Now that Fry, Leela, and Bender have been hired by Planet Express, the Professor assigns them their first mission: deliver a crate of toys to the Moon, which, in a thousand years' time, has become a cheesy, Disney World-style theme park. While Leela enjoys it, Fry wants to experience the moon the way Neil Armstrong "...and those other brave men no one's ever heard of" did, which leads to trouble with a space redneck and his robot daughters.
Tropes:
- Agitated Item Stomping: The moon redneck does this with his hat when Fry, Leela, and Bender escape from him for the first time. Later, after Amy saves them from his thresher, the redneck does it again with his space helmet... until he stops breathing.
- Alien Gender Confusion: This is used to establish that Zoidberg knows nothing of human medicine, including such basics as discerning genders.Fry: Uh, is there a human doctor around?
Zoidberg: Young lady, I'm an expert on humans. Now pick a mouth, open it and say... (lobster crow)
Fry: (tries and fails to imitate lobster crow)
Zoidberg: What?! My mother was a saint! GET OUT! - Armor-Piercing Response: Fry geeks out when they come across the Apollo 11 landing site, but Leela isn't impressed. Her response below leaves Fry standing there with his dreams crushed.Fry: Leela, isn't this the greatest thing you've ever seen?Leela: Fry, look around! It's just a crummy plastic flag and a dead man's tracks in the dust!
- Bilingual Bonus: Amy's first appearance also sets up the Running Gag of cursing in Cantonese when she's angry. When she fails to get the keys out of the crane machine, she yells "Aieyah! Jung lei! ngo da sei lei!" ("Good Grief, I hate you! I will beat you senseless!").
- Blatant Lies: When Fry watches someone being carried off by a giant eagle in the Planet Express adverts, he asks whether they exist. The Professor claims it's all just special effects and then proceeds to make omelettes from giant bird eggs.
- Brick Joke: When Bender first flees from the redneck, Fry asks if he tried seducing the Crushinator. Bender angrily asserts he didn't, because he believes she needed 'romancing' first. Later, after he storms away from the Lunar Lander, he returns, chased by the Redneck because he went back for the Crushinator.
- Early in the episode, Fry sticks a magnet on Bender and it makes him start singing. At the end, Amy uses the ship's magnetic winch to pick up Bender and he reacts the same way.
- Chekhov's Skill: Amy plays the claw-game many times until she wins the ships keys. She then uses the same skills to rescue Bender with the ship's winch.
- Deep South: The redneck farmer... on the Moon. There is even a Confederate flag painted on his lunar car. The Moon will rise again!
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: To Fry, the moon is a wondrous, magic unreachable place. To everybody else, it's just a hunk of rock with an amusement park you can reach in seconds. Nobody understands Fry's obsession with a hunk of lifeless dirt. It's not until Leela listens to Fry's explanation that she begins to really understand what the things she takes for granted in her present must be like for someone from the past.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Being only the second episode, there are some things to note:
- Zoidberg has teeth. This was done again in a few more episodes in Season 1 and then completely dropped.
- Hermes' accent is more downplayed compared to later on when it's more consistently Jamaican.
- Amy's ditzy personality traits are absent, with jokes revolving around her leaning more into her clumsiness or wealth.
- Ear Worm: "Weeeee're whalers on the Moon..." Repeated many times within the episode, and Fry is clearly sick of it. Even Leela sings along at one point.
- Establishing Character Moment:
- Hermes casually discusses all the ways Leela could die on the job with her while asking her to sign a liability waiver, then laughs in her face when she states that she intends to "do as little dying as possible".
- Doctor Zoidberg's incompetence is established when he asks Fry to open his mouth in order to look at his brain. When Fry complies, Zoidberg says "No, no, not that mouth".
- Amy's status as a Cute Clumsy Girl is set in stone the moment her hand slips and accidentally jabs Leela in the eye while cleaning Bender.
- Even Evil Has Standards: While this was a while before Bender was established as "Evil," he takes offense when Fry assumes he tried anything with the Crushinator. As he puts it, a woman that fine deserves to be romanced first. Later implied he tried just that.
- Feet-First Introduction: Fry is about to enter Zoidberg's office for his physical, and Farnsworth warns him that he is "a little" unusual, whispering, "He wears sandals." They then enter the office, and we get a closeup of Zoidberg's feet on his desk (showing he is indeed wearing sandals) before the camera pulls out to reveal Zoidberg himself.
- Foreshadowing: Bender saying "I guess a robot would have to be crazy to wanna be a folk singer" after singing a folk song due to having a magnet in his head becomes a Plot Point for later episodes where Bender does become a folk singer.
- Future Imperfect: The people of the 31st century have forgotten the actual details of Project Apollonote , which has been lost for centuries. For example, they mistake Ralph Kramden of The Honeymooners for a space pioneer because of his Character Catchphrase "Bang! Zoom! Straight to the moon!", and believe there are "Whalers On The Moon".
- Gonky Femme: The Crushinator, a huge blocky robot with a masculine voice treated as a delicate beauty by Bender.
- Hand Wave: Apollo 11 never remained on the moon. This is explained by the "Historical Sticklers Society" putting one there, along with the flag (which was bleached white after being planted) and footsteps.
