A Bicyclops Built for Two
A Bicyclops Built for Two is episode 9 in season 2 of
Futurama. It originally aired in
North America on
March 13 2000.
The Professor had great news: several years ago he had tried to log onto
AOL and it finally worked. He sends the crew into the Internet for fun. While playing Death Factory III, the legend of Death Factory II,
Leela meets the only other
cyclops in the known universe, but
Fry dispatches him before she can find out who he is and where he comes from. The crew is sent on a delivery mission to bring popcorn to Cineplex 14, so Leela can't take the time to find him, but he recorded her screen name and sends her a video mail. Leela abandons the delivery, and heads off to the coordinates provided. Unfortunately, when she jettisoned the cargo, it missed by a margin and hit the sun. The corn then became a popcorn galaxy.
The cyclops reveals himself to be Alkazar, sole survivor of the destruction of planet Cyclopia. He claims that Leela was sent away as a baby when the blind moles of Subterra 3 launched missiles in every direction, hitting forty planets including Cyclopia. Luckily, before the crash, Cyclopia's smartest scientist managed to save a baby that was possibly Leela. Alkazar was employed as a pool cleaner and was spared from the chaos while fishing out a dead
opossum. Leela decides that it is her duty to help rebuild the Cyclopian civilization, which includes marrying Alkazar. But Alkazar was taking advantage of her. While Bender loots everything of value, Fry tries to find out "what makes the Forbidden Valley so forbidden", but he stumbles right into the dungeon. Leela had planned to dump Alkazar but she accepted his offer of marrige in order to save her race.
As the wedding begins, Fry and Bender break into the Forbidden Valley and discover the secret of planet Cyclopia. Alkazar is actually a shape-shifting alien who is engaged to marry four other women, each of a possibly extinct different species, all on the same day (he could only afford to rent a shapeshifting tuxedo once). He wanted the five women to scrub his five castles, and he used them to make a little money on the side. Leela and the four other brides expose and reject him, and the crew returns to Earth. The Professor tells Leela that in the many years she'll work for him paying for all the popcorn she destroyed, she'll have plenty of time to look for her true home.
*
Bender: Behold, the internet.
Fry: My God, it's full of ads!
*
Bender:
(Disguised as a sexy nurse, talking to a chat room participant) Hi, I'm a naughty nurse, and I really need someone to talk to. $9.95 a minute.
Chat room participant: Oh, you're a dollar naughtier than most
(pays Bender the money)Bender: So how 'bout them
Knicks?
*
Amy:
(at a link marked "Amy Wong Nude!") Hey! That's me!
Bender: No it isn't. I just took some pictures of your face and stuck them on someone else's body.
Leela:
(looking inside) Hey!
*
Hermes: Get ready for fun, Fry. Nowadays, we have a type of game played entirely on video.
Leela: We call it a "video game".
Fry:
(sarcastically) A "video game", you say? Well golly, gee. You mighty spacemen of the future will have to teach me how it works.
*
Computer: Leela, you've got mail!
Leela: Sigh
Computer: It's not
spam!
Leela: Huh?
*
Alkazar:
(on screen) To: Leela. Subject: Hello. I am Alkazar. Fortunately I wrote down your screenname before I was dispatched by that oafish moron.
Fry: Kicked your ass!
*
Fry: What's over that hill?
Alkazar: The Forbidden Valley. A holy sanctuary where no one may tread.
Fry: Is that anything like a cemetery 'cause I gotta take a leak. [Leela slaps him.] Ow!
Leela Fry, that's offensive to our people (to Alkazar) isn't it? (Alkazar nods, and Leela slaps Fry again.)
*
Fry: Psst! Leela! You've got to get me out of here! It's horrible! Eating scraps; letting my waste drop wherever it falls, like an animal in a zoo!
Leela: Animals go in the corner.
Fry: The
corner! Why didn't I think of that?
*
Preacherbot: Do you, Leela, copy and paste his response, til death do you part?
*
Leela: All right, Alkazar, I have a question for you; if you could change form, why didn't you do it in the
one place that counts?
Wedding guests: WHOO! WHOO! WHOO!
*Bender's chest cavity apparently has access to
hammerspace. But in this episode, for the first time ever, it becomes entirely full and bulging with the loot of five castles, amazing even him.
*Three nerd characters who appear in the chat room as well as another player in the game are based on writers
David X. Cohen,
Ken Keeler and
Eric Kaplan.
Matt Groening was originally supposed to also appear but vetoed the idea early in development.
*The title spoofs the song
Daisy Bell and its well known line about "A Bicycle Built for Two".
*Parts of this episode are a spoof of
Married... with Children, which also starred
Katey Sagal.
*One of Alkazar's four would-be brides appears to be a member of the
Great Race of Yith, a species of time-travelling body-snatchers from the
H.P. Lovecraft story,
The Shadow Out of Time.
* When Fry is on the Internet, playing a videogame, in a scene similar to a 2D platform game, Fry jumps and shoots some crates and a
Donkey Kong look-a-like. When he jumps he makes noises similar to the sounds
Mario makes in his 3D videogames.
* A scene where Bender falls into a machine and slips between gears is a references to the
Charlie Chaplin film,
Modern Times.
* During the video game, Bender is destroyed by being cut into a
Slinky, then falling into a lava pit.
* The story about the destruction of Cyclopia and the planet's greatest scientist sending a Cyclopian baby, Leela, to Earth. This is a reference to the origin of Superman, where before the destruction of Krypton, his home planet, Jor-El, master scietist sends his only son, Kal-El (Superman) to Earth. Leela, like Superman is the supposedly the last member of her race.
* There are two references to
2001: A Space Odyssey: As Fry enters the internet,
Also sprach Zarathustra is played and moments later, he parphrases the line from the
novel saying
My God, it's full of ads!
