Episode Recap: The Sting

The Professor sends Leela, Bender and Fry on a dangerous, potentially deadly mission—they must retrieve ordinary honey from killer bees as big as a Buick. Bender communicates with the bees via waggle dance and sedates them with smoke while Leela and Fry collect honey, royal jelly and a cute baby queen bee. The bees attack only after Bender insults them but he and the others escape safely on the ship. The sleeping baby queen bee awakens and prepares to strike as the crew celebrates their success—it corners Leela and Fry throws himself in front of her. The infant bee’s stinger goes all the way through Fry and the tip slightly jabs Leela. Bender ejects the bee into space, and when Leela tries to shake the unconscious Fry awake, she realizes he is dead.

Fry is eulogized and his body, still impaled by the bee stinger, is jettisoned off into space. At her apartment, Leela, surrounded by her Fry memorabilia, eats a spoonful of honey and, finding it delicious, takes another and passes out. In a dream, Leela floats up to Fry in his coffin in space and he and shows her a gift wrapped with purple ribbon that she should find in his locker—then shakes her awake. Leela abruptly wakes up in her bed and the next day goes to Fry’s Planet Express locker...after denying there was a gift, Bender takes it out of his chest and Leela opens the package to find a one eyed squeeze toy. The gift convinces Leela that Fry is still alive, but after examining her brain the Professor finds no clue as to Fry’s mortality or whereabouts. That night Leela dreams she and Fry are dancing in a Venusian garden and taking a sleigh ride on Saturn’s moon, where Fry loans Leela his jacket, then prompts her to wake up. When she awakens, Leela is wearing Fry’s jacket.

At Planet Express the next day, an excited Leela shows the crew Fry’s jacket as proof he is still alive, but they point out that she is wearing her own jacket, not Fry’s. Leela is afraid she is going insane, and has more bizarre experiences, both nocturnal and waking, involving the honey, royal jelly the crew and Fry. Once again Fry shakes Leela and demands she wake up and this time she really does—in a hospital room, with Fry at her side, his jacket over her shoulders, and the squeeze toy on the bedtable. Fry explains that he was not poisoned by the bee sting, only she was and has been in a seemingly irreversible coma for two weeks, hallucinating. It was only Fry’s constant encouragement and attention that brought Leela back to the real world.