Futurama: "Love and Rockets"

'''"Love and Rockets." Futurama.''' Fox-TV, 10 Feb. 2002. #48 by through-numbering system, or 4.4 by season.episode system. d: Brian Sheesley, dir. Dan Vebber, script. Featured voices: Lucy Liu (Voice of Herself), Lauren Tom (Voice of Amy), Sigourney Weaver (Voice of Planet Express Ship). SOURCE: [www.tvtome.com/Futurama/season4.html#ep48].

TVTome Summary: "Having secured a lucrative contract [from RomanticCorp], the Professor upgrades the [ship's personality software on the] Planet Express ship, giving it [among others] a new [female] voice that arouses Bender. […] Ship and robot quickly become an item.  Then, just as quickly, Bender tires of it, picking a most inopportune time to say they should 'just be friends.'  But like HAL in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (film) the ship has its own ideas." While Bender is in love, he sings "Daisy" (HAL's, so to speak, "swan song" at the end of 2001). At the RomanticCorp factory note: (1) "Lovey Bears" (our guess at spelling) and our being told that they are made from living, genetically-engineered teddy-bear creatures, the most cuddly of whom are selected at a year old and put onto a conveyor belt to a "Bear 'Hospital'" where they're killed and stuffed. (2) Pick-up lines presented by wire creatures modeled after the wire "mothers" in the classic love experiments of psychologists Harry F. and M. K. Harlow. Before Ship heads into a giant quasar, note her HALian line to Leela's suggestion to "scootch a few parsecs to the left": "I'm afraid I can't do that, Leela." Further parody of 2001 follows, including the "death" of HAL 9000.

RDE, Title, 10Aug19