Three Hundred Big Boys

Infobox Futurama episode
episode_name = Three Hundred Big Boys
episode_no = 70
prod_code = 4ACV16
airdate = June 15, 2003
country = USA
writer = Eric Kaplan
director = Swinton O. Scott III
opening_subtitle = Voted "Best"
opening_cartoon = Unknown
guest_star = Roseanne Barr|

caption = Richard Nixon distributes a $300 tax refund.
season = four

“Three Hundred Big Boys” is the sixteenth episode of season four of "Futurama", which aired June 15, 2003.

Plot summary

Zapp Brannigan leads a successful attack on Tarantulon VI, claiming a huge prize of silken artworks. Earth President Richard Nixon gives the riches away to the citizens of Earth in the form of a three hundred dollar tax rebate (in the form of the $300 “Tricky-Dick Fun Bill”). The Planet Express staff plot what they’re going to spend their money on. Leela plans to swim with a whale, while Fry decides to purchase (and drink) one hundred cups of coffee. Dr. Zoidberg sets off to live like a rich man. Scruffy the Janitor decides to get an expensive haircut. Bender ponders buying one three hundred dollar hookerbot or three hundred one dollar hookerbots. Zapp Brannigan calls up Leela, and invites the whole staff to the reception displaying the silk treasures.

Later, Kif rents a paddle plane, and he and Amy go for a flight. Amy shows she has purchased a talking tattoo (which repeatedly insults and mocks Kif, to her irritation). On the ground, Professor Farnsworth buys one pound of stem cells and proceeds to smear the goo on his face, which causes a skin-deep (temporary) anti-aging effect. Across the street, Bender spies a ten thousand dollar cigar at a tobacco shop. Unable to afford it, he instead buys a $300 set of burglar’s tools at the same shop. Hermes purchases a pair of "Bamboo Boogie Boots" (boots that turn into bamboo stilts) for his son Dwight. When Dwight rejects the gift, Hermes puts the boots on; they instantly malfunction, and Hermes becomes an out-of-control menace, with Dwight hanging on too.

Professor Farnsworth, now looking 135 years younger, meets a twenty-year-old woman, and they hit it off. Leela purchases a ticket for her swim with a whale named Mushu, while Fry continues on his quest for coffee at the aquarium’s coffee stand. As Kif and Amy continue their flight, Kif presents her with a watch that tells the time where both of them are and is powered by love (also by being wound). They fly over the aquarium and when Amy waves to Leela and Fry, the watch falls and is swallowed by Mushu. Her talking tattoo plans to tell Amy’s other tattoos. That night, Bender uses his new burglar’s tools to steal the Grand Cigar, unaware that he is being videotaped; meanwhile, Hermes has fallen asleep in his still-malfunctioning stilts.

Back at the office, Zoidberg remembers how he had eaten another watch Kif had given Amy and that the solution was to induce vomiting. Scruffy devises a plan to make the whale throw up the watch: Leela will feed rotten fish from Elzar’s to Mushu when she goes for her scheduled swim, which will cause him to vomit up the watch. The next day, Bender tells an over-caffeinated Fry that he doesn't want to light his stolen cigar until he is at Zapp Brannigan's party and can blow smoke into the faces of the "fancy-pantses" there; he reasons that the cigar is too good for its smoke to be wasted on regular people. Meanwhile, Leela arrives at the aquarium with her swimsuit stuffed with rotten fish, and Mushu eats both the fish and the suit. Later, at the aquarium’s whale show, Mushu vomits up the watch. Kif dives in and recovers the watch, but is arrested for stealing aquarium property.

That night everyone attends the silk gala. Kif manages to get himself released when he returns the ambergris (defined for him by a Roseanne Barr hologram in the whale biologist's watch) in which he was covered when he jumped into Mushu’s pool of regurgitation, and heads to the party. At the party, Bender has lit the cigar and is blowing its smoke into the faces of everybody there. As Professor Farnsworth is making out with his new girlfriend under a royal spider robe, his stem cells reject his body and crawl off (This occurred when the clock stroke the time on the dot, more like the fairy tale, Cinderella, when the clock tower stroke midnight). After Farnsworth confesses his age, his girlfriend admits that she also used her tax refund to make herself look more attractive. She pulls a ring out of her navel and her volume rapidly increases by several times her "original" size (i.e, she seems to get fatter). Putting aside their physical problems, they confess their love for each other.

