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Futurama episode
"Brannigan Begin Again"
Episode no.	15
Prod. code	2ACV02
Airdate	November 28, 1999
Writer(s)	Lewis Morton
Director	Jeffrey Lynch
Opening subtitle	Not Y3K Compliant
Opening cartoon	"Pigs in a Polka"
Season 2 November 1999 – December 2000
I Second That Emotion Brannigan Begin Again A Head in the Polls Xmas Story Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love? The Lesser of Two Evils Put Your Head on My Shoulder Raging Bender A Bicyclops Built for Two A Clone of My Own How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back The Deep South Bender Gets Made Mother's Day The Problem with Popplers Anthology of Interest I War Is the H-Word The Honking The Cryonic Woman
List of all Futurama episodes...

"Brannigan Begin Again" is episode two in season two of Futurama. It originally aired in North America on November 14, 1999. The episode was written by Lewis Morton and directed by Jeffrey Lynch.

The Planet Express crew arrives at the new Democratic Order of Planets (D.O.O.P.) headquarters in orbit around the Neutral Planet, in order to deliver the oversized scissors for the ribbon-cutting ceremony. Zapp Brannigan interrogates them, thinking they are assassins, but he shortly thereafter destroys the entire station by attempting to use the Nimbus' laser to cut the ribbon.

At the former D.O.O.P. headquarters in Weehawken, New Jersey Brannigan is court-martialed and he and Kif Kroker are stripped of their titles and dismissed from D.O.O.P. service, the latter being dismissed after Brannigan unjustly points to him as the true guilty party. Unable to find employment, the pair wander the streets until they finally arrive at the Planet Express building. Leela tries to turn them away, but Professor Farnsworth decides hiring Brannigan would be good for the company's public image.

The augmented crew is sent to deliver pillows to a hotel on Stumbos 4, a high-gravity planet. Despite Leela's order to deliver one at a time, Fry, Bender, and Zapp decide to deliver all the pillows at once, which in the intense gravity causes the hover dolly to collapse. As punishment, Leela orders them to deliver the pillows by hand, which causes resentment among the crew.

Fry, Bender, and Zapp stage a mutiny against Leela, and lock her in the 'laundry brig'. Brannigan decides to attack the Neutral Planet, thinking this will make him a hero and get him reinstated as a D.O.O.P. captain. When Fry and Bender discover the plan is a suicide mission, they free Leela; and she retakes command.

After returning to Earth, Leela testifies that Brannigan was an amazing hero; so the D.O.O.P. will reinstate him, and thus keep him out of her life.

A majority of the jury at Zapp Brannigan's trial are characters from various Futurama episodes. Among the familiar ones are Glurmo from "Fry and the Slurm Factory", the fat anglerfish-antennae alien from "Hell is Other Robots", a Neptunian, an Insectoid, a Robot Elder from "Fear of a Bot Planet", and Fry's Trisolian advisor Gorgak from "My Three Suns". Included in the 3-D chess game Bender and Fry play are a Decapodian, a Horrible Gelatinous Blob, Lrrr the ruler of Omicron Persei 8, a Trisolian from "My Three Suns", a being of the same race as Kif, the head of D.O.O.P. and other noticeable species from this episode and the show in general.

• The title quotes a common phrase from Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, and refers to a 1985 HBO original film called Finnegan Begin Again. It is also a repeated line in the children's song "Michael Finnigan".
• The game Fry and Bender play at the beginning of the episode is a parody of Dejarik, the game played by R2-D2 and Chewbacca in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.
• D.O.O.P. is explicitly compared to the United Federation of Planets from the Star Trek Universe (even though earlier episodes have established that mentioning Star Trek in the future is considered taboo). Also, the "neutral zone" in which its headquarters are located may be a reference to the neutral zone between the Romulans and the Federation, or more likely to politically neutral countries such as Switzerland.
• When the Planet Express Ship comes into the new station, a riff on the theme of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine can be heard.
• The laser Zapp uses to cut the ribbon has settings of "Stun", "Kill" and "Hyperdeath™", a reference to phasers from the Star Trek universe.
• The slogan on the neutral planet "Live Free or Don't" is a paraphrase of New Hampshire's state motto "Live Free or Die".
• The woman in the car who wants Kif Kroker is Hattie McDoogal, Fry and Bender's landlady from "I, Roommate" in season 1.
• The crew's mission to the high gravity planet is a parody of the book Mission of Gravity.

In 2006 IGN.com ranked this episode as number five in their list of the "Top 25 Futurama episodes". The episode ranked highly in large part due to the character of Zapp Brannigan, particularly the Midnight Cowboy parody with Kif and Brannigan as Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight.^[1]

The sequence where Zapp attempts to make a living as a gigolo is taken from Midnight Cowboy,^[1] including the film's theme, "Everybody's Talkin'" by Harry Nilsson.

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Brannigan Begin Again

• Brannigan Begin Again at TV.com
• Brannigan Begin Again at the Internet Movie Database
• Brannigan Begin Again at The New York Times Movies