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Futurama episode
"Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles"
Episode no.	63
Prod. code	4ACV09
Airdate	March 30, 2003
Writer(s)	Jeff Westbrook
Director	Bret Haaland
Opening subtitle	Now Interactive! Joystick controls Fry's left ear
Opening cartoon	unknown
Season 4 January 2002 – August 2003
Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch Leela's Homeworld Love and Rocket Less Than Hero A Taste of Freedom Bender Should Not Be Allowed on TV Jurassic Bark Crimes of the Hot Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles The Why of Fry Where No Fan Has Gone Before The Sting Bend Her Obsoletely Fabulous The Farnsworth Parabox Three Hundred Big Boys Spanish Fry The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings
List of all Futurama episodes...

"Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles" is the ninth episode of the fourth season of Futurama. It first aired on March 30, 2003.

Professor Farnsworth goes after his escaped gargoyle, Pazuzu. Unfortunately, he drives slowly in traffic, incinerates a sign and blows up a space station. Forgetting the search for his gargoyle, he goes to Florida to have a discounted dinner and activates his nuclear-powered teeth. Annoyed with the Professor's crankiness, the Planet Express employees take him to an age-reducing spa, as he is 161 years old. A freak accident causes the entire crew to reverse in age back to their teens (except Professor Farnsworth, who reverts to his 50s). Leela decides to live with her parents so that she can have a normal teenage life. As teenagers, Fry and Leela begin dating and win a race against some other teen mutants but end up destroying a school and Amy is the subject of jokes back on Mars due to her obesity and pimples. The Professor searches for a way to undo the youthening effects. It seems that time-altering chronitons have become stuck to their DNA and Bender's "RNA" (The R standing for Robot, not to be confused with RNA in real organisms).

Unfortunately, his plan involving one of his inventions backfires and the crew (except Leela, who wanted to remain a teenager, so stayed in the Sewers) begins to grow progressively younger. In order to stop this process, they search out the mythical Fountain of Aging. When the rest of the crew gets caught in the current, Leela jumps in to save them, which ends her chance at being a teenager again. The Professor is still stuck in the fountain but is saved in the nick of time by his lost gargoyle, Pazuzu. The professor is delighted to find that he's become even older than he was before; Amy and Leela turn out to be a little younger (or at least agree to tell people that). In gratitude the professor frees Pazuzu, and the episode ends revealing it has all been a story the gargoyle tells his son about how he gained his freedom.

• The title is a reference to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
• Farnsworth's gargoyle, Pazuzu, is the name of a demon in Sumerian mythology. It is also the name of the demon possessing Regan MacNeil in The Exorcist.
• Leela exclaims to Professor Farnsworth, "For Heaven's Gate professor!", which is presumably a reference to the Heaven's Gate, a cult that believed they would ride in a space ship hiding behind the Comet Hale-Bopp, or to the 1980 film of the same name.
• The chroniton-eating bacteria are visually similar to Pac-Man.
• The space station the Professor inadvertently destroys is a parody of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's Deep Space Nine station.
• The essential plot of the main characters growing younger and being saved by the oldest among them is from "The Counter-Clock Incident", an episode from Star Trek: The Animated Series.
• The larval stages Zoidberg goes through (from birth) are coral, crinoid, starfish, sea urchin, anglerfish, sea lamprey, clam, horseshoe crab and a cuttlefish.
• The film playing at the underground mutant movie theater is The Fiddler Way Below the Roof, a parody of The Fiddler on the Roof.
• In Hermes' childhood form, he has the same high top fade hairstyle as Kid of Kid 'n Play.
• The lizard-like creature on the cover of A Child's Garden of Space Legends is a Gorn, from the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Arena". Also, one of the stories in the book is "Charlotte's Tholian Web", a reference to both Charlotte's Web and the Star Trek episode "The Tholian Web".
• The brand of tequila Leela's dad drinks is "Sewervo Gold" a parody of Cuervo Gold. He had earlier indicated in "Less Than Hero" that he was a heavy drinker.
• The front end of Moose's airboat is from a second generation Pontiac Trans Am.
• Moose is a parody of Moose Mason from Archie Comics, shown in his manner of speech, dress and hairstyle.
• The ending scene of the Gargoyles against a Paris backdrop could be a reference to the Hunckback of Notre Dame.

• Chronitons were the particles that caused the time skips in "Time Keeps on Slippin'".
• Bender was shown to have been assembled as an adult in "Bendless Love" and so should not have any younger forms. The commentary tries to handwave this by implying that Bender had younger forms while going through the assembly machine. However, this may be explained by the fact that robots do have prototype versions, as prototype robots were shown in "Crimes Of The Hot".
• Pazuzu speaks French, previously described in the episodes "A Clone of My Own" and "The Route of All Evil" as a dead language.

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