Jurassic Bark
| "Jurassic Bark" | |
|---|---|
| Futurama episode | |
| File:Seymourstill.JPG | |
| Episode no. | Season four |
| Directed by | Swinton O. Scott III |
| Written by | Eric Kaplan |
| Original air date | November 17 2002 |
| Episode features | |
| Opening cartoon | Hiss and Make Up in Merry Melodies |
"Jurassic Bark" is the seventh episode of season four of Futurama, airing November 17 2002. It was nominated for an Emmy Award, but lost to The Simpsons. It is widely considered by fans and critics to be the most emotional episode of the series. In 2006 IGN ranked this episode as number 8 in their list of the top 25 Futurama episodes.[1]
Plot
Fry decides to take Bender to a museum exhibit, showing a reconstructed pizzeria from the 20th century. To Fry's surprise, the restaurant is Panucci's Pizza, the very place he used to work. On display are many of the things he remembers using a millennium before—and, to his shock, also on display is a fossilized dog, which he instantly recognizes as his pet Seymour.
In a flashback (one of several throughout the episode), Fry remembers how he met Seymour. Fry goes to an address to deliver a pizza, only to realize that the name given ("Seymour Asses") means it was obviously a crank call. He finds a starving dog and feeds him some of the pizza, jokingly saying that he is the "Seymour" the call talked about. The dog then follows him back to the pizza parlor, and subsequently begins to hang around there so much that Mr. Panucci dubs him their "mascot." Fry, for all intents and purposes, becomes his owner, and teaches him tricks, including how to bark "Walking on Sunshine."
Back in the future, Fry begins a campaign to get Seymour's body out of the museum, which proves successful. The professor then examines Seymour's body, and concludes that, due to his unusually rapid fossilization, a DNA sample can be made to produce a clone, and it would even be possible to copy Seymour's brain waves to recreate his personality and memory. Fry is ecstatic and begins to prepare for a dog; however, Bender becomes instantly jealous, especially as Fry calls Seymour his "best friend," and seems incapable of understanding how Fry could care for an animal. Bender tries to make Fry jealous, to no avail.
In another series of flashbacks, it is revealed that the night when Fry was frozen, Seymour was anxious about him leaving, and as he left Fry reassured him, telling him to "wait for [him]" outside the shop. He is then frozen. On New Year's Day, when Fry does not return, Seymour goes on a quest to find him, and manages to get into the Cryogenic Lab, where he whines outside of Fry's freezer. The owners, not understanding or realizing that Fry is not supposed to be frozen, call Fry's parents, who take Seymour away without noticing their son is in the freezer.
In the 31st century, the professor is ready to clone Seymour, which requires going deep underground to harness geothermal power. Bender arrives and, annoyed that Fry will not spend time with him, grabs the fossil and throws it in a pit of lava, apparently thinking that destroying Seymour will instantly restore his friendship with Fry. Fry is, of course, furious and hysterical, and Bender realizes how Fry could love a lesser creature, as (from his perspective) a human loving an animal is the same as a robot loving a human. The professor explains that the fossil may not have been instantly destroyed, as it was made of dolomite. Bender—who claims to be 40% dolomite—dives in and manages to recover the fossil.
The professor is about to clone Seymour once again, when his computer tells him that Seymour died at the age of 15. Fry is upset by this—Seymour had only been three when he was frozen—and destroys the professor's machine so that the cloning does not occur. He explains that, as much as he loved Seymour, Seymour had apparently lived twelve years without Fry, and probably moved on and had a full life of his own, and that thus, he was only a small part of Seymour's life.
The episode ends with a flashback, revealing that Fry was wrong—rather than moving on, Seymour spent the rest of his life in front of Panucci's pizzeria, waiting for Fry to return. The scene shows a slow montage of passing years, where Seymour was cared for by Mr. Panucci until the restaurant's closing, and Seymour's final death at old age, still awaiting Fry's return.
However, it is later revealed in the movie "Bender's Big Score" that after Fry was frozen, Seymour lived with a temporal duplicate of Fry created through time travel, and was fossilized by Bender himself in an attempt to kill Fry.
