Bendin' in the Wind is the 13th episode in season 3 of Futurama. It originally aired April 22, 2001. The title comes from the Bob Dylan song Blowin' in the Wind.

Plot

Fry gets a free Volkswagen microbus, excavated from the ruins of Old New York. He pushes it back to the Planet Express office, and has to fuel it with whale oil, which replaced gasoline. Bender lifts the barrel of whale oil to the can opener, and is caught by the opener's magnet and horribly damaged. At the Cedars-Sinewave Robot Hospital (a play off of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center), the doctor informs Bender that he will never move again. Bender falls into a state of depression, but when he finds out that Beck's disembodied head is occupying the bed next to him, his spirits are lifted. Beck loans Bender a set of neck-mounted robotic mini-arms. Using the arms to scrape across his mangled body, Bender earns the position of Beck's washboard player.

Bender goes on tour with Beck, and Fry, Leela, Amy, and Dr. Zoidberg pile into Fry's van to follow them. While on tour, Bender is insulted by the treatment of other broken robots. As the tour continues, Bender writes a song about broken robots. Together with Beck, he decides to put on a benefit concert in San Francisco, to help all the broken robots.

Fry and the crew catch up with Bender, who is relaxing in a San Francisco hotel. To everyone's shock, they discover that Bender has miraculously been fixed. To keep his music career, Bender decides to fake still being broken. The concert goes on as planned, but when the time comes to perform Bender's song, he can not restrain himself, and dances around the stage. Bender, having been found out, runs off with the oversized benefit check in Fry's Volkswagen.

Bender, being pursued by an irate Beck, drives the microbus into San Francisco Bay. Beck catches Bender, and recovers the check. The crew floats back to New New York in the microbus.

Quotes

• Bender: That is so wrong. You can't just melt down broken robots! Not right when they're kissing my ass!
• Beck: You know, when I'm upset, I write a song about it. Like when I wrote Devil's Haircut, I was feeling really... What's that song about?
  Bender: Yeah! I could write a song - with real words, not phony ones like "Odelay."
  Beck: Odelay is a word, just look it up in the Becktionary.
• Beck: That was the best forty minute washboard solo I've ever heard. And the parts when I was awake, blew my mind.
• Bender: Hand me the Becktionary. (Bender is handed Becktionary) No! I want the rhyming Becktionary.
• Hermes: Kudos Bender, you got mangled, and now you're a singer! Both our dreams came true!
• Beck: (after finishing playing Sexx Laws) That song doesn't usually last three hours, but we got into a serious thing. And then I forgot how it ended.
• Bender: Fry's crack corn and I don't care, Leela's crack corn I still don't care, Bender's crack corn and he is great, Take that, you stupid corn.

Trivia

• The song "My Broken Friend", performed by Beck and Bender, was written by Christopher Tyng, Eric Horsted and Ken Keeler.
• The two other songs played during the episode are "Where It's At" from the album Odelay and "Sexx Laws" from Midnite Vultures.
• While playing "Where It's At", Bender sings a mock-up of the line "I got two turntables and a microphone" by singing "Got a washboard stomach and a microphone." Also, instead of singing "That was a good drum break", Beck sings the line "That was a washboard break".
• In the shot of the United States map it is shown that some states have been renamed in the future including "Nukevada", "East West Virginia" and "WyΩing". California is split into "HiCal" and "LoCal" and the state of Pennsylvania has become the "Penn Republic" and "Sylvania" - a parody of Czechoslovakia splitting into the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. One state (Presumably the Year 3000 version of Utah) is also written in the alien language "Rumhnvhrm" or, "Human Farm". Conflicting issues involve the fact that despite this episode, Washington D.C. is referred to as such, rather than Washington A.C. and "New New Jersey" is often referred to as just "New Jersey". Additionally, in the episode The 30% Iron Chef, Bender references Eugene, "Oregon", differing from "XORegon". Presumably these state parodies were only thought up for this episode.

References

• The title is a play on the Bob Dylan song Blowin' in the Wind
• The chase scene at the end is inspired by the movie Bullit, and the part of the chase in Chinatown could refer to a scene in the video for Beck's "Devil's haircut".
• Cylon and Garfunkle is a reference to the Cylons of Battlestar Galactica and 1970's folk duo Simon and Garfunkel.
• The concert Bend-Aid is a reference to the famine relief effort Band Aid
• Bender lands at "Fisherman's Worf", renamed after the The Next Generation character Worf.
• This is similar to the parody of a prison on "Commander Riker's Island" in the Season 2 Episode "Brannigan Begin Again", which is a parody of both the prison, Riker's Island, in New York, and the First Officer, Commander Riker in The Next Generation. Along with the brief appearance of Jonathan Frakes, who played Riker, in "Where No Fan Has Gone Before" these are the only references to Star Trek: The Next Generation, as the show mainly focusses on The Original Series.

Futurama episodes