2ACV04: RoboSanta

2ACV04: RoboSanta

Review by Haynes Lee

TV GUIDES: Fry discovers that feeling of good will and joy are not part of Christmas in Y3k, in fact Saint Nick isn't jolly at all-- he's a feared robot who torments all those dare to walk the streets on Christmas Eve. John Goodman guest-voices as Santa. Conan O'Brien also guest-voices, as himself.

GAG: Based on a true story

DYN: - the men are more immodest then the women? [shudder] - cute one-eared bunny wabbit looks like Life in Hell's Bongo? - clock at the end is in synch to the airing of the show (8:57 p.m.)

GOOFS - L.C.D. screen are flat so Fry should have had nothing to hang onto to unless it's one of those magical clocks.

SCI-FI REFERNCES - Star Trek: DS9: airlock doors look similar to ones at Planet Express - Star Trek: The Motion Picture: computer error makes space probe destory inferior life - X-Files: Scully and Mulder's much anticipated kiss interupted

YULETIDE REFERENCES - A Charlie Brown Christmas: scene of skating on the ice pond and the same music. Just last week creator Charels Schulz announced his retirement and is discontinueing the comic strip in the New Year. - Gift of the Magi: story of a husband who sells his pocketwatch to buy combs for his wife's hair while she sells her hair to a wigmaker to buy a gold chain for his pocketwatch. - Dickens' Christmas Carol: Tiny Tim - Oliver: scene of asking for more food

OTHER REFERENCES: 39 Steps (I think): man hanging onto hands of Big Ben Cool Running: true story of Jamaican bobsledders

FOLKLORE ALERT:

FALSE: The suicide rate increases significantly during the winter holiday season. http://www.snopes.com/holidays/xmas/suicide.htm

FALSE: 'Xmas' is a modern, disrespectful abbreviation of the word 'Christmas.' http://www.snopes.com/holidays/xmas/xmasabbr.htm

eof

[email] (Haynes Lee) wrote:

This was a holographic 3-D screen, not flat. We use them on my planet all the time. So it isn't a goof.

---------------------------- Weight is the result of friction between mass & gravity. My *real* .sig awaits future display technology (sent with Agent 1.5/32)

I hide my wings inside my soul, their feathers soft and dry And when the world's not looking, I take them out and fly - James Morrow - "The City of Truth"

In article , [email] wrote:

You can't hold on to a hologram an more easily than you can a liquid crystal.

They're those strange Star Trek holograms, which seem to somehow have solid mass and also show no signs of being projections of light.

Yeah, I know that it's actually a complex system of replicators and such, but it still freaks me out.

crystal.

It's just forcefields and light.

In article , "grosse" wrote:

Ben wrote, in part:

A hologram will hold you until you realize that it's just a hologram. In a cartoon, anyway.

Paul Turner wrote:

This is the "Elmer Fudd et al." principle, which reads:

If you run off a cliff and don't know you have run off a cliff, you remain at the logical extension of the surface you where running on until you realize you have nothing to stand on. Then you fall.

This is an almost universal principle in toons.

Thank you for your support.

There's a corrolary. If the toon happens to be Bugs Bunny, he is allowed to remain suspended indefinitely, without any visible means of support, simply by mentioning that he never studied Law(s of Physics).

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In article , Dave wrote:

liquid crystal.

remain at the

realize you have

No, that was the road runner, not bugs bunny. Most of bugs' physical humor included monsters or shotguns.

Ben [email] http://www.netins.net/showcase/benssite/

Nuh uh. The Road Runner made no such vociferation, as his vocabularity is limited to "me-meep". It was Bugs Bunny, most notably in the "Yosemite Sam keeps trying to get Bugs to jump from a high dive platform, but ends up repeatedly taking the dive himself" cartoon, who cited this lack of legal knowledge.

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In article , [email] wrote:

Good point. However, there were many more cartoons when Road Runner did it. He didn't say it, he held up a sign like he always did.

Ben [email] http://www.netins.net/showcase/benssite/

Ben wrote in message news:[email]...

hologram.

you

of

Physics).

humor

I wish the coyote didn't have to slowly starve to death each episode...

I think he gets by on galoshes and war-surplus cans of beans.

On Mon, 20 Dec 1999 03:15:39 GMT, [email] wrote:

didn't it make a clicking sound? So I'd figure it was something mechanical

In article ,

Maybe a wizard did it? Seriously this is a gag not a goof.

The robot's name was Tiny Tin.

Haynes Lee wrote: - Dickens' Christmas Carol: Tiny Tim Sean O'Flaherty wrote: The robot's name was Tiny Tin.

I'm pretty sure it was "Tinny Tim".

--brian

I thought it was Tinny Tim.

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Excerpts from netnews.alt.tv.futurama: 20-Dec-99 Re: 2ACV04: RoboSanta by Sean O'Flaherty@earthlin

heh ha

I didn't get this when watching the show.

[email] (Haynes Lee) writes:

The LCD clock scene was not a reference to 39 Steps but to Safety Last from 1923 starring Harold Lloyd. The "camera angles", the body movements, it's all clear.

(This is the second time they've had an LCD timer gag, right? There's something about the timing of these bits, knowing what's going to happen just a bit ahead of the actual clock, that really makes these funny to me.)

In other Other References, Bender's assembly number is famous in math circles as a cutesy, interesting number due to an anecdote in G H Hardy's book _Ramanujan_. Hardy had taken a cab to visit Ramanujan and remarked that the taxi's number, 1729, seemed so dull; Ramanujan replied it was the smallest number that could expressed as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.

--brian

Haynes Lee wrote:

I'd say that was more of a "joke" than a "mistake". Besides, not all digital clocks are LCD. Some actually *are* physical slats that move about. Not quite like depicted in the show, but... well, the one in the show was a *gag*.

Oh come now. That doesn't mean it's making a *reference* to X-Files. It could just as easily be a reference to Who's the Boss

That's like saying the Nixon episode was a reference to the oliver stone "Nixon" movie.

Derek Ward, Kaiju no Hakase wrote:

Shut up, you! (pulls out a large revovler and proceeds to begin beating Derek to death with the butt)

There, that'll teach you to interfere with our wild speculation and unfounded Conjecture!

In article , [email] is reputed to have iterated as follows...

DYN: Dr. Zoidberg was snowboarding sideways like, well, a crustachean?

Crustations don't snowboard!

Matthew B. Tepper wrote in message news:83n7mt$t8j$[email]...

No, but one crustachean did!

Perhaps more than one.

Didn't he mention his cousin, Zoidfarb? Or was it Zoidfeld?

Zoidstein?

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Zordfarb.