- Hayseed Name: Two of the Farmers Daughters are named Lulubelle and Daisy Mae; the third, of course, is the Crushinator.
- Just Like Making Love: Parodied when Amy is trying to retrieve the keys to a spaceship from a claw arcade game.Bender: Come on, it's just like making love. Y'know: Left, down, rotate 62 degrees, engage rotor...
Amy: Ugh, I know how to make love! - The Load: When they get stuck in a crater's quicksand on the moon, Fry says, "It's no use! Every man for himself!", jumps out of the cart, gets stuck, then cries, "Help me, Leela!"
- Lost Common Knowledge: Although the moon has long since been colonized, the site of the Apollo 11 landing has been forgotten. Fry and Leela find it by sheer luck. A plaque inside suggests that it was restored some time between the 20th and 31st Century, then abandoned.
- In a bit of
Fridge Brilliance, when Fry and Leela find the original Apollo 11 site, they take refuge in the ascent stage of the Lunar Module. A plaque on one wall states "Placed here by the Historical Sticklers Society."
- In a bit of
- Magic Countdown: Parodied. Fry's excitement has him count down from 10 to 1 when the crew is taking off. They've already hit the amusement park on the moon and have parked by the time he hits 1.
- The Man in the Moon: Craterface, the mascot of Luna Park wearing a man-in-the-moon costume, to whom Bender shoves a beer bottle in his eye in a reference to the A Trip to the Moon ur-example.
- Odd Name Out: The Moon Hick's daughters; Daisy Mae 128-K, Lulubelle 7, and... The Crushinator.
- Pop-Cultural Osmosis: The "Fungineers" who designed the Moon Landing "historical" recreation with singing whale hunters as astronauts have certainly gotten their historical facts through popcultural osmosis.
- Fungineering as a whole seems to be based on a massive foundation of Memetic Mutation.
- Fungineering as a whole seems to be based on a massive foundation of
- Rule of Symbolism: The moment where Fry's amazement of the Moon is completely crushed is visually represented by the nightfall passing over him til he's dark.
- Second Episode Introduction: Zoidberg, Hermes, and Amy first appear here.
- Shout-Out:
- Luna Park is named after one of the three original amusement parks in Coney Island.
- Craterface, the amusement park's mascot, gets a beer bottle shoved into his eye, resembling The Man in the Moon with a rocket ship crammed into his eye from the classic silent film A Trip to the Moon.
- The "Fungineers" are a reference/parody of the the Walt Disney Company's "Imagineers", who are responsible for designing and developing the Walt Disney theme parks.
- At the site of Apollo 11, Fry recognizes the American flag as "that flag from MTV".
- The Slacker: The lazy trucker guy makes his first appearance as a guy who's so lazy he won't even punch Fry for being a jackass.
- Space Whale: Though there aren't any space whales seen in this episode, the theme park-employed "Fungineers" concluded that the moon was first visited by Space Whalers. They proceeded to create a theme-park ride based on this "fact".
- Notably the next line after the ones included in the page quote is "But there ain't no whales, so we tell tall tales and sing our whaling tunes".
- Start My Own: Trope Namer is based on a line Bender says when he is kicked out of Luna Park, and later when Fry and Leela keep Bender out of the Apollo 11 lunar lander. The line has gone on to become a popular meme.Bender: Yeah, well, I'm gonna go build my own theme park! With blackjack! And hookers! In fact, forget the park!
- To Serve Man: The Horrible Gelatinous Blob in the advert, who eats the hapless worker regardless of whether he had the required package or not.
- Take That!: When Fry complains about how lame the moon is, he's told to "Take all complaints to the Monsanto corporation.".
- Very False Advertising: Somewhat inverted. Fry is eager to visit the moon for the first time, only to end up visiting a large theme park with cheesy attractions. He hijacks a lunar rover to break out and see the "real" moon, which ends up almost killing him.
- Vocal Dissonance: The Crushinator has a much deeper voice than her sisters.
- Wanting Is Better Than Having: Fry, while in the lunar lander with Leela, describes the moon as a beautiful and romantic thing that seems just out of reach. But now he knows that when you're actually on it, it's just a big rock floating in space.
- We Have Reserves: The Planet Express ethos; "Our crew is replaceable, your package isn't."
- Who Would Be Stupid Enough?: When the Planet Express crew are browsing the moon souvenirs.Leela: Who buys this crap?
Bender: Idiots who need gifts for other idiots.
(Fry walks in from off screen, wearing an "I'm With Stupid On The Moon" souvenir shirt and holding two moon-themed refrigerator magnets)
Fry: Hey, look what I got you guys! - The World Is Just Awesome: Fry loves to be on the moon for the first time while Leela is thinking, "It's just the moon, we travel to other planets all the time in the year 3000." But by the end of the episode, Leela begins to understand how amazing the universe she lives in is to someone from the past.
Bender: Oh, so you tropers have been writing this recap without Bender, eh? Fine, I'll go write my own recap page! With blackjack! And hookers! In fact, forget the page and the blackjack! Ah, screw the whole thing.
