Big Reveals and Damage to our Jaws

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The best part about a long-running series is the Big Reveal, a turn that is so shocking, so game changing, people will slap you across the face if you spoil it for them. Just a scant few centuries ago, dropping an un-alerted spoiler was grounds for a duel. Little known fact: the famous Hamilton-Burr duel began when Alexander Hamilton gave away the ending of Catherine Cuthbertson's novel The Romance of the Pyrenees before Aaron Burr got a chance to finish it. (Spoiler alert, I may have made that last bit up.)

Sometimes, though, the Big Reveal does not cause our jaws to succumb to gravity. In fact, gravity itself is so annoyed by the plot development that it ceases to function around our jaw area, causing it, in fact, to rise. If you ever found yourself involuntarily grinding your teeth after finding out, I don't know, that as a boy Darth Vader built C-3PO, that's gravity expressing its disdain. (Seriously, don't annoy gravity. I don't think it likes us.)

The Heart of Futurama

There you are, minding your own business, watching a show about a nitwit from the Twentieth-Century stuck in the future. He's got a beer-guzzling robot as his best friend and a crush on a cyclops. This show created by Matt Groening, who also gave us The Simpsons, is a clever, satirical send up of the present vis-a-vis the future. It's a typical fun episode, you're having a laugh, and faster than Elzar can misfire a spice weasel into your eye, the show takes an emotional turn. It floors you, you weren't expecting it, and chances are, eight to ten years later, you're still talking about it. Well, I am, but I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Find a group of Futurama fans, get them talking about favorite episodes, particularly the ones from the hallowed 1999-2003 years, and four inevitably come up. These are the four episodes that go right for that four-chambered organ you're slowly destroying with your diet. (In your defense, putting cheese and bacon on everything really is awesome.) Three of the episodes warm your heart, and when you're having a day in which Kill All Humans seems like a good action plan, these episodes will quickly change your attitude to I Must Hug a Human Right Now!

The fourth? This one stabs your heart, steals its wallet, and leaves it in a gutter to die. And yes, you know the episode I'm talking about, but we'll get to that shortly.