How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back
Encyclopedia
"How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back" is episode eleven in season two of Futurama
. It originally aired in North America
on April 2, 2000. The title references the 1998
film and popular novel How Stella Got Her Groove Back
.
is excited because the Central Bureaucracy is conducting an inspection
the next day, and he expects to be promoted
to a Grade 35 bureaucrat. Leela hosts a poker
game with her former co-workers from the cryogenics
lab at the office that night, and Bender
cheats via the use of X-ray glasses. On the run from the other players, he takes refuge in Hermes’ office, but the other players find him, and the savage beating he receives trashes the office.
The resulting mess costs Hermes his promotion, and the inspector, Morgan Proctor, places a suicidal
Hermes (who is so emotional he cannot recite his own catchphrase, murmuring 'Sweet something of...someplace!') on paid vacation, which Hermes considered a penalty. Morgan appoints herself as an acting Planet Express bureaucrat
. Doctor Zoidberg suggests Hermes and his wife LaBarbara take a trip to Spa 5, the sauna
planet which gives him a bucket of krill
for every patient he sends there.
Morgan, who has a fetish
for slovenly men (which she explains by saying she is "surrounded by neat freaks all the time"), begins a secret affair with Fry for his messy instincts. Fry is promoted to Executive Delivery Boy, who no longer goes on actual deliveries. After Bender discovers the illicit affair and tries to blackmail
them, Morgan downloads his personality and intelligence to a floppy disk
, turning him into a mindless drone who can only say "I am Bender. Please insert girder
." She then sends the disk off to the Central Bureaucracy for filing.
At Spa 5, Hermes discovers it is in truth a forced labour camp, and he begins to use his natural managerial skills to reorganize the labor camp for efficiency, oblivious to the torment of his fellow workers (a single Australian man ends up doing all the labor). The rest of the Planet Express staff infiltrate the Central Bureaucracy in order to recover Bender’s mind. One of the many employees they encounter is a Beholder
, a Dungeons and Dragons monster, who simply hopes not to be exposed for sleeping on the job. They discover the master in-pile, which is an enormous pile of pneumatic tube
capsules, only one of which contains Bender’s brain.
The Planet Express staff is daunted by the giant pile, but Hermes and LaBarbara return from Spa 5, Hermes having regained his love of bureaucracy. In a musical number, he sorts and files everything in the pile with amazing speed, finding the disk with Bender’s brain in the last tube. He is restored to his original rank of Grade 36 by Number 1.0, the head of the Central Bureaucracy, but immediately demoted
to Grade 38 for finishing two seconds early, since bureaucrats should not finish early. Because Morgan is still in charge of Planet Express, she fires Fry for exposing her affair. However, Hermes exposes a mistake she made on her high school prom date papers, having stamped them only four times instead of the standard five. Number 1.0 promotes him to Grade 37 for this, and in turn, orders his assistants to get the papers needed to have Morgan taken away. The Professor re-hires Hermes, but at severely reduced pay; Hermes does the same to Fry in turn, then cheerfully cuts everyone else's pay as well. Zoidberg begins to sing a song of his own, but the episode's credits appear abruptly after the first few words.
Futurama
Futurama is an American animated science fiction sitcom created by Matt Groening and developed by Groening and David X. Cohen for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series follows the adventures of a late 20th-century New York City pizza delivery boy, Philip J...
. It originally aired in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
on April 2, 2000. The title references the 1998
1998 in film
-Events:* February 14 - Sharon Stone marries Phil Bronstein.* Former child star Gary Coleman is charged with assaulting a young female bus driver at a California shopping mall.-Top grossing films:...
film and popular novel How Stella Got Her Groove Back
How Stella Got Her Groove Back
How Stella Got Her Groove Back is a 1998 romance film, directed by Kevin Rodney Sullivan. The film stars Angela Bassett, Taye Diggs, Whoopi Goldberg and Regina King. This film is an adaptation of Terry McMillan's bestselling novel by the same title...
.
Plot
Hermes ConradHermes Conrad
Hermes Conrad is a fictional character in the Futurama animated series. He is voiced by Phil LaMarr.- Appearance and personality :Born in 2959, Hermes is a grade 36 bureaucrat from Jamaica. He manages the Planet Express delivery business with responsibilities that include paying bills, giving out...
is excited because the Central Bureaucracy is conducting an inspection
Inspection
An inspection is, most generally, an organized examination or formal evaluation exercise. In engineering activities inspection involves the measurements, tests, and gauges applied to certain characteristics in regard to an object or activity...
the next day, and he expects to be promoted
Promotion (rank)
A promotion is the advancement of an employee's rank or position in an organizational hierarchy system. Promotion may be an employee's reward for good performance i.e. positive appraisal...