Production notes
- According to the DVD commentary, the last part of the episode where Seymour is waiting outside on the sidewalk was originally set to "Gayane's Adagio" by Aram Khachaturian (known to most science-fiction fans from the sequence introducing the Discovery spacecraft in 2001: A Space Odyssey), but it was exchanged with the song "I Will Wait For You" from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg as sung by Connie Francis, which writer Eric Kaplan's grandparents sang and played on the piano while he was a child.
- According to the DVD commentary, the original idea for the episode was to have Fry's mother fossilized instead of Seymour, but this idea was scrapped after it was thought to be too upsetting to the audience.
Continuity
- When Fry is dancing on the sidewalk, a person in the crowd resembles Fry's girlfriend, Michelle.
- At one point in the episode, we again see Fry being frozen, as in "Space Pilot 3000"; similar to the original scene, we see a shadow under the desk, the silhouette of Nibbler. However, we also see an additional shadow, resembling Fry. This is later explained in "The Why of Fry".
- It is also possible to see Nibbler's top eyeball poking out of the trash can for a brief moment as Fry places the pizza box on the desk before he is frozen, and it seems to look in the direction of Fry. Nibbler's shadow is also visible as the chair topples over.
- When Fry and Bender go to the 20th century Pizzeria exhibit, a sign says "Treasures of the Stupid Ages." In "Space Pilot 3000", Leela mentions to her boss that Fry is from the stupid ages.
- It is later revealed in the movie "Bender's Big Score" that after Fry was frozen, Seymour lived with a temporal duplicate of Fry created through time travel, and was fossilized by Bender himself in an attempt to kill Fry.
Cultural references
- The title is a reference to the popular book/film series Jurassic Park, as is the idea of cloning a long-dead life form from DNA preserved in a fossil.
- At the history museum, a pimp is seen frozen in amber, another reference to Jurassic Park.
- When Bender and Fry enter the museum, Bender exclaims "Truly, they were as gods who built this place!" This is possibly a reference to "By the Waters of Babylon", a post-apocalyptic short story in which the main characters regard the ruins of modern civilization as built by gods.
- When Fry is protesting in front of the museum to get Seymour back, he starts to dance to "The Hustle" by Van McCoy. Three days later, he's still dancing, but the song is playing at a slow, faded pace, matching Fry's exhausted dancing.
- Seymour is able to bark "Walking on Sunshine." There are recurring references to this song in connection with Fry. He sings it in "I, Roommate", "The 30% Iron Chef" and "War Is the H-Word", and a bagpipe version of it was played at his "funeral" in "The Sting" (the funeral actually took place during Leela's coma; in reality, Fry survived the accident with a space bee).
- Bender refers to a gorilla that loves a kitty. This is a reference to Koko the gorilla.
- The Professor says that only dolomite can withstand the heat of lava. While this is a real mineral, the context ("the tough black mineral that won't cop out when there's heat all about") suggests he is referencing the 1975 film Dolemite, with a possible nod also to Isaac Hayes' famous "Theme from Shaft".
- The story may be based upon the following:
- Greyfriars Bobby, a famous Edinburgh Skye Terrier dog who waited for his lost master until his own death.
- Hachikō, a famous Japanese Akita dog that spent most of its life (from 1925 to 1935) awaiting for the return of its deceased master in front of Shibuya's train station
- Argos, Odysseus's dog, who waits for Odysseus for the twenty years that he is away from Ithaca in Homer's The Odyssey.
- In the scene right before we see the cloning machine, the Professor's head appears as a large hologram, telling everyone that it is ready. The head appears with a loud, majestic trumpeting, referencing the scene in the television series "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" where a Magrethean official appears in a hologram, with a similar trumpeting, to the characters.
- The paleontologist who discovers Seymour is named "Dr. Ben Beeler," presumably a reference to producer and prolific writer Ken Keeler.
- Leela is seen giving Amy a Piledriver
References
- ^ Dan Iverson (2006-07-07). "Top 25 Futurama Episodes". Retrieved 2007-09-21.
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