The Series Has Landed

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"The Series Has Landed"
Peter Avanzino
Written byKen Keeler
Production code1ACV02
Original air dateApril 4, 1999 (1999-04-04)
Episode features
Opening captionIn Hypno-Vision
Opening cartoon"Baby Bottleneck" (1946)
Episode chronology
← Previous
"Space Pilot 3000" 		Next →
"I, Roommate"
Futurama season 1
List of episodes

"The Series Has Landed", also known as "Episode Two: The Series Has Landed", is the second episode in the

Hermes Conrad (Phil LaMarr), are first introduced, and the crew goes on their first mission. After completing their delivery, a series of mishaps occurs which puts Fry and Leela
's lives in danger and nearly leaves all of them trapped on the Moon.

Plot

Settling into their new jobs, Fry, Leela and Bender are introduced to the other Planet Express employees: Doctor John A. Zoidberg, intern Amy Wong and bureaucrat Hermes Conrad. It becomes apparent that the ship needs a

Ralph Kramden was the first man in space) and have been replaced by musicals about whalers
on the Moon and goofy gophers. This greatly upsets Fry, who wants to see "the real Moon".

In spite of Leela's orders to the contrary, Fry hijacks a car from the

hydroponic farm. Bender arrives and proceeds to seduce one of the farmer's robot daughters, resulting in him, Fry and Leela going on the run. Whilst trying to out-distance themselves from both the farmer's shotgun and the lunar terminator, Leela berates Fry for refusing to accept that, apart from the amusement park, the Moon is nothing but a wasteland. As night falls on the Moon, Fry and Leela find the Apollo 11 Lunar Module Eagle and take shelter inside it, while Bender goes back to flirt with the farmer's daughters. Fry apologizes to Leela for hijacking the car from the ride and explains his childhood dream of being an astronaut. Leela sympathizes with him and begins to see the beauty of the Moon herself, as they watch an Earthrise
together. Eventually, Amy manages to rescue them and Bender with her newly-developed crane operation skills, just before the farmer can kill them.

Cultural references

During the sequence where Amy attempts to retrieve the keys for the Planet Express Ship from the vending machine, an arcade game titled Gender-Neutral Pac-Person can be seen in the background, a reference to the Namco arcade games Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man.[1] Also, The Goophy Gopher Revue is said to have been sponsored by Monsanto, a bioengineering conglomerate from the United States.[2] Crater Face, the Luna Park mascot, is a reference to the Moon from the 1902 French silent film A Trip to the Moon. Bender shoves a beer bottle into Crater Face's eye after Crater Face attempts to confiscate his alcohol, which is another reference to the scene where the astronomers' capsule (which resembles a bottle) hits the Moon in the eye when it crashes. The title of the episode itself is a reference to the quote "The Eagle has landed" said by astronaut Neil Armstrong when he and Buzz Aldrin touched down on the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission. Fry nearly makes a reference to Neil Armstrong's "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind" quote when first setting foot on the Moon. At the "Destination Moon" lunar rover ride, there is a reference to Ralph and Alice Kramden from The Honeymooners. When Fry and Leela are on the surface of the Moon and it starts to get dark, it is possible to hear the first chord of the song "Breathe" from Pink Floyd's 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon in the background.

Broadcast and reception

Ken Keeler was nominated for an

Nielsen ratings of 8.1/14 in homes and 6.8/19 in adults aged 18–49. While this was a decrease from the pilot episode, it did still build 5% from its lead in, The Simpsons. This was the second episode to air following The Simpsons and the final scheduled to air on Sunday evenings before the show moved to the Tuesday night lineup, where it was expected to suffer in the ratings.[4] In 2006 IGN ranked the episode as number 19 in their list of the top 25 episodes of Futurama due to its humor and the effective way in which it portrayed Fry's discovery of the changes in the future.[5]

See also

References

  1. 20th Century Fox
    .
  2. ^ "The Series Has Landed at IMSDb". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved October 31, 2010.
  3. ^ "27th Annual Annie Award Nominees and Winners". International Animated Film Society. 1999. Archived from the original on 2007-07-01. Retrieved 2007-06-28.
  4. ^ Bierbaum, Tom (1999-04-06). "'Futurama' cools, but still holds on to auds". Variety. Retrieved 2022-01-06.
  5. ^ Iverson, Dan (2006-07-07). "Top 25 Futurama Episodes". IGN. Retrieved 2008-06-15.

External links

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