Futurama Season 6 Episode 2 begins with a back and white TV series clip featuring cheap special effects and starring Zapp Brannigan and an actress made up to look like a smitten Leela (complete with fake Cyclops eye), but for once Zapp is not Leela’s biggest danger; a device called the V-GINY is. So what was the point of one of Zapp Brannigan’s ‘Transcredible Exploits’ scenes, and why would the V-GINY want to destroy the Earth?
Futurama Season 6 Episode 2: Zapp Brannigan Doesn’t Dream of Electric Sheep; He Dreams of Campy Black-and-White Sci-Fi Fantasies
Apparently Zapp Brannigan’s pea brain doesn’t even allow him to dream in color, as the space captain awakens from his ‘Transcredible Exploits’ where he was wooing Leela to discover that he was actually making out with a pillow. He had been summoned by Nixon’s head to his secret lair (using his handprint that matches that of Mrs. Eisenhower to gain entrance) and advised of a deadly device then called a death sphere, capable of erasing planets like 18 minutes of incriminating tape. And who better to help destroy the death sphere? Good news, everyone! There’s a crazy Professor whose crazy invention might just be able to stop it.
Futurama Season 6 Episode 2: Entering the V-GINY
And so the Professor reveals his latest invention, a tiny ship with a cloaking device that can be used to enter the death sphere’s only weak spot in order to destroy it (sound familiar?). The Professor identifies letters on the death sphere that spell “V-GINY”, which he states are a mashup of letters from the Air Force’s Flying Destiny satellite and the V-Chip censoring satellite (the two satellites collided and merged to form the deadly device). Leela and Zapp Brannigan end up boarding the Professor’s tiny invisible ship in a rather awkward-looking position, and head into a hole in the V-GINY in order to destroy it. Unfortunately, they just find themselves in a room full of TV screens before they are detected and forced to flee after a black substance is shot at them.
Futurama Season 6 Episode 2: In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela
Unforunately, their ship crash lands on a beautiful planet resembling the Garden of Eden. Leela awakens to find herself pinned under a tree branch, while Zapp Brannigan seems to be treating her in a much more considerate and kind manner than usual (is it the strange planet’s atmosphere? Did he hit his head or something?). Zapp Brannigan suggests that they both get nude to save the precious bolidy fluids they are losing due to the heat, and Leela oddly complies.
Futurama Season 6 Episode 2: Meanwhile, Back on Earth
Meanwhile, back on Earth, the Professor has learned that the V-GINY device has become a censorship satellite that is eradicating entire planets for being lewd and crude, including the nude beach planet and a planet with a name so dirty they couldn’t say it on the show. Trying to find some hope for a world full of profanity and indecency, all the Planet Express crew sees is a woman soliciting sex and a man buying it. Even the building that seems to be safe, the public library, ends up being a dirty bookstore (just remove one letter from “public” and you’ll see the wheels turning in the heads of teen vandals in possession of white spray paint). And so the Planet Express crew does what any sensible humans fearing that the planet will be destroyed do: don robes and carry signs telling everyone to repent because the end is near.
Futurama Season 6 Episode 2: Meanwhile, Back in the Garden of Eden
Things are getting weird with Leela and Zapp Brannigan, as Leela encounters a talking snake and becomes convinced that the Earth has been destroyed. She believes she and Zapp Branigann are going to have to restart the human race themselves (after which they realize how disturbing some parts of the Bible are), and a forbidden fruit, a juicy apple, falls into Leela’s hand. It’s then that she realizes that the salty “nutberries” Zapp Brannigan had so bravely procured for her earlier were actually trail mix Fry had given her for their trip, and points out that Zapp Brannigan has been urinating a lot, stating that he must be hiding a source of fluid from her (indicating that the apple from the “Tree of Knowledge” really did get the gears in her brain going). He tells her he wanted her to be a bit dehydrated and loopy to kill a bit of her hatred for him, so he didn’t tell her about the bottles of mineral water he found. But things get worse when he reveals that he’s also kept a stash of chocolate and beef jerky from Leela, being concerned about her waistline, and that the tree branch didn’t fall on her by chance; he had replaced a small stick that fell on her with a much heavier branch to make her helpless and reliant upon him.
Futurama Season 6 Episode 2: Zapp Brannigan, Terrible Man Again
Zapp Brannigan also reveals that the ship was not destroyed, and, when Fry wanders into the idyillic Garden of Eden, Zapp Brannigan’s elaborate plot is revealed: the “telescope” he used to show Leela the Earth being destroyed was composed of a toilet paper role and a simulation projector; they are actually on Earth; and all of it was part of an elaborate plot to get Leela to get it on with him.
Futurama Season 6 Episode 2: Zapp and Leela Save the Planet
The V-GINY shows up to the last pure acre of land on the planet, and we learn that the black substance the V-GINY squirts is a form of censorship fluid when the Professor’s robe flies open. The censor-crazed ship tells the humans gathered to “Heed the words of the mighty V-GINY!”. The Adam and Eve-like Leela and Brannigan have restored its faith in humanity and are forced to have intercourse to save the planet (and for once Brannigan isn’t thrilled with the prospect’ performance anxiety). And so the Transcredible Exploits of Zapp Brannigan come to an end, although I’m sure we’ll see plenty of him as attempts to destroy Earth are made again and again (looks like Futurama’s back, baby!).
