The Sting

"The Sting" is the sixty-sixth episode of Futurama, the twelfth of the fourth production season and the ninth of the fifth broadcast season. It aired 1 June, 2003 on FOX. Fry is stung to death by a bee queen trying to save Leela, the guilt of his death drives her crazy.

Act I: "Bad news everyone! You're not good enough to go on your next mission."
As Fry and Bender are playing virtual golf, the Professor comes in and explains that they are not good enough for their next mission: collecting honey from space bees, which claimed the lives of the previous Planet Express crew. Leela insists that they are just as good and forces Fry and Bender to go on the mission.

The crew reaches the space bees' hive and paints Bender's body like a bee, giving him a bee language cartridge that will allow him to communicate with the other bees to distract them while they venture deeper into the hive. They eventually come across the remains of the old Planet Express ship in the process (where the black box reveals the previous crew died due to the captain's insistence they prove themselves better than the Professor's expectations). The crew eventually discover the honeycomb stockpile, and a flow of royal jelly, into which Fry falls. Leela comes across a baby queen bee, which she takes, so that the crew can build its own hive in the future, and takes some jelly with which to feed her. Suddenly, Bender accidentally insults the bees, including the current queen, causing the enraged bees to chase them back to the ship.

On the way back to Earth, the baby queen wakes and threatens to kill Leela. Fry throws himself in front of Leela in defense, but is impaled in the spleen with the stinger, which passes through him and mildly stabs Leela as well. Bender picks up the defensless dying queen and throws her into the air lock, ejecting her into space (where she is hit and killed by a space truck). Leela gets up with a minor wound from the stinger and is horrified to discover that Fry is dead.

Act II: "It was all my fault! He died because of me!"
Fry's funeral is held at the Orbiting Meadows, where many old acquaintances come to mourn. However, none is more woeful than Leela, who believes that it was her error that caused Fry's death, and is wracked with utter remorse. Towards the end of the processions, Fry's coffin is ejected into the outer reaches of space. Back in her apartment, Leela remains sorrowful as she goes through all of the belongings that Fry had given her. Having kept some of the space honey from the mission, she takes two spoonfuls to ease the pain and, after having a brief laughing fit, quickly falls into a deep sleep. She then finds herself floating in space with Fry, who seems to be alive. Leela is not entirely certain, especially since Fry still has a gaping hole through his abdomen, so Fry decides to prove he's alive by telling her that he left something for her in his locker, which only he would know. He then tells her that he wants her to wake up; it turns out that this experience was only a dream.

Leela tells the others about her dream and what she was told, explaining that if it's true, then he must still exist in some form or another. When she opens his locker, she is disappointed to find that it is completely empty. Bender then comes in, saying that he pawned most of the stuff in Fry's locker for closure, keeping only one item because it turned out to be a present for Leela: a one-eyed stress-relieving doll. Leela marks this as proof that Fry is still alive and is communicating to her in her dreams. However, a quick brain scan leads the others to conclude that Fry told her about the present before his death, and that she subconsciously blocked it out in her grief. In other words, they begin to think that Leela might be going crazy.

Later that night, Leela has another dream in which Fry is still alive. She is convinced, however, that Fry must still be alive, since he treats her very romantically, and that she couldn't be treated any more so by her own imagination. When Fry takes her sleigh-riding on the ice fields of Hyperion, he gives her his jacket before telling her to wake up once again. Leela is reluctant to accept that this is just another dream, but wakes up anyway. Her hopes are once again dashed until she discovers that, although she is very much awake, she is still wearing Fry's jacket. Since Fry was buried in this jacket, she is once again convinced that Fry is truly alive.

Act III: "Fry's alive! I have proof!"
Leela comes to the headquarters the next day to show the others the jacket, but it turns out she has her own jacket. Leela admits that she may be freaking out (especially after hearing Amy and Hermes speaking with the Professor's voice, and Bender with Amy's), and decides to take some more space honey. After hearing this, however, the others warn her that she must not take too many spoonfuls; one helps a person calm down, two help a person get to sleep, but three can place a person into a sleep from which they can never awaken.

