Put Your Head on My Shoulders

"Put Your Head on My Shoulder" is the twentieth episode of Futurama, the seventh of the second production season and the tenth of the second broadcast season. It aired 13 February, 2000 on FOX. After a romantic picnic trip between Amy and Fry (and Dr. Zoidberg) ends in tragedy, Fry's head is attached to Amy's shoulder.

Act I: "You just assume I can't get a Valentine's Date?"
Amy decides to buy a new car, and Fry, Leela and Bender go with her. In Bender's case, the visit is mandatory because he has to bring his ass in for servicing, as he has received a recall note with his name (Bender Unit 22) on it - there is the danger of his ass bursting into flame on a low-speed collision. At Malfunctioning Eddie's Rocket Car Emporium, Amy quickly falls in love with the Beta Romeo, with a little help from Victor, the car vendor, while Fry is sorely tempted by the Ford Thundercougerfalconbird. Bender is being serviced in the service department and has some shock-absorbing bumpers installed to reduce the risk of catastrophic butt failure. Bender is not happy with the new part and has it removed, despite the warning of the mechanic. Amy buys the Beta Romeo, and they all drive back to Planet Express. As Valentine's Day is coming, Fry asks Leela out, but she refuses. Amy wants to take out her new car to Mercury, and Fry decides to go with her. They have a lot of fuel-consuming fun with the new car and run out of fuel in a desolate area, where they are stuck for a few hours. They get into talking and realize they have a lot in common, and they end up sleeping with each other.

Act II: "Fry and Amy go together like a lime and a coconut"
The PE crew is astounded to hear that Fry and Amy are together now, and Zoidberg is especially jealous as he is miserably lonely and desperately poor so he can't even buy romance. This inspired Bender to start a dating service (Benders Computer Dating Service, Discrete and Discreet), after a false start that ended in court, and it starts to attract a lot of people, mostly of the desperate kind. Fry is meanwhile fearing that his relationship with Amy might become too close, and asks Leela if she will come with him and Amy to a picnic on Europa as he doesn't want to be alone with her. Leela refuses, but Zoidberg is happy to join in. On the tour across the moon's frozen surface, Amy is asking Fry what he wants to do on Valentine's Day, and he is preparing to break up with her. For this, he needs a more intimate atmosphere, and lets Zoidberg take the helm of the car. As Zoidy can't drive, there is a terrible accident in which Fry's body is severely injured, but Zoidberg manages to keep his head alive by transplanting it on Amy's shoulder. Whether he wants it or not, Fry is going to spend a lot of time with Amy...

Act III: "This sort of thing always happens with office romances"
Fry is now temporarily reduced to his head and dependant on Amy to survive, but he doesn't let this stop himself and he finishes his breakup with her. Amy, however, takes it easy and arranges another date for this evening. Meanwhile, Leela is getting desperate and hires Bender's services to arrange a date for her, and some time later. so does Fry who doesn't want to be alone with Amy and her date. They all congregate to Elzar's Fine Cuisine. Amy is meeting with a goodlooking guy named Gary, while Bender has arranged Petunia to be Fry's valentine, and Leela meets Sal. Only Amy's date is taking a satisfactory course, as both Petunia and Sal (and every other date in the room Bender arranged) have to catch their bus - it turns up Bender rounded up his candidates at a bus station to take a bus to Nutley. Now Gary and Amy are planning to get busy in a more private fashion, which is a horrifying thought for Fry. He actually tries to break free from Amy's shoulder, when Leela steps in to save him: she involves Gary in a long, boring conversation so the intimate get-together with Amy is canceled. The next day, Dr. Zoidberg restores Fry's head to his own body, and everything seems to have worked out - except for Bender, who becomes, right in the closing shot, a victim of catastrophic butt failure.

Trivia

 * Among the cans in the closet at Planet Express, there are two bearing the labels Emergency Beans and Condensed Milt, plus two folders, one labeled P, the other NP.
 * It is revealed that Al Gore is on the $500 bill.

Goofs

 * Bender's Office (employee lounge) seems to connect to the conference room on one end and the hanger and the main hall at the other though the same door.
 * Near the end when Fry turns on his chair it duplicates then covers itself up
 * In the final scene where Leela is accusing Bender of rounding up their dates at the bus station, during the close up shots of their head the background doesn't change when it switches between them.

Continuity

 * Malfunctioning Eddie and Victor have another appearance in "Insane in the Mainframe".

Allusions

 * This is not the first time a show created by Matt Groening has explored the idea of sewing someone's head onto another person's body; the idea was explored in a Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episode.
 * In the scene where they go to Jupiter's moon, Europa, there is a black thing with an "Out of Order" label on it. That is a black monolith, taken from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
 * The car Malfunctioning Eddie mentions in his television ad is a Plymouth 'V'ger, a reference to the major plot device in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. A sentient life form known as V'Ger that turns out to be NASA's Voyager 6 deep space probe and also a reference to the Plymouth Voyager minivan.
 * Amy's car has "Cross your heart seatbelts", a parody of Playtex's Cross Your Heart bras.
 * Amy's compact makes the Star Trek communicator sound effect when it opens.
 * The only gas station on Mercury is Hg's Fuel, this is a pun as Hg is the chemical symbol for Mercury.
 * The company "Septuple A" is a reference to "Triple A" (i.e., AAA or the American Automobile Association).
 * The car "Beta Romeo" is a reference to Alfa Romeo.
 * Bender's dating service is advertised as being "Discreet and Discrete", the first meaning exercising self-restraint, and the second a form of mathematics based in logic and computability, by which as a robot, Bender is programmed to abide.
 * This episode might be a reference to a 1972 SF film, The Thing With Two Heads. There's also a 1971 movie called The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant

Alien Language Sightings
Time:04:04

Location: Sign next to Planet Express

Language: AL1

Translation: drink

Characters

 * Amy
 * Bender
 * Professor Farnsworth
 * Fry
 * Gary
 * Hattie McDoogal
 * Hermes
 * Hookerbot 5000
 * Larry
 * Lou
 * Leela
 * Debut: Malfunctioning Eddie
 * Abraham Lincoln's head
 * Debut: Petunia
 * Sal
 * Debut: Victor
 * Zapp Brannigan
 * Zoidberg
 * George Washington's head

Episode Credits

 * Writer
 * Ken Keeler
 * Director
 * Chris Loudon
 * Voice Actors
 * Billy West
 * Katey Sagal
 * John DiMaggio
 * Lauren Tom
 * Tress MacNeille
 * Phil LaMarr
 * Maurice LaMarche
 * David Herman
 * DVD Commentary
 * Matt Groening
 * David X. Cohen
 * Rich Moore
 * Ken Keeler
 * John DiMaggio
 * Billy West