a fully justified, prudent fool.

I kinda did a parallel between past Leela and present Leela? I don't know if that makes sense but whatever lol. The outfit she's wearing on the right is inspired by the one she wore to that zoo/resort thing when she was with Sean

A Tumblr Post Co-Authored by @ladybender (ballooncastle AO3) and @capt-t-leela (DarylWeenus AO3)

Disclaimer: We both watched this episode twice two months ago, and are writing this from memory. We also both wrote this entire post without editing - which will soon become apparent lol. The rage you see here is straight from our black hearts. Unfiltered, baby. Also, spoilers ahead for The Futurama Episode '50 Shades of Green.'

We broke this down into four sections: The Plot, Fry, Leela, Misc. Let's goooo alreadddyyyyyyyy!

THE PLOT

Leela has never cared about plants? We've literally never seen this seemingly super important to her plant (or any other) in 25 years. You know who does canonically care about plants????????? FRY. Fry is a certified Plant Dad:

Leela goes to the sewer for a week and can’t text Fry to remind him? She can’t call?  Her parents live basically right under Planet Express, she couldn’t pop up to care for the plant? It’s the year 3025 - there’s no machine that will water plants for you??

Who waters her plant when she’s away on a delivery for days or weeks at a time?

A plant that small could be taken down to the sewers? (LadyBender here, adding her two cents. A plant like that that needs water only once a week could absolutely survive more without it, it’s not gonna wither and go brown like that in a week, and usually plant that do that are dramatic ones that needs water/a lot of light a lot more regularly, but again give that bitch water and you’ll see it resuscitate. So even that detail of the episode is held together by spit lol.)

This premise is B O R I N G and L A Z Y. This is a sci-fi show. Right? right???

Does Leela want to hang out with her family? Four episodes later (Crab Splatter, which deserves its own hate post, tbh) she can’t stand spending time with them. Now she’s going down for an entire week without a break?

And why isn’t she calling or texting fry in that week??? Are they seriously no contact when they’re away from each other? her parents call her so much it’s annoying but I guess fry and Leela don’t talk on the phone or text ever? But ok soulmates.

She seems completely unfazed that Fry has no interest in joining her for xmas and new years. It seems like she expects him to try to worm out of it - this is super weird for a long term relationship to not want to spend holidays together, no? Especially when it’s also an important anniversary for them - wouldn’t they want to spend it together?

Sara again, pointing out that in the last Xmas episode they DID spend the holidays with Leela's family too, so this is inconsistent.

Both episodes were written by the same person btw…

IF this is an important anniversary for them, then why would she go to the sewers for it?

The soulmate mirror and is apparently all taboo, but then nothing happens or comes of that? It just ends up living on the wall in the apartment?

And how is everyone else already with their soulmate but not the couple that’s the emotional core of the show>!?!? 

Is Leela really not sure how she feels about Fry? Seriously? After they spent a lifetime together in Meanwhile? Is Fry still insecure about where he stands with her????

PHILIP J. FRY (EARTH. For Philip J. Fry of Hovering Squid World 97, please click here)

Does Fry know Leela at all? Leela would never want a giant, extravagant surprise party. This seems like Leela 101. I thought he was a wife guy whose special interest is his wife. 

We’ve also done the whole ‘please stop doing grand romantic gestures, and show up for me consistently on the day to day.’ it’s been done. 

And why would fry make it such a big ass gesture when Leela might not like it, when on other occasions that were important (leela’s birthday in TLPJF) he scaled back and offered her a lunch and then dinner just the two of them. AND pointing out the message leela herself left fry at the end of that episode: what i will remember is the time together.

^^ and in Meanwhile when she says she was never lonely with just the two of them.

Why does he pursue Branch? This is weird?????? There is literally no reason for him to do this?

Where is leela while he’s with Branch?? Why doesn’t she wonder where in the hell fry went???

the "you love me so much you would let me go" thing made no sense for the context, made leela look extra selfish and fry more like a poor wet blanket of a man. Not to mention it was done in BBS and a whole boatload of things happened in fry and leela’s relationship since then. But no let’s circle back to that this makes so much sense. Don’t you know Hulurama is this show’s victory lap?

TURANGA LEELA

"this plant is a metaphor for their relationship" completely ignoring the nice and thoughtful party Fry put together for her???? Very convenient for Leela. And then she is like "I'm going to live with my stupid parents" omg does she really hate her parents????

“Hello Philip” 😐😐😐😐😐 can we lighten up kids, she's being waaaay too cold with Fry about the mission thing, almost unjustifiably so. OVER A PLANT!!!!!!

