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.