to a Grade 35 bureaucrat. Leela hosts a poker
Poker
Poker is a family of card games that share betting rules and usually hand rankings. Poker games differ in how the cards are dealt, how hands may be formed, whether the high or low hand wins the pot in a showdown , limits on bet sizes, and how many rounds of betting are allowed.In most modern poker...
game with her former co-workers from the cryogenics
Cryonics
Cryonics is the low-temperature preservation of humans and animals who can no longer be sustained by contemporary medicine, with the hope that healing and resuscitation may be possible in the future. Cryopreservation of people or large animals is not reversible with current technology...
lab at the office that night, and Bender
Bender Bending Rodríguez
Bender Bending Rodríguez, designated Bending Unit 22, is a fictional robot character in the animated television series Futurama. He was created by series creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen and is voiced by John DiMaggio. In the series, Bender plays the role of a comic anti-hero, and is...
cheats via the use of X-ray glasses. On the run from the other players, he takes refuge in Hermes’ office, but the other players find him, and the savage beating he receives trashes the office.
The resulting mess costs Hermes his promotion, and the inspector, Morgan Proctor, places a suicidal
Jumper (suicide)
A jumper, in police and media parlance, is a person who dies by suicide by jumping from a height, or people who have jumped, then survived, often with major injuries and permanent disabilities...
Hermes (who is so emotional he cannot recite his own catchphrase, murmuring 'Sweet something of...someplace!') on paid vacation, which Hermes considered a penalty. Morgan appoints herself as an acting Planet Express bureaucrat
Bureaucrat
A bureaucrat is a member of a bureaucracy and can comprise the administration of any organization of any size, though the term usually connotes someone within an institution of a government or corporation...
. Doctor Zoidberg suggests Hermes and his wife LaBarbara take a trip to Spa 5, the sauna
Sauna
A sauna is a small room or house designed as a place to experience dry or wet heat sessions, or an establishment with one or more of these and auxiliary facilities....
planet which gives him a bucket of krill
Krill
Krill is the common name given to the order Euphausiacea of shrimp-like marine crustaceans. Also known as euphausiids, these small invertebrates are found in all oceans of the world...
for every patient he sends there.
Morgan, who has a fetish
Sexual fetishism
Sexual fetishism, or erotic fetishism, is the sexual arousal a person receives from a physical object, or from a specific situation. The object or situation of interest is called the fetish, the person a fetishist who has a fetish for that object/situation. Sexual fetishism may be regarded, e.g...
for slovenly men (which she explains by saying she is "surrounded by neat freaks all the time"), begins a secret affair with Fry for his messy instincts. Fry is promoted to Executive Delivery Boy, who no longer goes on actual deliveries. After Bender discovers the illicit affair and tries to blackmail
Blackmail
In common usage, blackmail is a crime involving threats to reveal substantially true or false information about a person to the public, a family member, or associates unless a demand is met. It may be defined as coercion involving threats of physical harm, threat of criminal prosecution, or threats...
them, Morgan downloads his personality and intelligence to a floppy disk
Floppy disk
A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles...
, turning him into a mindless drone who can only say "I am Bender. Please insert girder
Girder
A girder is a support beam used in construction. Girders often have an I-beam cross section for strength, but may also have a box shape, Z shape or other forms. Girder is the term used to denote the main horizontal support of a structure which supports smaller beams...
." She then sends the disk off to the Central Bureaucracy for filing.
At Spa 5, Hermes discovers it is in truth a forced labour camp, and he begins to use his natural managerial skills to reorganize the labor camp for efficiency, oblivious to the torment of his fellow workers (a single Australian man ends up doing all the labor). The rest of the Planet Express staff infiltrate the Central Bureaucracy in order to recover Bender’s mind. One of the many employees they encounter is a Beholder
Beholder
The beholder is a fictional monster in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. It resembles a floating orb of flesh with a large mouth, single central eye, and lots of smaller eyestalks on top with deadly magical powers....
, a Dungeons and Dragons monster, who simply hopes not to be exposed for sleeping on the job. They discover the master in-pile, which is an enormous pile of pneumatic tube
Pneumatic tube
Pneumatic tubes are systems in which cylindrical containers are propelled through a network of tubes by compressed air or by partial vacuum...
capsules, only one of which contains Bender’s brain.
