Based on an actual UFO sighting
When Farnsworth becomes bankrupt, the crew heads out West to earn some thallium in exchange for bitcoin and get the Robot Mafia off of their backs.
Tropes in the episode:
- Abnormal Ammo: To complete his outlaw style, Roberto trades his signature knife for a revolver. He invented it himself, so he could shoot knives. It's even deadlier than his usual knife.
- Affably Evil: Delilah may have been taking robot heads and using them to mine bitcoin, but she did donate proceedings to children's orphanages. Although she imprisons Farnsworth and the others in her Bitcoin-mining farm, she points out that it's a comfortable, air-conditioned room and that she'll come by every day to give them a snack.
- A-Team Firing: The gunfight during the climax; basically nobody is able to hit each other, apart from Fry taking out the Borax Kid's hand and shooting Leela by mistake.
- Ask a Stupid Question...: When Zoidberg asks Bender (whose head is being used to mine for Bitcoin) if he is okay, Bender answers he is not and it's a stupid question.
- Asshole Victim: Delilah takes the head of Roberto along with Bender's to use for in crypto mining. She also takes the heads of the Robot Mafia at the end.
- Bait-and-Switch Comment: When Amy shows to the crew the giant thallium ore, Bender comments how beautiful it is... before asking what is the "big rock" on his rear end that's being used as a pan.
- Bound and Gagged: Played for laughs; when Roberto tried to steal the thallium rock and kidnapped Bender, he left Rusty the donkey behind, gagged and tied up to a tree; however, Rusty isn't bound the way a cowboy would bind his horse to a pole, but instead like how someone would bind and gag a human prisoner. Can also count as him being the Butt-Monkey of the episode, as mentioned below.
- Butt-Monkey: Neither Fry nor Zoidberg fill the role in this in this episode; Rusty, Bender's donkey, however, does. Bender accidentally crushes his back on a treadmill, he's operated on by Zoidberg with "animal whiskey" as anesthetic, and then he's forced to dig a tunnel to escape while Bender yells at him (though he does kick Bender in the face, which he admits was deserved).
- Call-Back: Professor Farnsworth's Abandoned Catchphrase "...though I am already in my pajamas," returns for the first time since "The Series Has Landed".
- Continuity Nod: Bender still has his guitar from "Forty Percent Leadbelly".
- Cowboy Episode: The crew go to Doge City, which heavily resembles an Old Western Town, and accordingly act the part.
- Desert Skull: The Doge City population sign is decorated with one.
- Dirty Coward: When a puma attacks Fry and Leela, the Borax Kid makes no attempt to save them and just walks off. After Fry scares it off with a gun, the Borax Kid takes the credit for it anyway.
- Disability Superpower: After getting run over and having his spine broken, Dwight gains the ability to limbo. He uses this to get through the shootout without getting shot.
- The Dog Bites Back: Rusty kicks Bender in the face for forcing him to burrow their way out of the warehouse. Bender admits he deserved it.
- Enforced Technology Levels: Because all the electricity is being used to power bitcoin mining, and because all of the bitcoin mining causes electrical anomalies that prevent aircraft from approaching, all other technology in Doge City is reduced to that of the old west.
- Even Evil Has Standards:
- Due to her constant mood swings, Delilah doesn't seem able to hurt a human without apologizing and offering compensation after. When the crew learn about her crypto mining activity, she admits to kidnapping, dismembering and keeping robots prisoner, but she knows they'll survive. When the crew are in the same room, she decides to keep them captive too, but she also make sure the temperature is acceptable and assures them she'll provide them food. At no point does she threaten to kill the witnesses to silence them. The only moment where she actually shot at someone is when Bender challenges her to a gunfight.
- Implied with Roberto. He may be a psycho, and had planned an ambush to murder a coach driver to steal a USB with a password to a crypto account on it, using Dwight as a living obstacle to stop the coach. But even he didn't anticipate the coach driver rolling over a 12-year-old tied up on the road rather than stopping.
- Even the Robot Mafia seems pretty reasonable in this episode, leaving the crew enough time to earn the money to pay them back, not intervening in the process or threatening the Planet Express Crew. They even show up at the end just to make sure they directly collect the money from the thallium rock.