Then when Leela left the apartment Fry grabbed and broke the plant and Leela said "wow it just keeps metaphoring". I hate it here

The entire fucking hospital scene she is looking at Branch like she wants to bang him on the hospital table. Gross. flipping from concern for fry to sex eyes with some rando is criminal.

How superficial is she? Impressed by his height, job, and alleged penis size? 

Spends the entire 6 weeks Fry is in a coma with Branch? She’s not even there when he wakes up?

This episode calls back to The Sting just to insult it and every fan who likes it. It feels like i’m being personally stabbed with that sting.

If i took a shot for every time Leela was an asshole and I'd be in a coma like fry lmao

The takeaway is basically “you’ll be my soulmate so long as I can do whatever I want to do,” which isn’t at all related to the initial conflict about the stupid plant? And is BATSHIT. 

Also who cares about whether or not this stupid technology that was banned tells them they’re soulmates?! This means NOTHING. 

Ok and also with Branch - why would her soulmate be an arborist? Trying to loosely tie into the initial conflict, but Leela has never cared about plants. If he were some sort of conservationist of endangered animals maybe????? 

Fry is back at the apartment looking at that stupid mirror and Leela comes through the door and says 'oh you're here' hello he was in a coma and he woke up and Leela didn’t know where he was????????? This is their reunion after that guy split his skull and her first words to him are ‘oh you’re here’, i need to go ballistic.

Also Fry fucking lives there too what kind of question is that

Such bullshit when she tells Fry ‘oh no that guy that i obviously wanted to bang in the hospital, who i spent so much time with while you were in a coma, after i threw a temper tantrum about a plant. that guy? Oh yeah, he’s, uh, just a friend. You’re crazy for thinking that could be anything more than a friend.” GAWD.

Turanga Leela, somehow a socially inept insufferable dork with no game who needs a chatbot friend to learn how to socialize, but also can befriend hot guy???????

This ending amounts to nothing for what they set up at the start of the episode. If anything the conflict was that Leela wanted Fry to step up and be more responsible so she could count on him, and what he did was track down a guy who had nothing to do with them, and then try to let Leela go and THAT somehow resolved things???? That was Leela's answer she needed ???? how does that tie to Fry being more responsible? isn't that the opposite? isn't that Fry stepping back???

But don’t worry guys! Fry and leela are soulmates and that mean..... nothing specific apparently 🙃 🫠

and if anyone wants to argue that this episode wasn't as bad as it could have been (welcome to the to the bottom of the floor mr bar), sure, but this episode was still 1) a stupid idea to bring to the table so late into the freela game. 2) not well executed at all. those guys had almost 4 weddings. they lived for a century alone with just the other person, how are they like this now????

MISC.

While I’m thinking about it, the jokes are not funny. 

The bank account joke?????? Do these people talk? Is fry that dumb? He doesn’t know if they have a shared bank account. 

This is also a terrible joke because it violates one of the main tenants of comedic writing (or performing) which is YES AND-ing your scene partner or setup. Where you take the setup you’re given and escalate and / or raise the stakes to make it funnier and move the story along. 

The scene in the show goes like this: Fry: I used all of the money from our joint savings account. Leela: We don’t have a joint savings account. 

First off, it’s not funny and it’s detrimental to both of their characters. It tells us that they don’t communicate, they don’t take their relationship seriously, they’re dumb, and I’m supposed to believe these two are soulmates?

Secondly, the joke denies Fry’s setup - ok so what money did he use? What’s that about? Fry says one thing and Leela says no. This ends the joke. You can’t build on this. It’s barely a joke at all. 

the “What’s USB?” “It’s what came after the fall of the USA.” (Or something along those lines, I’m paraphrasing from memory) I knew I had seen that joke on the internet before. Here’s a screenshot of a stupid meme from 2020. This joke has been floating around since at least 2020 and professional comedy writers put it in a script. 

Another joke they overexplained and ruined was the one about charlie the intern or whatever: "it was his first week on the job" / "he only had one week left from retirement" LITERALLY SAID BACK TO BACK

I kinda did a parallel between past Leela and present Leela? I don't know if that makes sense but whatever lol. The outfit she's wearing on the right is inspired by the one she wore to that zoo/resort thing when she was with Sean

I kinda did a parallel between past Leela and present Leela? I don't know if that makes sense but whatever lol. The outfit she's wearing on the right is inspired by the one she wore to that zoo/resort thing when she was with Sean

Link to fic: An Old Inhabitant of Earth

I kinda did a parallel between past Leela and present Leela? I don't know if that makes sense but whatever lol. The outfit she's wearing on the right is inspired by the one she wore to that zoo/resort thing when she was with Sean