The Planet Express staff is daunted by the giant pile, but Hermes and LaBarbara return from Spa 5, Hermes having regained his love of bureaucracy. In a musical number, he sorts and files everything in the pile with amazing speed, finding the disk with Bender’s brain in the last tube. He is restored to his original rank of Grade 36 by Number 1.0, the head of the Central Bureaucracy, but immediately demoted
Demotion
A demotion is a reduction in an employee's rank or job title within the organizational hierarchy of a company, public service department, or other body. A demotion may also lead to the loss of other privileges associated with a more senior rank and/or a reduction in salary or benefits...
to Grade 38 for finishing two seconds early, since bureaucrats should not finish early. Because Morgan is still in charge of Planet Express, she fires Fry for exposing her affair. However, Hermes exposes a mistake she made on her high school prom date papers, having stamped them only four times instead of the standard five. Number 1.0 promotes him to Grade 37 for this, and in turn, orders his assistants to get the papers needed to have Morgan taken away. The Professor re-hires Hermes, but at severely reduced pay; Hermes does the same to Fry in turn, then cheerfully cuts everyone else's pay as well. Zoidberg begins to sing a song of his own, but the episode's credits appear abruptly after the first few words.
Broadcast and reception
In its initial airing, the episode placed 94th in the Nielsen ratings for primetime shows for the week of March 27 - April 2, 2000.Continuity
- Leela's old co-workers from "Space Pilot 3000Space Pilot 3000"Space Pilot 3000" is the pilot episode of Futurama, which originally aired in North America on March 28, 1999 on Fox. The episode focuses on the cryogenic freezing of the series protagonist, Philip J. Fry, and the events when he awakens 1,000 years in the future...
" appear. - Leela's old boss says his wife does not know he has a job; however, "Space Pilot 3000" establishes that jobs are required by law.
- The Australian man who Hermes forced to do all the work in Spa 5 is later seen as a slave helping to build the SphinxSphinxA sphinx is a mythical creature with a lion's body and a human head or a cat head.The sphinx, in Greek tradition, has the haunches of a lion, the wings of a great bird, and the face of a woman. She is mythicised as treacherous and merciless...
in the episode "A Pharaoh to RememberA Pharaoh to Remember"A Pharaoh to Remember" is episode seventeen of Futuramas third season. It originally aired on March 10, 2002.-Plot:After a pool heist Bender committed is attributed to a human felon, Bender grows concerned that he will be doomed to obscurity, and sets off to rectify the situation...
" and mining diamonds in "Lrrreconcilable NdndifferencesLrrreconcilable Ndndifferences"Lrrreconcilable Ndndifferences" is the eleventh episode of the sixth season of the animated sitcom, Futurama and is the 99th episode in production and broadcast order. It aired on Comedy Central on August 26, 2010. In the episode, the ruler of the planet Omicron Persei 8, Lrrr experiences...
". - In the film Bender's Big ScoreFuturama: Bender's Big ScoreFuturama: Bender's Big Score is an Annie Award-winning direct-to-video film based on the animated series Futurama. It was released in the United States on November 27, 2007. Bender's Big Score, along with the three follow-up films, comprise season five of Futurama, with each film being separated...
, which takes place seven years after the events of "Requisitioned," Hermes has been promoted to Grade 34 but in "Lethal InspectionLethal Inspection"Lethal Inspection" is the sixth episode of the sixth season of the animated sitcom, Futurama, and originally aired on July 22, 2010 on Comedy Central. In the episode Bender learns that he suffers from a terminal manufacturing defect, effectively rendering him mortal...
", which takes place 3 years after the events of the film, was shown to have been demoted to Grade 36, the grade Hermes had held before the events of "Requisitioned".
Production notes
- When Hermes is attempting to sort the master pile, he is told that he has only four minutes. He musically completes the task in just under a minute and a half (assuming the song takes place in real-time). He is told that he has finished two seconds early (something a good bureaucrat apparently never does).
Cultural references to other works
- In the DVD audio commentary, Matt GroeningMatt GroeningMatthew Abram "Matt" Groening is an American cartoonist, screenwriter, and producer. He is the creator of the comic strip Life in Hell as well as two successful television series, The Simpsons and Futurama....
and others mention Terry GilliamTerry GilliamTerrence Vance "Terry" Gilliam is an American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Gilliam is also known for directing several films, including Brazil , The Adventures of Baron Munchausen , The Fisher King , and 12 Monkeys...
's film BrazilBrazil (film)Brazil is a 1985 British science fiction fantasy/black comedy film directed by Terry Gilliam. It was written by Gilliam, Charles McKeown, and Tom Stoppard and stars Jonathan Pryce. The film also features Robert De Niro, Kim Greist, Michael Palin, Katherine Helmond, Bob Hoskins, and Ian Holm...
having an influence over the depiction of the Central Bureaucracy. - When Dr. Zoidberg is announcing his hand in the poker game he says he has "three human females, a number, and a king giving himself brain surgery." The king giving itself brain surgery is a reference to the 'Suicide King.' The nickname often given to the 'King of Hearts' because on a standard pack of cards he is pictured as if driving a sword into his own head.
External links
- How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back at The Infosphere.