As Leela cautiously takes a couple of spoonfuls of space honey, she becomes drowsy and accidentally knocks over the jar of royal jelly (which she also kept from the mission) onto the couch. All of a sudden, the jelly begins to take some sort of solid form, eventually transforming into Fry, who is completely naked and covered in jelly, but apparently very much alive. Leela presents Fry to the others; after examining him, the Professor concludes that Fry's DNA was imprinted into the jelly when he fell into it, and that a new body was formed when the imprint merged with his DNA in the couch. Leela is relieved that everything can return to normal and that she no longer has to carry the burden of guilt for his death, until Fry tells her to wake up again; it turns out that Leela merely fell asleep again after eating the second spoonful.

Leela realizes that she is comfortable in her dreams while her mind plays tricks on her when she's awake. This is evidenced when Leela hallucinates the crew into performing a musical number, which each member exploding after being stung by a bee. Afterwards, Leela decides to go out into space to find Fry's coffin; her plan is to retrieve Fry's corpse and keep it under her mattress to remind herself that he's really dead, which means dealing with her guilt again. When she finds it, however, she wakes to find herself in her room once again, with the others' faces on the walls and floor, chanting the accusation that she killed Fry. After tearing the faces down like wallpaper, Leela finally believes that she is now insane.

She decides that she will take enough space honey to put her in the eternal sleep so that she can be in her dreams with Fry forever, as that is when she does not feel guilty. Just as she is about to take the final spoon, Fry's picture on her bedside table comes to life and tells her to fight her impulses, but Leela is so confused as to what to do that she breaks into tears. Fry continues to bolster her, saying that she's stronger than this. As Leela attempts to overcome her irresolution, a small space bee starts flying around the room. Leela throws the jar of space honey at it, causing it to turn into an entire swarm of smaller bees. With Leela hopelessly scared and confused, Fry admits his love for Leela and begs for her to wake up once more; when she does, she finds herself lying in a hospital bed, with Fry sitting beside her.

It turns out that when the sting of the baby queen went right through Fry's body, Leela caught all the poison in her seemingly mild wound, putting her into a coma that lasted for two weeks; it is clear now that Fry was not killed by the sting (he only needed a spleen transplant). Fry never left her side while she was unconscious and kept talking to her in the hope that a familiar voice would guide her back, which came to her in her "dreams". The final shot shows Leela and Fry hugging each other... they then tell each other that they need a shower.

Trivia

 * This episode was nominated for an Emmy in 2004 for Outstanding Animated Program (For Programming Less Than One Hour).
 * (Aside from Primary characters) Leo and Inez Wong, Michelle, Petunia, Sal and Scruffy appear at the funeral. Many of the women that Fry had previously been romantically linked with attend the funeral and sit in a group together, except for Umbriel, who obviously can't breathe out of water. Scruffy also plays 'Walking on Sunshine' on the bagpipes at Fry's funeral.
 * Cameos are listed in the Continuity section.
 * In Leela's dream, Fry dies. Traditionally, funerals are held three days after passing. But on the night of Fry's funeral, Fry comes back to life and reveals himself to Leela. The Fry is portrayed as a Jesus-figure because he comes back to life on the third day, and shows himself to the Leela, who is portrayed as a Mary Magdalene figure.
 * Farnsworth has changed the logo of Planet Express a bit since his last crew died.
 * Farnsworth is wearing slippers during the funeral.
 * In this episode Fry is stung by a giant bee. Billy West, the actor who voices Fry, is also known as the voice of the Honey Nut Cheerios spokes-bee, Buzz. Multiple references are made to Honeycombs Cereal.
 * Honeycomb Hideout is a location in these commercials.
 * Hermes, in reply to a comment made by Fry, says "Honeycomb's big, yeah, yeah, yeah." to which Bender replies "It's not small?" then Hermes says "No, No, No." This is part of the product's jingle.
 * This is the only time we see the old Planet Express Ship.
 * Atomic Raygun Attack made an album entitled 'The Sting' in which they wrote 6 tracks taking moments from the episode. They are available for free download.
 * They do not use the correct colour of Royal jelly. This is because Royal jelly is a creamy-white colour and it was thought that colour would not work well.
 * Among the many wreaths at the funeral, Bender's is easily the most obvious: "R.I.P. Meatbag", and still shows his typical focus on himself, as his name is larger than that of Fry.
 * Leela uses only half a tissue to wipe away her tears, but not only because she has only one eye: it is an inside reference to David X. Cohen who had a bad cold at the time the episode was written and was fearing to run out of tissues, so he halved each one to make them last longer.
 * Fry and Bender were on their 17th hole of virtual golf, par 4.
 * The squishy toy from Leela's dream is on her bedside table at the hospital. Also, a picture of the ice moon Hyperion, where Fry took her in her dream, is in frame opposite her bed.
 * Black Boxes usually have some form of armoring to protect them from impact. This also seems to be only a circa 1980s tape recorder. This could be explained by Professor Farnsworth's miserly approach to business.
 * This episode started out as a sarcastic joke from one of the writers: "Why don't we kill off one of the major characters?"
 * This episode is one of four featured in the Monster Robot Maniac Fun Collection, reflecting its popularity with both fans and the creators of Futurama.
 * This episode was named #24 on IGN's list of Top 25 Futurama episodes.
 * In an episode of The Simpsons, another show Matt Groening made, Homer was on a vibrating chair going so fast that during a scene, whenever he blinked, his eyes and skin changed to different colours. The exact same thing happened in this episode, with Leela staring into the coffin. Both sequences are a reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Continuity

