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Futurama episode
"The Sting"
Episode no.	66
Prod. code	4ACV12
Airdate	June 1, 2003
Writer(s)	Patric M. Verrone
Director	Brian Sheesley
Opening subtitle	A By-Product Of The TV Industry
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...

"The Sting" is episode twelve in season four of Futurama. It originally aired in North America on June 1, 2003.

The crew is sent on a mission to collect space bee honey—the same mission which killed all of Professor Farnsworth's previous crews. During the mission, Leela decides to bring home a baby queen bee to create a new hive from which to collect honey. As the crew is leaving Bender accidentally insults the hive's Queen, causing the entire hive to chase the Planet Express back to their ship. During the escape, the baby bee awakens and attacks Leela, though Fry leaps in front of her, causing the stinger go completely through his body, killing him but only lightly wounding her.

Back on Earth, Leela feels responsible for Fry's death and has recurring dreams that he is still alive, all ending with him telling her to "wake up." When she begins to think she's going insane, she starts taking space bee honey to help her sleep, causing her to have another dream where Fry regenerates. Her guilt and the dreams become so intense that she decides to take enough of the space bee honey to make her sleep forever, though dream-Fry tells her that the Leela he knows would never give up like that and that he loves her.

Leela eventually wakes up to find herself in a hospital bed, with a disheveled and weeping Fry by her bed, asking her to wake up. She is wearing his red jacket and it is revealed that Fry actually survived the sting of the space bee, and it was Leela who took the brunt of the damage since the venom was released into her body. The venom put her into a coma that doctors said would be irreversible, and the events she perceived after the mission were a dream. For two weeks Fry had been at her bed side talking to her in an attempt to get her to wake from her coma. The episode ends with Fry and Leela embracing each other tightly, with Leela whispering (over the closing credits): "You could really use a shower", to which Fry responds: "You too".

This episode ties back to events in the episode "Space Pilot 3000", where the Professor produces career chips from his previous crew from an envelope labeled "Contents of space wasp's stomach." This episode is somewhat contradictory to this information as the crew is shown to have been killed by space bees rather than a space wasp. In the episode commentary Patric Verrone admits that they were aware of this inconsistency at the time and that he did research to find a plausible explanation for it. As his search was unsuccessful he states that "we made liars out of the pilot"^[1]. In the apartment scene immediately after the funeral, a grief-stricken Leela decides to try out the space bee honey to help her sleep and takes out a commemorative spoon depicting Fry as Emperor of Trisol, an event from the episode "My Three Suns", from a box containing significant memories of Fry. Other "memories" include a souvenir magnet purchased by Fry on the Moon ("The Series Has Landed"), Fry's first mustache ("The Cryonic Woman") a can of π-in-1 oil ("Insane in the Mainframe"), a candy heart reading "U Leave Me Breathless" ("Love and Rocket") and a flower given to her by Fry in "The Why of Fry".

Father Changstein-El-Gamal delivers the eulogy at Fry's funeral

At the funeral service held at Orbiting Meadows (which the crew previously visited in "The Luck of the Fryrish") many characters from past episodes appear. Father Changstein-El-Gamal of the "First Amalgamated Church" presides over the funeral and Terry from Applied Cryogenics cries out, "Farewell from the World of Tomorrow!", a callback to his welcome to Fry in the first episode. Scruffy also appears playing the bagpipe. Many of the women that Fry had previously been romantically linked with attend the funeral and sit in a group together. In attendance are Kug from "Amazon Women in the Mood", Petunia ("Put Your Head on My Shoulders"), Morgan Proctor ("How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back"), his ex-girlfriend Michelle ("The Cryonic Woman"), an unnamed 21st century woman ("Love's Labours Lost in Space") and the "radiator woman from the radiator planet" ("Lesser of Two Evils"), who is actually just a normal radiator. Other recognizable characters also in attendance are Leo and Inez Wong, the monkey Guenter who was Fry's roommate in "Mars University", two Trisolians ("My Three Suns"), two Neptunian elves ("A Tale of Two Santas"), Sal, two Cygnoids ("A Leela of Her Own"), Chester A. Arthur's head ("The Day the Earth Stood Stupid") and the still-fossilized Seymour ("Jurassic Bark").

The idea from the episode was originally inspired by an idea to kill off one of the characters and the story came together in a matter of hours after that.^[1] At one point in the episode, Leela is crying and takes a tissue to dry her eye. However, when she does this, she tears the tissue in half. The audio commentary notes that many people believed this was because Leela has only one eye. However, the joke was originally an inside joke referring to when the writers were all sick in the writer's room and saved tissues by tearing them in half.^[1]

This episode was nominated for an Emmy in 2003 for Outstanding Animated Program (For Programming Less Than One Hour).^[2] Writer Patric Verrone was also nominated for an Annie Award for "Writing in an Animated Television Production".^[3] In 2006 this episode was named by IGN as number 24 in their list of the 25 best episodes of Futurama, the episode was included in the list because of its advancement of the relationship between Fry and Leela.^[4] This episode is one of four featured in the Monster Robot Maniac Fun Collection, indicating it is one of Matt Groening's four favorite episodes.^[5]

• The ejection of Fry's casket into space, accompanied by Scruffy playing the bagpipe mirrors the funeral scene of Spock in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, in which Scotty played the bagpipe. 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", "The 30% Iron Chef", and "I, Roommate".
• In the scene where Leela approaches Fry's coffin in space, Also Sprach Zarathustra, the theme to 2001: A Space Odyssey, is heard. When Leela looks into the casket, she sees a colourful tunnel of light, which is a reference to the Stargate sequence in 2001 when Dave Bowman enters the Monolith.
• The song "Don't Worry, Bee Happy" is a parody of and/or homage to the 1988 hit song "Don't Worry, Be Happy" by Bobby McFerrin.
• Multiple references are made to Honeycombs Cereal (for which Billy West has done some commercials.), such as the Honeycomb Hideout.
• The scene where Bender ejects the baby queen bee out of an airlock is a reference to the film Alien.
• 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 Death Star.
• This episode is similar in some ways to the episode "Goodbye" in Katey Sagal's other show, 8 Simple Rules. The episodes aired only 5 months apart.
• This episode bears similarities to the motion picture Solaris, which featured an astronaut haunted by persistent and contradictory visions of his dead wife. The source novel was written in 1961, and the original Russian film was released in 1972.
• Bender's comment, "That was the best coma I've ever seen!" may be a reference to his inability to act out being in a coma in Bender Should Not Be Allowed on TV.
• 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".
• Hermes proclaims that he is from Jamaica - The Show-Me Island, which is a reference to Missouri's state motto, "The Show-Me State."

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The Sting