Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles

"Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles"
Futurama episode
File:Futurama ep63.jpg
Episode no.	Season four
Directed by	Bret Haaland
Written by	Jeff Westbrook
Original air date	March 302003
Episode features
Opening cartoon	unknown

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

Summary

Template:Spoiler Professor Farnsworth goes after his escaped gargoyle, Pazuzu. Unfortunately, he drives slowly in traffic, incinerates a sign and blows up a station with the high beams. Giving up on (or perhaps 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 aging 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 backfires and the crew (except Leela, who wanted to remain a teenager) begins to grow even 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. At one point, Leela is unable to save Zoidberg (or who the rest of the crew assumes is Zoidberg), who ages rapidly, dies and crumbles to dust in the fountain's whirlpool - but Zoidberg, to the crew's relief, turns up moments later and points out that the Decapodian who died in the fountain was an offshoot from his coral-like first-stage form. 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. Template:Endspoiler

Quotes

• Leela: For Heaven's Gate, Professor, this ship goes 99% light speed. Why are we going 35 miles an hour?
  Professor Farnsworth: Because we're in a hurry, that's why!
• Waitress: Sir, this card is expired.
  Professor Farnsworth: But it's good for a lifetime!
  Waitress: Well, yours expired.
• Professor Farnsworth: Oh, I don't have time for this! I have to go buy a single piece of fruit with a coupon, and then return it, making people wait behind me while I complain!
• Bender: Like everything else in life, pumping is just a primitive degenerate form of bending.
• Professor Farnsworth: Fifty-three years old! Oooh, now I'll need a fake ID to rent ultraporn.
• Leela: When I was an orphan all I wanted was to be able to grow up with my mom and dad. And now, thanks to being hurled backwards through time...
  Professor: That's not what happened! Shut up and go live with your parents!
• Turanga Morris: Fine, sweetikins, we'll be the strictest parents ever. Now let's have some tequila to celebrate!
  Leela: Dad! I'm underage!
  Turanga Morris: Oh, right. Here's a silly straw.
• Professor Farnsworth: (Toilet flushes) The devil take this predictable colon!
• Turanga Morris: No beer until you finish your tequila!
• Professor Farnsworth: We'll all keep getting younger and younger until we suffer a fate worse than death, pre-life! (all gasp) Then death.
• Bender: When I grow up, I wanna be a steam shovel!
• Leela: It says here the Fountain of Aging is located just past Teddy Bear Junction.
  Professor Farnsworth: Ah, Teddy Bear Junction. The worst scum hole in the galaxy...
• Professor Farnsworth: With my last breath, I curse Zoidberg!

Trivia

• 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.
• Pazuzu speaks French, previously described as a dead language.
• This is arguably the first episode in which Leela dates Fry.

References

• 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.
• The chroniton-eating bacteria are visually similar to Pac-Man.
• The space station the Professor inadvertently destroys is 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, chrinoid, starfish, sea urchin, anglerfish, sea lamprey, clam, horshoe crab and a squid.
• The film playing at the underground mutant movie theater is The Fiddler Way Below the Roof, a parody of The Fiddler on the Roof.
• 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.