Episode Recap: Love and Rocket

Aboard the Planet Express Ship, Bender and the ship engage in a typical argument, while the crew learns they’re going to pitch a new client, Romanticorp, just in time for Valentine’s Day. The team meets with Sheldon and Gwen Swanson, and is taken on a tour of Romanticorp. Fry is excited to learn that the company manufactures candy hearts with sweet sayings tattooed on the front, and proclaims that he’s going to find the one piece that explains his feelings towards Leela. Back on the ship, the Professor announces that the new contract will pay for upgrades to the ship, and reveals that he installed a new personality into the ship. Bender begins talking to the new girlish personality, and instead of bickering, Bender and the ship begin to fall in love. With crates of candy hearts on board, Fry continues searching for his valentine to Leela. When the ship begins shaking violently, Leela and Fry discover Bender tickling the ship, and are surprised to learn that the two are dating. One day, Bender confides to Fry and Leela that he’s already sick of his new girlfriend. Leela suggests Bender let her down easily, but Bender decides to start dating floozies behind the ship’s back. During a date with two floozies, Bender doesn’t notice the ship at the window spying on him. The ship confronts Bender about his date, but Bender talks his way out of the situation. The next day the Planet Express team visits Omicron Persei 8 to drum up business, but the planet’s leaders are so offended by the candy hearts presented to them as a gift, that they launch an attack against the Planet Express ship. The ship and crew fly off, but Bender chooses that moment to break up with the ship. Devastated, the ship comes to a grinding halt and is blasted by a missile. The ship survives the attack, but she insists on finding a way to make Bender love her again. She starts flying towards a giant quasar, and announces that the quasar will smush her and Bender into an eternal quantum singularity. Despite Bender’s declarations of love, the ship tells him that the only way she’ll believe him is if the two merge their programming. To keep Leela and Fry from interfering, the ship turns off the oxygen. Using portable oxygen units, Leela decides to shut down the ship’s brain, but the ship turns off the artificial gravity, releasing all the candy hearts into the air. Leela, Fry and Bender realize that Bender must merge his programming with the ship, while Leela tries to shut down the brain. With Bender plugged into the ship’s computer, Leela begins popping open cans of the ship’s thought fluid. Fry notices that Leela ’s oxygen level has reached critical, so he heroically connects his hose to her unit. Just as the ship’s program is about to engulf Bender’s, Leela completes her work, which disables the ship and restores oxygen and gravity. Leela realizes Fry is unconscious, but is able to resuscitate him. Moved by his actions, she wishes Fry a happy Valentine’s Day. The two find Bender uninjured, and decide to clean up the candy hearts by blowing them out into the quasar. Hit by the hearts, the quasar begins radiating weird beautiful pink rays. Over a montage of couples, Dr. Zoidberg explains that although the hearts created a radiation that destroyed many planets, it didn’t effect earth, although couples all over the planet were treated to a beautiful sight on what just happened to be Valentine’s Day.