“But we can’t kill someone just because he’s hideous and annoying!” – Fry
Making intergalactic deliveries and running away from vengeful robotic pogo-sticks certainly works up an appetite.
Unfortunately, when you’re out in the open cosmos, one of the only things available is fast food. After Fry has a heart attack and Leela finds a bone in her “froot” cup, the Planet Express is blackmailed into doing something we could all stand to choose out of our own free will – eating organically. Leela, Bender, and Fry, pop over to the local farmer’s market one galaxy over, and return home with fresh and… fertile produce.
Fry, discovering that the fertile eggs still have something living inside of them, refuses to eat anything unborn, and vows to hatch an egg before eating whatever is inside of it. The egg turns out to be able to withstand the most perilous of Fry’s clumsy mistakes, though it eventually breaks while being saved from Zoidbergian consumption.
The monster, who Fry adoringly names Mr. Peppy, soon grows into a huge, acid-spitting menace. After unearthing a medieval monster manual, named after Dungeons and Dragons creator Gary Gygax, Farnsworth reveals that Mr. Peppy is actually a bone vampire, a euphemistic, asexual creature capable of killing everyone and everything with a skeleton. Thought long-extinct on its home planet, Leela gives Fry the idea to reintroduce his beloved Mr. Peppy to its natural habitat before its instincts overwhelm its vegetarian upbringing.
Fry reluctantly lets Mr. Peppy go off into the wild when they get to his planet, but before he can return home with the rest of the Planet Express, Bender’s booze radar leads the crew to a tavern filled with a bunch of space-Scottish villagers named Angus. Among the Anguses is the Handsome Major Angus MacZongo Esquire, a revered bone vampire hunter with eyes for Leela.
I thought Futurama might have abandoned any storyline having to do with Fry’s affection for Leela – we’ve been constantly reminded that Leela doesn’t feel much for Fry, and when she does, Fry usually spoils his chance by blowing up the stars, or pretending to be someone else. This episode, however, we see that the writers haven’t forgotten about the Leela and Fry dynamic, which, along with some more nods to earlier seasons, tells me the show is keeping track of where it’s been and what worked well.
MacZongo shares his history of protecting the planet’s livestock from bone-vampires and, like the rest of the tavern, appears outraged when he learns that Mr. Peppy is roaming the planet. MacZongo agrees to let the crew stay for a few days while they wait and see whether Mr Peppy proves to be a non-preachy vegetarian, but Fry doesn’t trust the rigidity of his shins. That night, a flock of sheep turns up deboned, and after Leela gets attacked by Mr. Peppy while getting some air away from Bender’s obnoxious cigar-jerk cigars, Fry decides that he has to put Mr. Peppy down, stating his love for Leela as the reason.
After a bit of Scooby-Doo-ing and a midnight forest chase, Fry and the crew discover that MacZongo has been running around in a bone vampire costume, deboning sheep in order to make everyone believe that Mr. Peppy was actually a threat. Desperate for the fame and glory that once accompanied his hunting of bone vampires, he would have slain the beast and left his life as a tavern greeter behind. Well, it turns out that Mr. Peppy has been eating sheep skeletons – but only about half of what everyone thought before MacZongo was discovered.
This turns out to be a blessing for the town of Anguses, who have had more livestock than they could manage since the extinction of bone vampires. They decide to let Mr. Peppy live – this not only balances the planet’s livestock population, but gives the Planet Express crew peace of mind knowing where their fast-food boneless sheep nuggets come from. Mr. Peppy was a rather cute monster in the end of all things – I shudder to think what vile reality lurks behind real fast food preparation.
Some stats and info about Futurama, “Fry Am The Egg Man”
TV SHOW – Futurama
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 6, Episode 22
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – FOX/Comedy Central
GENRE – Comedy, Animated Shows, Science Fiction
CREATED BY – David X. Cohen, Matt Groening
This review was originally published on TV Geek Army.