'Futurama' Season 9, Episode 8 Recap - 'Fun on a Bun'

Opening Credits Gag: "50% More Colors Than Bargain-Brand Cartoons." So that's why my eyes are bleeding.

The Highlights:

For a bit of R&R, the gang goes to Oktoberfest. But like most things in the future, Fry finds that this version is much different from the one he used to know. Gone are the days of chicken dances and getting black-out drunk; the future's Oktoberfest is the classiest festival around, a celebration of how far humans have evolved.

That word, "evolved," comes into play later.

Fry wants none of this hoity-toity new Oktoberfest, so he starts drinking the beer-spit out of spittoons, which almost makes me vomit even though this is a cartoon. His chicken dance (complete with chicken hat) is the last straw: Leela breaks up with him for acting like such a Neanderthal.

If only she knew: later, when attempting to help Bender grind up a woolly mammoth that he dug up out of the ice, Fry gets caught in the grinder. We're lead to believe that he was ground into Bender's sausage, which Leela eats. To prevent herself from going insane with the guilt, she goes to a parlor (Annie's Forgettery) and has all of her memories of Fry removed. Looks like somebody's been watching "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" recently.

As it turns out, Fry wasn't ground up. Rather, he was tossed down into an ice pit and frozen there, where he is uncovered by... some Neanderthals? Yes, it seems that they're still living there in the Neander Valley. And yes, that's really the place where they discovered Neanderthals, but no, I don't think there's still a bunch of them living down there, trapped under the ice.

Fry, having wanged his head pretty hard, has also lost his memory... and thanks to his swollen forehead, thinks he's one of the Neanderthals himself. When he learns of their mistreatment, he leads them up through the hole that he fell down and leads a rebellion against the homo sapiens... and since they're fighting Zapp Branigan, they pretty much win easily.

The Heartstrings:

While all this is happening, Fry and Leela keep seeing things that remind them of each other: the purple tail on a warthog, or an orange pumpkin, or the chicken hat. But the memories never really fall into place until the two of them go head-to-head in the battle (where did Fry learn to fight like that?) and get a good look at each other.

As is often the case with "Futurama," they find the sweetest moments out of the oddest situations. Admit it, it was pretty adorable when they saw each other and said "Orange?" "Purple?" And the synapses reconnecting and showing images from past episodes was awww-worthy too, especially since one of them was Fry's holophonor image of the two of them kissing.

Notes & Quotes:

- "Sorry Grunty, I'll have to kill you later for some other reason."

- Countess von Luftballoon. Ha. Germans.

- "Gasp! We were going out?"

- "It's tragedy on a bun."

- "Anyone dumb enough get stuck in ice probably Neanderthal."

- "I do have vague memories of people refusing to breed with me."

- "Third place? This is the greatest injustice that Germany has ever committed!"