 * The Professor produces career chips from his previous crew from an envelope labeled "Contents of space wasp's stomach," rather than the space bees depicted in this episode. See the Goofs section for more.
 * Terry from Applied Cryogenics appears at the funeral.
 * The refrigerator magnet from Luna Park is in Leela's "Memories of Fry" box.
 * The unnamed girl from the '21st Century' appears at the funeral.
 * A couple of Trisolians appear at the funeral.
 * A coronation spoon with Fry as Emperor of Trisol on it is in Leela's "Memories of Fry" box.
 * Guenter appears at the funeral.
 * (Presumably) the winning Slurm can is in Leela's "Memories of Fry" box.
 * The radiator appears at the funeral.
 * Petunia appears at the funeral.
 * Morgan Proctor appears at the funeral.
 * Fry's first Moustache is in Leela's "Memories of Fry" box.
 * Kug appears at the funeral.
 * A couple of Santa Claus's Neptunian aides appear at the funeral.
 * Orbiting Meadows reappears.
 * Chester A. Arthur (head-in-jar) appears at the funeral.
 * A can of π-in-1 oil is in Leela's "Memories of Fry" box.
 * A couple of Cygnoids appear at the funeral.
 * Father Changstein El-Gamal hosts the funeral.
 * The conversation heart ("U leave me breathless") is in Leela's "Memories of Fry" box.
 * Bender's comment, "You were in the best coma I've ever seen!" may be a reference to his inability to act out being in a coma in All My Circuits.
 * The still-fossilized Seymour appears at the funeral.
 * The flower Fry gave Leela is in her "Memories of Fry" box
 * Kug appears at the funeral.
 * A couple of Santa Claus's Neptunian aides appear at the funeral.
 * Orbiting Meadows reappears.
 * Chester A. Arthur (head-in-jar) appears at the funeral.
 * A can of π-in-1 oil is in Leela's "Memories of Fry" box.
 * A couple of Cygnoids appear at the funeral.
 * Father Changstein El-Gamal hosts the funeral.
 * The conversation heart ("U leave me breathless") is in Leela's "Memories of Fry" box.
 * Bender's comment, "You were in the best coma I've ever seen!" may be a reference to his inability to act out being in a coma in All My Circuits.
 * The still-fossilized Seymour appears at the funeral.
 * The flower Fry gave Leela is in her "Memories of Fry" box
 * Father Changstein El-Gamal hosts the funeral.
 * The conversation heart ("U leave me breathless") is in Leela's "Memories of Fry" box.
 * Bender's comment, "You were in the best coma I've ever seen!" may be a reference to his inability to act out being in a coma in All My Circuits.
 * The still-fossilized Seymour appears at the funeral.
 * The flower Fry gave Leela is in her "Memories of Fry" box
 * Bender's comment, "You were in the best coma I've ever seen!" may be a reference to his inability to act out being in a coma in All My Circuits.
 * The still-fossilized Seymour appears at the funeral.
 * The flower Fry gave Leela is in her "Memories of Fry" box
 * The flower Fry gave Leela is in her "Memories of Fry" box
 * The flower Fry gave Leela is in her "Memories of Fry" box