- Realizing that the Robot Mafia were after the crew's debt, Delilah steps in while Farnsworth goes to convert the thallium, and she dismembers the Robot Mafia to prevent Farnsworth from losing his money to them again.
- Exact Words:
- Zoidberg visits a local Doctor and asks what his survival rate is. The man answers with ”pretty high”, because he’s a psychiatrist. In some of the foreign dubs (like the French dub) he says the exact same message by saying the opposite, doubling as some Tempting Fate.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: For most of the episode, the Saloon is the only visible part of the Delilah's building, while she claims the rest is occupied by a brothel. By the end, when the crew is searching for Roberto and Bender and assumed they went to the brothel, they head right into it. We see that it uses only one room, just before the crew discover the hidden Bitcoin farm who constitutes the other side of the building.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: During the scene where Farnsworth is showing thallium's position on the Periodic Table, one can see that Indium has been renamed to "Native Americium".
- Harmful Healing: Surprisingly subverted for once with Zoidberg. He manages to completely fix Rusty's broken spine using a bone saw and "animal whiskey," with the donkey up and walking in the next scene with only a makeshift brace covering his back.
- Heal It with Booze: Parodied. So common in that town that Zoidberg even has "animal whiskey" to serve as anaesthetic when he must operate on an animal.
- Honey Trap: Delilah lures robots into the back room of her bar... only to take their heads to use as makeshift Bitcoin mining rigs.
- Hydra Problem: Being driven over by a horse-and-carriage left no visible scratches on Dwight, but it did give him a super flexible spine.
- I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: Fry accidentally shoots Leela with a gun. The Borax Kid offers to clean up the wound, but she doesn't want him to on account of how much of a scoundrel he is.
- Innocently Insensitive: As Leela turns on the charm for tips, not very successfully:Leela: Can you think of anything I can do to look sluttier?Fry: Nope!
- Karma Houdini: Despite kidnapping Bender, Roberto and hundreds of other robots to use as bitcoin mining rigs and sealing everyone in her warehouse, Delilah faces no consequences for her actions.
- Loan Shark: Farnsworth needs to pay back the loan from the Robot Mafia, who helpfully remind the crew that they aren't above ass-kicking.
- Mood-Swinger: Delilah's mood is described as swinging heavily, much like the value of bitcoin.
- Miss Kitty: Delilah, going along with being the Saloon Owner. However, it's mainly a cover for her bitcoin mining activity made with dismembered robot heads.
- Mob Debt: The Robot Mafia has engaged in loan sharking from time to time. It turns out that the Professor borrowed money from them to invest in Bitcoin, and since it crashed again the crew has to pay them back.
- Ms. Fanservice: Amy and Leela. Amy wears mini-shorts and a revealing cowgirl outfit, while most of the Planet Express Crew wear less revealing, cowboy-themed outfits; Leela, meanwhile wears a frilly saloon-style dress. Justified, as while the others search for thallium, she works in a saloon-brothel to provide money for daily life. While she's an effective bouncer, her feminine wiles seem to be off, as she complains that she's had only one client interested by her looks, admitting to liking that part of the job, and asking advice from Fry, who tells her to look sluttier.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Bender, in a rare moment of genuine compassion, is filled with guilt over accidentally breaking his donkey Rusty's back in the middle of singing whilst riding him.
- Mythology Gag: The Professor announces that he's already in his pyjamas, an Abandoned Catchphrase from the first two episodes of the show's original run.
- Only a Flesh Wound: Leela accidentally gets shot by Fry. and while she is in some pain, it's not life threatening, and merely amounts to a minor bruise on her hand.
- Outlaw: Going along the cowboy theme, Roberto adopts this style instead of his usual mugger behaviour during this episode.
- Panthera Awesome: Fry and Leela are attacked by a pumanote . Whilst the Borax Kid proves to be a Dirty Coward, Fry shoots at the cat and chases it off, although the Borax Kid takes credit for it.
- Phlebotinum: Subverted. Farnsworth announces an expedition out west to mine Element 81, which sounds like an esoteric element found in science fiction... and then zooms in on the periodic table, revealing it to be a real-life element: thallium.
