Going to the World of Tomorrow 07.15.08: The Honking
Posted by Jerome Cusson on 07.15.2008
Could this title be any dirtier?
Fry/Professor Farnsworth/Zapp Brannigan/Dr. Zoidberg…Billy West
Bender…John DiMaggio
Leela…Katey Segal
Amy Wong…Lauren Tom
Hermes Conrad…Phil LaMarr
Various Voices…Maurice LaMarche
Writer: Ken Keeler
Director: Susie Dietter
Production Code: 2ACV18
Original Airdate: November 5, 2000
The “Bite my shiny medal ass!” moment for best line/moment : The whole concept of “Project Satan.”
The Zoidberg moment for worst line/moment: Bender is both scared and sad. HE’S A ROBOT!!!! How can you possibly feel emotions?
After a little bit of social commentary about war, now we get back to just being funny. This week Bender becomes an evil werecar, and we get to watch him destroy things and people’s lives without remorse. So just another weeknight.
Opening Subtitle: Smell-O-Vision Users Insert Nostril Tubes Now
We open with a robot dying. It turns out that Bender is the surviving heir, but before we get to that we have to listen to him sing about himself. Thankfully, he comes with a mute button. Hermes announce a mail call. Everyone gets mail, including Bender. Uncle Vladimir is dead, and Bender announces he’s rich. Isn’t that nice? He does ask them to then go with him and it’s off they go in search of wonder and danger. The robot town is like a late 19th century small town. After some haggling, they get a ride to the castle for the funeral.
Uncle Vladimir is tastefully buried. Then we get to witness the will reading as Bender finds out that he has acquired the castle. They get to spend the night in the castle, and judging from the looks of it, it appears to be haunted. Yes, it’s a dreaded haunted house episode. It’s gotten to the point where I’ve seen so many television shows and movies about haunted houses that I’m quite numb to it. The place continues giving off a weird vibe as all of Planet Express spends the night. Blood with 0s and 1s appear and Bender is freaked out. Robots ghosts, including his uncle among other bots, begin chasing Bender around.
Farnsworth notices that the robots in the graveyard were improperly buried. The programming of the different robots were leaking into the wires of the house, allowing them to appear as projections. SO Bender should have nothing to worry about. Yet there he goes running away. As he stands alone, he gets run over by a mysterious car that then bellows and honks at the moon.
Fry tries to wake his friend, and only through liquor does Bender properly recover enough to inform the crew that he was run over. Fry thinks he’s either two drunk or too sober, but Amy points out that there do indeed seem to be some tracks backing up Bender’s claim of having been run over. Even Leela believes him, and that’s quite scary.
The next day Bender appears to not have slept very well. He was dreaming of running people over. I guess this is a change from dreaming about just killing people with his cold robot hands. Leela runs in to inform everyone that there was a hit and run in New New York. Bender was in the general area of the porn theater where the incident happened. Bender thinks he’s being followed, but we find out shortly thereafter that the werecar is in fact Bender. He looks pretty funny as a car. The next morning he wakes up in a pile of transmission fluid.
Remember how I always say Bender as the focal point of an episode tends not to work so well. I provide you exhibit A as the robot is actually scared and worried that he may have hurt people. This seems totally out of character for him considering his usual behavior. Fry and Leela don’t even believe the robot when they’re told he might be the were car that’s running rampant throughout the city. Bender goes to a cheap fortune teller bot. The damn thing actually works since it provides the exposition needed to know what’s up with Bender. Bender was indeed run over by a werecar, and every night he’ll go on a murderous rampage. The only way to stop Bender is to kill the original werecar.
At the apartment, Bender is bolted in by Leela. They’re going to hunt down the original car the next day after they take Bender down. Too bad those blts aren’t working so well. We get to see Bender become the evil car. He begins his rampage by escaping the apartment and howling and honking at the moon. Leela and Fry are each walking alone back to their apartments. Then the car goes after Leela. Just as Bendcar is ready to run over Leela, she runs into a garbage dump. Leela manages to trap Bender in a giant claw. Crisis averted. Fry continues complaining about how Bender went after Leela first.
Bender wakes up the next day, and Fry is really angry with the robot since he thought they were best friends. The gang begins their hunt for the werecar by going back to the original town. The person they find is not the original werecar. This sends Fry, Bender, and Leela on a wild goose chase through a number of different lands and areas. They even visit Calculon, but even he ‘s not the original werecar. He is 1000 years old and the search is almost over. It was 2019 and Calculon was working on a Satan car that was quite evil. The car features some of the most evil of machinery. Then they go to the Chrysler building to find “Project Satan.”
They find the car sleeping, but then Leela wakes it up. The car manages to talk and of course Planet Express doesn’t make the wise move by waiting until the next day to visit the Chrysler. They make the dumb move and fail to realize Bender will be evil(er) by midnight. Bender decides to run over his best friend, and at least Fry could have something to be happy about in his last fading moments. He gets put into the car while Leela runs away from Project Satan. The two evil cars have a near-hit. The original werecar runs into the fire and Bender is cured.
Fry is still alive. He’s just stuck in his stomach. Fry celebrates by drinking the last beer contained in the compartment.
The 411: Bender episodes always seem to have fatal flaws. I think this episode was okay, but one of the weaker ones of the season. There were some redeeming parts, the search for the original werecar being one of them, but overall this was not one of this show’s strongest efforts.
