine, Bender. Try some zinc.
    Bender: I'm 40% zinc!
    Amy: Then take some echinacea, or St. John's Wort.
    Prof. Farnsworth: Or a big fat placebo. It's all the same crap!

    [Fry and Bender see a fembot walk by.]
    Bender: Hold still, sexy lady. [Bender uses the f-ray on the fembot but is stunned.]
    Fry: What's wrong?
    Bender: That's no lady!
    Hermaphrobot: Damn, chico! One more upgrade and I'll be more of a lady than you can handle! Why you so stoopid, stoopid?
    Bender: Hey, bite my shiny metal ass!
    Hermaphrobot: You couldn't afford it, honey!

    Bender: I can't see what's happening! Are we boned?
    Leela: Yeah, we're boned.

    Glurmo: [To the Grunka Lunkas.] Hey, I don't pay you to sing! You just used up today's bathroom break!
    Grunka Lunka: Hard ass.
    Glurmo: I heard that! [The Grunka Lunka whimpers.]

    Fry: This is nothing. Back in high school, I used to drink 100 cans of cola a week, right up until my third heart attack.

    Slurm Queen: As for you, you will be submerged in Royal Slurm, which, in a matter of minutes, will transform you into a Slurm Queen like myself.
    Small Glurmo #1: But, Your Highness, she's a commoner. Her Slurm will taste foul.
    Slurm Queen: Yes! Which is why we'll market it as New Slurm. Then, when everyone hates it, we'll bring back Slurm Classic and make billions!

    Slurm Queen: Honey comes from a bee's behind. Milk comes from a cow's behind. And have you ever used toothpaste?
    Fry: Whose behind does that come from?
    Slurm Queen: You don't wanna know.

    Fry: What about me?
    Slurm Queen: You are free to go.
    Fry: Yes!
    Slurm Queen: If you can resist this concentrated Super Slurm! [The Glurmos grab him and sit him in a chair in front of a tub. The Slurm Queen fills the tub with a dark green slime.] It's so delicious, you'll eat until you explode! Oh, which reminds me, put a cover over that sofa, will you? Bon appétit!

Goofs

  • Fry says he can't swim, but he is treading water, once Leela jumps in to save him.
  • Fry, Leela and Bender went down the drain in the Slurm river, yet when they open the door to the fake factory, it is revealed they are level with the river.
    • The river may have been on a slope, making it so that after going down a drain on a high part of a river, one is level with a low part.
  • The Slurm Queen says that milk comes from a cow's behind, but we learn in "A Fishful of Dollars" that cows are extinct. Milk came from cows, but no longer comes from them.
  • Milk does not come from a cow's behind, at least in our time, and neither does honey come from a bee's behind.
    • The Queen could have been purposefully lying to make Slurm seem less disgusting to the crew.
  • When Leela is lowered into the royal Slurm (16:00) there is a stalagmite next to the pool and no grate, at 16:55 and onward, the grate appears and stalagmite is gone.
  • The machine which was to recycle Bender to make Slurm cans has no back panel when it is first shown, the cave wall behind it can be seen inside the opening. It is dark inside the machine every other time it is seen.
  • At the very end of the episode, Bender drinks a can of Slurm and says, "Hey, that's not that bad", yet in other episodes ("The 30% Iron Chef" for example) we learn that taste isn't one of Bender's 8 senses.
    • Bender has been able to taste lots of drinks, so he may just not be able to taste solid food.
  • In some shots, the hole in Bender's body disappears.
  • When Slurms MacKenzie takes his sunglasses off in the tunnel toward the end of the episode, his eyes are briefly solid black.

Alien Language Sightings

    Time: 01:19
    Location: Rules of the contest
    Language: AL1
    Translation: The following species are ineligible: space wasps, space beavers, any other animal with the word 'space' in front of it, space chickens, and the elusive yak-face.

    Time: 03:25
    Location: Eye Chart
    Language: AL1
    Translation:
    n o
    s q u i
    n t i n g
    f o u r
    e y e s

Characters

(In alphabetic order)

Episode Credits

References