- Plagiarism in Fiction: Fry discovers that the Borax Kid has been taking the plots of Buffalo Bill Cobalt novels and replacing their names with his. He tries to argue that the books are in the Public Domain, but the others aren't buying it.
- Population: X, and Counting: An elderly man can be seen manning the population sign when the crew enters Doge City. After they enter, he promptly dies, adjusting the population number downwards before he does.
- Running Gag: The recurring joke of Bender being made of an eclectic and metallurgically improbable array of metals comes up when he literally offers his shiny metal ass to be analyzed for thallium content; however, it's subverted in that Bender apparently doesn't have any thallium in him (at least, not in that part).
- Series Continuity Error: Fry doesn't know who the Borax Kid is, despite already meeting him in "Neutopia".
- Shout-Out: A Roadrunner can be seen in Doge City, along with a "Meep-Meep!".
- Shown Their Work:
- Thallium is actually used to make microchips, and most of the world's thallium mines are in the western United States, with Nevada having nineteen registered mines alone.
- Also, a strange kind since the episode happened in the year 3023 and not in the actual Far West era. But in the background, most of human cowboys are Black or Latino people, like most of historical cowboys/vaqueros actually were.
- Skewed Priorities: Downplayed, but according to the news presenters, the destruction of an entire planet and its 50 billion inhabitants is just slightly more important than the Bitcoin price variation.
- Stealth Pun:
- Translating the binary reveals the title to be "How the West was 81"; the crew are hunting for thallium, the 81st element in the Periodic table.
- Bender yells at Rusty to burrow out of the warehouse; it's a homophone for 'burro', the Spanish word for "donkey".
- Strongly Worded Letter: The final gag of the episode is the Donbot vowing to give the cowboy resort a negative review on Yelp.
- Take That!: Quite a few towards cryptocurrency:
- Linda refers to it as "virtual 'money'", giving finger quotes when she says "money", as the news shows a chart tracking its price from 2023 to 3023; for most of the chart, the price is so low it isn't visible.
- Leela refers to Bitcoin as "a pyramid scheme for rubes", and Farnsworth agrees, and plans to make money off of said rubes.
- The assayer is quite disappointed in seeing that his servers mined Ethereum instead of Bitcoin.
- Tasty Gold: A variation. The Professor tests a thallium ore by biting it. When Amy warns him that it's toxic, he explains that he is wearing a set of "prospecting teeth". Then the thallium broker uses an element analyzer that is a set of dentures hooked up to a computer.
- Taxonomic Term Confusion: When confronted by a puma, Fry and Leela debate whether it's really a puma or a cougar or a mountain lion. Leela then correctly points out they're all the same animal.
- Took a Level in Badass: Fry challenges the Borax Kid to a gunfight and holds out well on his own until the fight's end.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Downplayed. The Borax Kid's YA adventure novels paint him as a hero who foils crimes and faces down gun-toting criminals without fear, but as Leela points out, he's actually a notorious gambler. Fry's the only one who really buys into the books themselves. He also proves to be a cowardly mountebank, but he's able to get Leela to think better of him until he is outed as a plagiarist.
- Violence Is Disturbing: Parodied with the shooting at the end. Even Roberto seems disturbed to see another robot being injured by being shot at. He falls to his knees, and cries about when this kind of violence will end. So he chooses to abandon his gun, goes back to holding his knife, and immediately starts stabbing the injured robot.
- Visual Pun: The three-way shoot-out in the climax is an illustration of a three-dimensional axis. This is driven in by their being an arch and a pit between two buildings so that a pair of shooters can represent the third axis as the camera rotates around the suddenly CGI situation.
- Worthless Yellow Rocks: As Amy's panning the river for thallium, she gets annoyed because she keeps finding gold nuggets, enough to make a fairly large pile.
- Would Hurt a Child: The reaction of the coach driver when he sees a 12-year-old boy tied up on the road? Do not slow down and roll over him. Fortunately for Dwight, not only did he emerge unscathed, but the incident also gave him a super flexible spine.