Allusions

 * "They say a spoonful of honey helps to ease the pain" is a take on the song lyric, "just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down" from Disney's film, Mary Poppins.
 * Most of the plot and Leela thinks Fry is dead while he was alive and she was in a coma. And the 'wake up' echoed through the episode sounded similar to the "stop breathing" line from the film The Others.
 * Aside from the title being taken from the 1973 film, Bender's outfit in the beginning is the same as Robert Redford's.
 * The space helmets look similar to the ones from 20, 000 Leagues Under the Sea.
 * This episode is similar in some ways to the episode "Goodbye" in Katey Sagal's other show 8 Simple Rules. The episodes aired only five months apart.
 * This episode bears some Star Trek similarities:
 * Scruffy is wears a Scottish out-fit and plays the bagpipes at the funeral - a spoof of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (Spock's funeral), complete with Scruffy playing the bagpipes like Scotty did. Fry's funeral song is an arrangement of "Walking on Sunshine", which was established as Fry's favorite in "Jurassic Bark". He also sings/hums it briefly in "War Is the H-Word" and "The 30% Iron Chef".
 * This episode also bears similarities to the Star Trek episode "The Tholian Web", in which Kirk is mistakenly presumed dead. Uhura sees him calling for help and thinks she is losing her mind.
 * In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Frame Of Mind", commander Riker is caught in a situation much like Leela's. He's rendered unconscious by aliens, and in a dream that's becoming increasingly weird, he start to question his own sanity, as nothing is what it appears to be.
 * In the episode "Night Terrors" (Star Trek: The Next Generation), counselor Troi find herself floating in outer space (much like Leela) in one of her dreams. Slowly the recurring dream takes its toll on her mental health. In the end it turns out the "nightmares" was caused by aliens attempting to communicate with her.
 * In the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Demon", the Voyager crew discover a biologic substance that can make replicas of humans/aliens based on a few strands of DNA. Much like the Fry replica in Leela's dream.
 * And finally the tradition from most every Star Trek series, the body being put in a torpedo and shot into space.
 * When Leela has the second dream, Fry appears in a similar way to the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland - as a smile hanging in the air - only he's got his hair, too.
 * Fry pours Leela some Semitic Miss Cocoa, which is a reference to Swiss Miss Cocoa.
 * Leela's on the brink of death, but her hallucinations make her believe she is living and Fry is dead. The same thing happens in Soul Survivors with the main character believing her boyfriend is dead when he is staying with her at the hospital.
 * Fry's remark, "I thought that maybe if you heard a familiar voice, it might help keep your mind together. But who knows if it really got through" is an allusion to Nan Adams, a character who appeared in "The Hitch-Hiker", an episode of The Twilight Zone.
 * When Leela picks up the baby queen bee, it seems to be a reference to Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, when Ender finds a young Bugger queen.
 * Hermes proclaims that he is from Jamaica - The Show-Me Island, which is a reference to Missouri's state motto, "The Show-Me State."
 * The scene in which Fry regenerates from royal jelly that was spilled on the couch is reminiscent of Frank's regeneration in the movie Hellraiser.
 * Leela pulling Fry's jacket out of her dream is a reference to Nancy Thompson pulling Freddy's hat out of a dream in A Nightmare on Elm Street.
 * The scene where Leela looks into Fry's coffin in space and sees a colourful tunnel of light (to the music Also sprach Zarathustra) is a parody of the scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey, where David Bowman encounters the Monolith and it opens into the same Stargate sequence as in the end of 2001.
 * The song "Don't Worry, Bee Happy" is a parody of and/or homage to the 1988 hit song Don't Worry, Be Happy.
 * Multiple references are made to Honeycombs Cereal, such as the Honeycomb Hideout, and when Hermes, in reply to a comment made by Fry, Hermes says "Honeycomb's big, yeah, yeah, yeah." to which Bender replies "It's not small?" where Hermes says "No, No, No.".
 * Zoidberg's set (during "Don't Worry, Bee Happy") is inspired by the Elvis Presley Special.
 * The scene where Bender ejects the baby queen bee out of an airlock and where the queen bee wriggles its stinger in the Planet Express Ship's cargo bay are references to the film Aliens.
 * When Hermes sees that Leela is awake, he exclaims, "Sweet Three-toed Sloth of Ice Planet Hoth! She's awake!", referring to the ice planet from Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.
 * As Leela and Fry escape the Bee Hive a bee hits a wall, then explodes; the ensuing scene is similar to Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi when the Millennium Falcon escapes from the second Death Star.
 * This episode bears similarities to the motion picture Solaris, which featured an astronaut haunted by persistent and contradictory visions of his dead wife.
 * This episode bears similarities to Philip K. Dick's novel Ubik, in which after an explosion and narrow escape, the leading characters see evidence that they might be dead, while characters who are believed dead or in irreversible coma ("half-life" in Ubik) nonetheless participate unexpectedly.
 * When Leela accidentally knocks the jar of royal jelly, it turns into the form of Fry, this is similar to when the  jumps into helicopter, then reforms itself.