In an unexpected twist, Hermes crashes through a window, still on the Bamboo Boogie Boots and unable to control his movement. The stilts hit Bender’s lit cigar, sending it flying into a silk tapestry. As the flames spread rapidly through the room, an agitated Fry, shaking violently from his massive caffeine intake, heads for the buffet table and drinks his hundredth cup of coffee. Fry enters a caffeine-induced state of hyperspeed where he perceives everything else as moving so slowly that it appears to be standing still. Now seeming strangely calm and peaceful, he rescues everyone at incredible speed (which for him appears to be a leisurely pace) and puts out the fire.

The rescued partiers find themselves in an alley behind the gallery where Fry left them, confused but unharmed. There they find Zoidberg, who, having been unable to make himself feel rich, has bought a large meal for a group of hobos. Everybody joins in; the surplus has burned and is gone; and Bender joyfully gets closure to his plot line by being beaten by the police.

Purchases

* Fry: 100 cups of coffee which helps him save everybody from the gallery fire.
* Leela: A pass to swim with Mushu the Whale.
* Bender: $300 burglar's tools (which he uses to steal a $10,000 cigar from the very same store which sold him the tools.)
* Farnsworth: Stem cells to make him look younger.
* Hermes: Spent $299.99 on "Bamboo Boogie Boots" as a gift for Dwight. He gave the last penny to Dwight to invest on his own; Dwight used it to buy 5 shares of Amazon.com stock (seen by Hermes as a risky investment).
* Zoidberg: After trying different things (jewels, golf, food at Elzar’s) he buys turkey dogs for some hobos.
* Amy: A Satan-like talking tattoo.
* Scruffy: A $300 haircut.
* Zapp: A medal (he had it specially minted).
* Kif: Rents a pedal plane for him and Amy, and buys a watch with a picture of him and her that displays the time wherever the both of them are.
* Mom: She blows her nose contemptuously on hers.
* Farnsworth’s girlfriend: A belly button ring that, when worn, makes her thin.
* Crack Addict: After leaving a crack house, he uses his $300 to buy from a "crack mansion".
* Randy (In a deleted scene): He and his boyfriend chuck their money into the fireplace, deciding love is more important than money.
* Hattie (In a deleted scene): A giraffe neck.

Cultural references

* As Fry drinks more and more coffee, the effects of the caffeine make him increasingly agitated until his hundredth cup, which causes him to relax into a calm Zen-like state, but allows him to move at many times normal speed, a film and animation technique sometimes referred to as bullet time similar to Clark Kent on Smallville, Peter Parker in Spider-Man, or Hammy in Over the Hedge. The slow moving Hummingbird in the background is reference to , where Picard is shown in a similar scene.
* Nixon’s line, “The loot, the loot, the loot is on fire!” is a parody of the 1985 dance hit “The Roof Is on Fire” by Rock Master Scott & the Dynamic Three. The song’s chorus includes the frequently referenced line, “The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire.”
* The lab name and the sign reading “Geneworks S.K.G.” are a parody of the movie company DreamWorks.
* Nixon’s consultation of “voodoo economists” is a reference to the Ronald Reagan-era fiscal policy of supply-side economics that was derided by critics as “voodoo economics”.
* The scene in which Bender steals the $10,000 cigar is based on a similar scene from the film .
* The ingredients of the perfume Kif was going to make for Amy were Lilac, Jasmine, and Franken Berry.
* When Zoidberg encounters the bums in the alley, they ask him to move aside so they can search for food in a garbage can, saying "Hungry hungry hobos", a reference to the game Hungry Hungry Hippos.
* One of the brands of cigars in the cigar store is "The Royal Kooparillo", a play on C. Everett Koop.
* Amy's talking tattoo calls Kif Gordon Gekko, a reference to the character from "Wall Street".
* At the end of the episode, Nixon says the line "The entire surplus has gone! What a McGovern I've been". This is a reference to George McGovern, his opponent in the 1972 presidential election.
* Kif is imprisoned in Commander Riker's Island, a play on Commander Riker and Rikers Island.
* According to the DVD commentary, this episode was partially inspired by the "Simpsons" episode "22 Short Films About Springfield" (which has a storyline consisting of overlapping vignettes).
* Hermes malfunctioning stilt boots are a loose reference to The Wrong Trousers.
* The rings that Zoidberg tries on his facial tentacles are modeled after some of the rings of the Marvel Comics' villain The Mandarin.

Production notes

* The idea for this episode came from the 2001 United States tax rebate.

Continuity

* When Leela walks through Elzar's kitchen there is a peacock cooking in a pot. In "The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings", Fry mentions that peacocks are not eaten raw in the future.
* Professor Farnsworth seems to have changed his position on being old since "Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles", in which he rejected attempts to make him younger, complained about having a "predictable colon", and rejoiced at the end when he turned out to be even older than when he started.