A Big Piece of Garbage

<tr><th style="font-size: 100%;" align="center" colspan="2">Image:Futurama 108 - A Big Piece of Garbage.jpg</th></tr>

<tr><th>Opening subtitle</th> <td>Mr. Bender's Wardrobe by ROBOTANY 500</td></tr><tr><th>Opening cartoon</th> <td>Elmer Fudd in "A Corny Concerto"</td></tr><tr><th>Guest star(s)</th> <td>Ron Popeil
Nancy Cartwright</td></tr>

"A Big Piece of Garbage" is episode 8 in season 1 of Futurama. It originally aired in North America on May 11, 1999.

[edit] Plot

Tomorrow the crew will be making a delivery to Ebola 9, the virus planet. Farnsworth wants them to wait until tomorrow so they will all be alive tonight for the Academy of Science symposium. He has built the Deathclock, a device that tells how long you have to live. At the academy, he meets a former student from Mars University, Professor Ogden Wernstrom, who vowed revenge on the professor after receiving an A minus on a pop quiz, even if it took him a hundred years. Ninety-nine years have passed and still Wernstrom has not had his revenge. Farnsworth was ready to present his deathclock when Wernstrom mentioned he presented it last year. After ten minutes, he comes up with a smelloscope. Wernstrom gave him the worst grade imaginable for this invention, an A minus minus. Farnsworth vows to build the smelloscope, but quickly remembers that he already built one last year.

Fry begins pointing the smelloscope around, and discovers the smelliest object in the universe with "a stench so foul, it ranks right off the funkometer". After calculating its path, Professor Farnsworth announces that the object is on a path to collide with New New York City in 72 hours. After some research, a video is produced, revealing the object to be a giant ball of garbage launched into space by New York around 2052.

After warning the mayor of New New York Mayor Poopenmayer, a plan is hatched to destroy the garbage ball. The Planet Express crew is sent on a suicide mission to plant a bomb on the ball. The bomb has been set to allow twenty-five minutes to escape. Unfortunately, the Professor actually set the timer upside-down allowing only fifty-two seconds, and the crew is forced to throw the bomb into space to save themselves.

Attempting to redeem himself, Farnsworth formulates a second plan to save the city: Launch a second ball of garbage to bounce the first one away. Using Fry's 20th century garbage-making skills, the city of New New York quickly generates a second ball of garbage, which succeeds in saving the city.

[edit] Trivia

• Wernstrom says "Au Revoir" although it was stated in "A Clone of my Own" that French was a dead language.

[edit] Cultural references

• A pile of Bart Simpson dolls is found on the surface of the garbage ball. After the Bart Simpson doll says "Eat my shorts!", Bender eats the doll's shorts. This is followed by Bender saying "Mmmmm.... Shorts" à la Homer Simpson.
• Fry finds a Mr. Spock collector's plate on the surface of the big ball of garbage.
• The entrance to City Hall is covered by a blue sign labeled CITIHALL, which is similar to the old Citibank logo.
• The planet Ebola 9 is a reference to the fatal virus Ebola which has killed most of its victims with a 9/10 chance of dying.
• There are several references to the movie Armageddon:
  • The Professor's first plan to destroy the ball of garbage is similar to the plot of the movie
  • The scene where the giant hamburger asteroid crashes through the skyscraper is the same as a famous scene in the movie.
  • The scene in which the space heroes walk out to their ship is very much like the same scene in the movie.
• When the ship is advancing towards the garbage ball, it looks similar to the meteor from Final Fantasy VII after they send a rocket to blow it up.
• The delivery of the message from Neptune was identical to that of an outpost colony in Star Trek: The Original Series, "Balance Of Terror" when it was describing an approaching Romulan vessel's attack run on the colony.
• The credit sequence features the song "We'll Meet Again" by Vera Lynn. This is a reference to the 1964 black comedy Dr. Strangelove which featured the song in the ending along with a montage of nuclear bomb explosions, mirroring this episode's views of world destruction.

[edit] External links

• Episode Transcript