| Futurama episode | |
| "Jurassic Bark" | |
 Seymour awaiting Fry's return |
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| Episode no. | 61 |
|---|---|
| Prod. code | 4ACV07 |
| Airdate | November 17, 2002 |
| Writer(s) | Eric Kaplan |
| Director | Swinton O. Scott III |
| Opening subtitle | not Affiliated With Futurama Brass Knuckle Co. |
| Opening cartoon | Hiss and Make Up in Merrie Melodies |
| Guest star(s) | Tom Kenny |
| Season 4 January 2002 – August 2003 |
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| List of all Futurama episodes... | |
"Jurassic Bark" is the seventh episode of season four of the television series Futurama, airing November 17, 2002. It was nominated for an Emmy Award, but lost to The Simpsons episode "Three Gays of the Condo".[1]
Contents |
Plot
When Fry takes Bender to a museum exhibit, he is shocked to find a fossilized dog on display, which he recognizes as his pet from the 20th century, Seymour. For three days he protests in front of the museum by dancing to "The Hustle" by Van Mccoy, demanding they give him Seymour's body, which proves successful. Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth then examines Seymour's body, and concludes that, due to his unusually rapid fossilization, a DNA sample can be made to produce a clone, and it would even be possible to recreate Seymour's personality and memory.
Fry begins to prepare for the dog and Bender becomes jealous, especially when Fry refers to Seymour as "my best friend". Just when the professor is ready to clone Seymour, Bender arrives. Angry that Fry will not spend time with him, he grabs the fossil and throws it in a pit of lava, believing that destroying it will restore his friendship with Fry.
Fry is furious at Bender and extremely upset at having lost Seymour. Bender realizes how Fry could love an inferior creature and apologizes for what he did. The professor explains that the fossil may not have instantly melted, as it was made of dolomite. With this in mind, Bender, claiming to be partly made from dolomite, dives into the lava and recovers the fossil.
The professor begins the cloning process and his computer informs him that Seymour died at the age of 15, meaning he lived for twelve years after Fry was frozen. Fry has the cloning process aborted, believing that Seymour will have moved on with his life and forgotten about him. A flashback then shows that Seymour faithfully obeyed Fry's last command, to wait for him in front of Panucci's Pizza until he came back from his delivery run on December 31, 1999. He stays there as the years pass and he, the pizzeria, and Mr. Panucci begin to show their age; in the final shot, Seymour lies down and closes his eyes.[2]
Production
According to the DVD commentary, the last part of the episode where Seymour is waiting outside on the sidewalk was originally set to "Gayane's Adagio" from Aram Khachaturian's Gayaneh ballet suite, famously used in the sequence introducing the Discovery spacecraft in 2001: A Space Odyssey, but was replaced with the song "I Will Wait For You" from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg as sung by Connie Francis, which writer Eric Kaplan's grandparents sang and played on the piano while he was a child.
According to the DVD commentary, the original idea for the episode was to have Fry's mother fossilized instead of Seymour, but this idea was scrapped after it was thought to be too upsetting to the audience.
Broadcast and reception
In its initial airing, the episode received a Nielsen rating of 4.2/5, placing it 93rd among primetime shows for the week of November 11-17, 2002.[3] In 2006 IGN ranked this episode #8 in their list of the top 25 Futurama episodes, with critic Dan Iverson remarking that the climax was "one of the saddest endings to a television program that I have ever seen".[4]
Continuity
- When Fry delivers the pizza to the cryogenic lab, as he puts the pizza on the desk you can see Nibbler's third eye in the garbage can and also his shadow when the floor is shown. This is foreshadowing Nibbler's involvement in freezing Fry until 3000.
- Seymour's fate is shown in the DVD movie Bender's Big Score. After Fry was frozen, a temporal double of Fry had returned to the past and resumed his old lifestyle living above Panucci's. It is revealed that Seymour's rapid standing fossilization — unexplained in the episode itself — is a result of an explosion overcoming him; Bender, who was sent back in time to kill Fry, blew up the apartment of Fry's temporal double above Panucci's Pizza. It took Bender 12 years to track down Fry, putting the explosion of Panucci's Pizza 12 years after Fry got frozen and correlating with the age of Seymour's death revealed in "Jurassic Bark".
See also
- Argos (dog) - Odysseus' faithful dog in The Odyssey who waited over twenty years to see his master again
- Hachikō - a real life dog who searched for his dead owner for years after his master had died
- Greyfriars Bobby - another real life dog who stayed by his masters grave for fourteen years
- Shep (American dog) - a real life dog whose master's casket was taken away by train and met every train for six years until his death
References
- ^ Azrai, Ahmad (2004-10-31). "Farewell to the funny future". http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-14221036_ITM. Retrieved 2008-01-10.
- ^ Seymour's fate was later revealed in Futurama: Bender's Big Score.
- ^ "Ratings watch (table breaks down television ratings for week of Nov. 11-17)". Broadcasting & Cable (Reed Business Information). 2002-11-25. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-94892981.html. Retrieved 2009-03-07.
- ^ Dan Iverson (2006-07-07). "Top 25 Futurama Episodes". http://tv.ign.com/articles/716/716663p2.html. Retrieved 2007-09-21.
External links
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