Fry and the Slurm Factory

"Fry and the Slurm Factory" is the thirteenth and final episode in the first production season of the American animated television series Futurama. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on November 14, 1999.^[1] The episode was directed by Ron Hughart and written by Lewis Morton. Pamela Anderson guest stars as the voice of one of the Slurm party girls.

Plot

The episode opens with an advertisement for Slurm, announcing a contest: whoever finds a golden bottlecap inside a marked can of Slurm wins a free trip to the Slurm plant on Wormulon, a tour of the Slurm Factory, as well as a party with the popular Slurm mascot, "the Original Party Worm" Slurms McKenzie. Fry resolves to find the bottlecap by drinking massive quantities of Slurm. Meanwhile, Bender is sick with a high fever (900°F); Professor Farnsworth uses this as an excuse to test his experimental "F-ray", a flashlight-like device that enables the user to look through anything, even metal. The Professor is able to find out what is causing Bender's high fever; he reveals a watch that belongs to Amy Wong caught in one of Bender's cogs.

After repairing Bender, the Professor leaves the F-ray in the custody of Fry and Bender. Fry realizes that they could use the F-ray to scan Slurm cans for the golden bottlecap. After checking "90,000" cans, they give up on finding the winning can. Fry settles in to relax with a Slurm and chokes on the winning bottle cap. He faints, but regains consciousness later. The Planet Express crew arrives at the Slurm plant on Wormulon. After meeting Slurms McKenzie, who is required by contract to party all night, every night, the crew takes a tour down a river of Slurm through the factory, and see the Grunka-Lunkas (who are a parody of the Oompa-Loompas from "Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory") manufacture Slurm step by step. Fry tries to drink the Slurm from the river due to his thirst, but he falls off the boat and remembers he does not know how to swim. Leela dives in to save him, and Bender joins them because "Everybody else was doing it."

The three are sucked into a whirlpool and deposited in a cave under the factory. They discover that the factory they toured was a fake. Making their way through the tunnels, they enter the real factory and discover Slurm's true nature: it is a secretion from a giant worm, the Slurm Queen. They are discovered and captured by the worms. Bender is placed into a machine designed to turn him into 174 metal Slurm cans. Leela is lowered by crane into a vat of royal Slurm, which will turn her into a Slurm Queen. Fry is fed ultra-addictive "super-slurm", so that he cannot resist "eating until he explodes". Fortunately, Fry manages to drag the tub of super-slurm to the crane controls, so he can save Leela while continuing to drink the super-slurm.

A freed Leela saves Bender slightly too late, leaving Bender with a hole through the side of his waist. Leela then saves Fry by dumping the super-slurm down a drainage grate. They manage to escape, but are pursued by the Slurm Queen. Slurms McKenzie, exhausted from his years of partying, arrives and sacrifices himself to save Fry, Leela, his two super models, and Bender. When they escape, the Slurm Queen yells that the company is ruined for the discovery of the secret. Professor Farnsworth contacts a government agent to reveal the secret of Slurm. However, Fry is so addicted to Slurm that he tells the government agent that "grampa's making up crazy stories again", so that it can continue to be produced. In the end, the entire Planet Express crew holds a toast to Slurms McKenzie and Slurm itself.

Broadcast and reception

In its initial airing, the episode placed 45th in the Nielsen ratings for primetime shows for the week of November 8–14, 1999.^[2]

In 2006 IGN listed this episode as number three in their list of the top 25 Futurama episodes, also stating that this episode was the "most memorable" of the series.^[3]

Cultural references

The episode, including its title, is a parody of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, a movie adaptation of the novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl.^[1][3] The characters whom the factory paid to pretend to be workers, the Grunka Lunkas, resemble the Oompa Loompas from the film version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and the tour guide, Glurmo, also wears a Willy Wonka-like attire, and speaks in a Gene Wilder-like voice. Slurms McKenzie, the Slurm party worm, is a parody of Spuds MacKenzie, the Bud Light spokesdog.^[4]

Professor Farnsworth's F-Ray reveals a 6502 microprocessor in Bender's head, a widely used CPU in home computers of the 1970s and early 1980s.^[5]

Slurm is sometimes considered to be similar to SURGE by fans due to its green color.

There is also a reference to Soylent Green, when Leela talks about Soylent Cola, a soft drink made out of people.

The conspiracy theory surrounding New Coke is parodied when the Queen talks about releasing "New Slurm" for the sole reason of knowing that people will hate it so they can release "Slurm Classic" to great fanfare.

Both this episode and the 1985 film The Stuff feature a strange goo that becomes a merchandised item, and makes people addicted to it; also, Fry says "Soon enough is not soon enough!", mimicking the "Enough is never enough!" of the Stuff commercials.

Slurm

Slurm posters were one of the first clues to deciphering the alien languages in the series and were meant to act in a manner similar to the Rosetta Stone for dedicated fans.^[6]

Slurm is also referenced in the Marvel Comics title Young Avengers written by Allan Heinberg. In the Young Avengers Special, the character Hulkling is shown attacking the Shocker using a Slurm vending machine.^[7]

Slurm's stylized logo is the first menu item seen in a KFC restaurant in the Academy Award winning animated short film Logorama.

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Fry and the Slurm Factory

• "Fry and the Slurm Factory" at TV.com
• "Fry and the Slurm Factory" at the Internet Movie Database
• Fry and the Slurm Factory at TVSquad.com
• Fry and the Slurm Factory at The Infosphere.