"The Futurama Holiday Spectacular" (originally titled "Holiday Val-U-Pak") is the third Christmas-themed episode of the 20th Century Fox animated series Futurama, and the only Christmas-themed episode to premiere during the series' run on Comedy Central.
Synopsis[]
The episode features three holiday-themed segments, following the same structure as the episodes "Anthology of Interest I" and "Anthology of Interest II". However, unlike those episodes, this episode does not feature the What If Machine. The three segments are based around Christmas Xmas, Kwanzaa and Robanukah (the holiday Bender made up to get out of work in the episode "Fear of a Bot Planet"). Coolio reprised his guest-starring role of Kwanzaabot in the Kwanzaa segment, and Al Gore makes an appearance as himself in a wrap-around segment where he introduces each story. The episode had an environmental theme and has musical numbers in each segment.
In each story, all the earthlings die, with exceptions made for the Robanukah segment, in which Bender survives, and the Kwanzaa segment, in which only the Planet Express crew is shown to die. This kind of disregard of continuity was never before experienced in Futurama, except in the stories in the "Anthology of Interest" episodes, from which this episode also takes the three-stories format.
First story (Xmas)[]
Fry is gloomy because he still didn't understand the Xmas holiday, therefore Santa explains it in a song. The crew realizes they do not own a pine tree, as Xmas tradition would require they want to get one. Pine trees are extinct, therefore they go to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, right next to the Germ Welfare Repository. They then are able to obtain a seed for the pine tree, which appears to be contaminated with germs, and Fry plants it in front of the Planet Express Building. One year later it is grown not more than six feet, and Nixon steals it in order to replant it in front of the white house to celebrate the annual whitehouse xmas tree lighting. And right after the lighting, the tree starts growing huge and shooting pinecones on the ground, reforestating the world. This brings very high levels of oxygen. This is when Bender says: "I don't recall doing anything for a while, but I still think I deserve a smoke!" When he lights his cigar, the oxygen in the air catches on fire transforming the whole earth in a ball of fire.
Second story (Robanukah)[]
Bender is upset because everyone gets exited about holidays but not about Robanukah. When he is accused to have invented Robanukah himself just to skip days of work, he makes up a song in which he describes Robanukah traditions. One of these is to watch two fem-bots wrestling in petroleum oil. Unfortunately there is no petroleum left on earth. Professor Farnsworth states there should be some petroleum deep down towards the center of the earth. They therefore modify the Planet Express Ship in order to dig through ground. They finally go too deep and all the crew but Bender is crushed. Bender then sits singing "Bender is great" for 500 million years. When he looks back to the crew he finds out they finally turned into petroleum oil ("I thought they were selfish, but in the end, it turns out it was I that thought they were selfish!"), so he climbs back to surface and celebrates Robanukah with the two fem-bots wrestling in lots of petroleum oil, generated from the whole population of earth being extinct, and the planet being now a desert.
Third story (Kwanzaa)[]
The crew gathers at Hermes' home to celebrate Kwanzaa. This is when they want to know more about Kwanzaa, so Kwanzaabot sings a song about it and its traditions. They therefore find out they have to light some candles, which have to be made 100% out of bee wax. All bees on earth are attacked by parasites and cannot produce any bee wax. Fry then suggests to go on the planet of the space bees, and so they do. Once there they see how all the bees are crushing against walls and floors and exploding. The queen bee then explains that they have been attacked by parasites themselves, and can't do anything but just talk smack to each other. Hermes wants to stop this bee on bee conflict and decides to africanamericanize the space bees. He tells them about the values of Kwanzaa, about unity. Hermes' speech about Kwanzaa brings back the Kwanzaa spirit, which kills all the parasites. Now the space bees are united again and turn against the crew, killing Kwanzaabot and making them into candles to celebrate Kwanzaa.
Availability[]
The episode was made available on the Futurama: Volume Five DVD set, released on December 21, 2010.
Cast[]
See also[]
External links[]
- Futurama Wiki: The Futurama Holiday Spectacular
- "The Futurama Holiday Spectacular" at the Internet Movie Database
- "The Futurama Holiday Spectacular" recap at TV Tropes