Forty Percent Leadbelly
| "Forty Percent Leadbelly" | |
|---|---|
| Futurama episode | |
| Episode no. | Season 7 Episode 14 |
| Directed by | Stephen Sandoval |
| Written by | Ken Keeler |
| Production code | 7ACV14 |
| Original air date | July 3, 2013 |
| Opening caption | "Any Resemblance To Actual Future Is Purely Coincidental" |
"Forty Percent Leadbelly" is the fourteenth episode of the seventh season of the animated sitcom Futurama. It originally aired on Comedy Central on July 3, 2013. The episode was written by Ken Keeler and directed by Stephen Sandoval. In this episode, Bender meets his hero, Silicon Red, a folk singer who has been in jail 30 times, during a convict transport, and uses a wireless 3D printer to duplicate his guitar, but the wireless connection between Bender's brain and the 3D printer turns his folk song about an angry space railbot hunting down Bender into a reality.
The Planet Express Discount Prisoner Transfer crew are transferring Dr. Brutaloff, a supervillain with Freddy Kruger-style finger-knives encased in a Han Solo-style block of frozen carbonite, to Elevenworth Variable Security Prison. Conveying this cargo to its final destination, Bender spies Silicon Red, "the universe's greatest folk singer" at the prisoner discharge office, retrieving his belongings and preparing to depart. Bender suddenly remembers his "lifelong dream of being a folk singer" and abandons Fry to chase down Silicon Red. As soon as Bender leaves, Brutaloff escapes from the carbonite, beats Fry up, and freezes Fry back into the carbonite up to his neck.
Bender catches up to Silicon Red and takes a picture of Red's guitar, with the intention of using a 3-D printer to create a perfect duplicate. With this duplicate, Bender believes he will be a "famous folk singer". Dr. Beeler finds the image of the duplicated guitar in Bender's file system. He then turns a crank in Bender's compartment of mystery that causes Bender's components to wirelessly transmit the image to the printer. Bender then walks around Planet Express wearing a flannel shirt and playing his duplicated guitar.
Fry, mostly encased in carbonite after being attacked by Dr. Brutaloff, begins at this point to make periodic sarcastic comments to complain of Bender's mistreatment of him at the prison. When the crew tell Bender that he doesn't know enough about folk music to be successful, he explains his analysis of "every folk song in the universe": bad-hearted woman cheats on her good man with a rambler. Bender uses this as a formula for creating his own folk songs. He crashes a performance by Silicon Red and performs one of his songs while Red is distracted, billing himself as "Ramblin' Rodriguez". The audience hates it, and Red explains that Bender's song is insincere. He sends Bender away and says, "Don't come back 'til you've lived a life worth singin' about!"
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