Goofs

 * In, the Professor produces career chips from his previous crew from an envelope labeled "Contents of space wasp's stomach," rather than the space bees depicted in this episode.
 * While the writer admits in the commentary their research found no relationship between bees and wasps, some wasps do invade beehives to host their larvae.
 * Note: This may not be a goof. When Leela hears of the mission, she claims "We're just as good as any of those other crews you sent to their deaths.".  Later, when they find the black box from the old Planet Express ship, one of the old crew says that the Professor was right, they weren't as good as the previous crew.  This would make Leela, Fry, and Bender at least the third crew that the Professor sent to the Space Bee Hive.  There could easily have been a fourth crew that died in the space wasp's stomach.  Also, in, the Professor is seen hiring a replacement crew for Leela, Fry, and Bender, thinking that they have died fighting the Omicronians.  Package delivery in the year 3000 is a dangerous business.
 * In, Guenter the monkey's hat was crushed, making him have moderate intelligence while wearing it, and he keeps it that way. When Guenter is shown at the funeral, his hat isn't crushed anymore. On the other hand, he could have fixed the exterior of the hat without fixing the machinery inside.
 * The Amazonian who says Fry did "good snu-snu", Kug, actually snu-snued Zapp Brannigan.
 * During the funeral, the garland is suddenly much farther away from the coffin than before (standing on the carpet then). Also, Seymour vanishes.
 * The first time the funeral is seen from the back, Leela's hair is black, also the man to Zoidberg's right is shown with diferent hair and skin colours in the two shots.
 * In Leela's dream, right after Fry's funeral, Leela is on her bed. She tears a tissue in half and puts it on her night-table. The camera zooms in, then out; and the tissue is gone.
 * Fry and Leela are stung by a baby queen bee, then the stinger breaks off. Queen bees do not lose their stinger after they sting. A worker is killed by stinging, since the stinger is barbed and is ripped from the bee's body, along with its venom sac. Queens have less-barbed stingers and do not have them ripped free. A queen may sting multiple times without being injured, however, these are Space Bees, and the queen's stinger was not ripped from her body, but rather snapped off, not necessarily producing a fatal wound to the bee.
 * In the scene where Leela opens Fry's coffin, the hinges have suddenly changed position. Now the casket opens from right to left, instead of opposite, regular left to right.
 * When Bender jumps into the virtual lake to fetch a golf ball, the Prof. enters and gives the news. In the next scene, Bender is out of the water and on the fairway.

Characters

 * 21st Century girl
 * Amy
 * Bender
 * Father Changstein el Gamahl
 * Cubert
 * Dwight
 * Professor Farnsworth
 * Fry
 * Guenter
 * Hermes
 * LaBarbara Conrad
 * Leela
 * Leo and Inez Wong
 * Petunia
 * Michelle
 * Morgan Proctor
 * Sal
 * Scruffy
 * Seymour Asses
 * Terry
 * Thog
 * Zoidberg

Episode Credits

 * Writer
 * Patric M. Verrone
 * Director
 * Brian Sheesley
 * Voice Actors
 * Billy West
 * Katey Sagal
 * John DiMaggio
 * Maurice LaMarche
 * Tress MacNeille
 * Lauren Tom
 * Dave Herman
 * DVD Commentary
 * Matt Groening
 * David X. Cohen
 * Rich Moore
 * Patric M. Verrone
 * Brian Sheesley
 * John DiMaggio
 * Billy West
 * Maurice LaMarche