Stuff in "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings"

[on:]

Post the wierd things/trivia/goofs that you noticed in the episode here.

For me, this episode had so many things right.  Without a doubt my favorite episode.  There was only one thing that really stood out to me:

Fry may have gotten the Robot Devil's hands, which gave him amazing dexterity towards playing the holophoner. 
But he only recieved the Robot Devil's dexterity on the instrument.  Where did Fry get the immense amount of musical theory knowledge that is essential to write a full opera piece, orchestrations and all?

[Reply #1 on:]

It was in side him all along but he had "stupid fingers" so he couldn't play an insturment with
proper timing with his own hands.

another thing, was I seeing things or was Leela not wearing Calculon's ears when she asked Fry to finish the opera?

[Reply #2 on:]

The Robot Devil's wheel listed the obsolete robots from "Obsoletely Fabulous," but they were just part of Bender's dream.

I'm sure this one was deliberate, but did you notice that Fry's record set had 900 songs but was just over thirty minutes long?

[Reply #3 on:]

 

Originally posted by newhook_1:
It was in side him all along but he had "stupid fingers" so he couldn't play an insturment with
proper timing with his own hands.

another thing, was I seeing things or was Leela not wearing Calculon's ears when she asked Fry to finish the opera?

no she wasn't wearing them. She didn't need them anymore. Once Fry gave back the hands she got her hearing back.

[Reply #4 on:]

Don't mean to question every thing but how?

[Reply #5 on:]

Also, did anyone notice that Fry's room had a hallway outside of it?  Fry lives in the closet.  His door leads to Bender's room.  This new apartment layout confuses me.

[Reply #6 on:]

 

Originally posted by Action Jacktion:I'm sure this one was deliberate, but did you notice that Fry's record set had 900 songs but was just over thirty minutes long?

why yes i did. what do i win?

[Reply #7 on:]

I didn't know Fry's "door" had KEEP OUT on it~   

[Reply #8 on:]

 

Originally posted by VelourFog:
why yes i did. what do i win?

Uh, the realization that that's impossible?  It just sounds normal unless you think about it.  I just wanted to point out the joke, you didn't have to be so cruel... sniff....

[Reply #9 on:]

How was it possible for Fry's organic hands to connect to the robot devils metal arms and vice versa?  Same with Leela and Calculon's ears.

[Reply #10 on:]

 

Originally posted by newhook_1:
It was in side him all along but he had "stupid fingers" so he couldn't play an insturment with
proper timing with his own hands.

Granted, Fry did have wonderful, deep feelings that he wanted to express to Leela musically.  What I was trying to say is, there is a very fine line between being able to play an instrument to a melody that you have in your head; as opposed to writing a full opera piece with music for other instruments and singers. 
Any PEELer who is classically trained musically would agree with this(and if your out there, please back me up on this, i'm not doing a very good job explaining myself here  ).

[Reply #11 on:]

 

Originally posted by VelourFog:
why yes i did. what do i win?

Free tickets to the MHOP, of course.

Why was Nixon surprised to be going to robot hell? Doesn't he play poker with the robot devil all the time? And if not, why is he going at all? (Did his robot body from "A Head in the Polls" join robotology?)

Isn't it a bit odd that Morbo would be spending a night at the opera when his fleet should be here by now to destroy the earth (even allowing for the out-of-production air order, where Bender Should Not Be Allowed on TV aired only a week before this episode)? And why wasn't Morbo invited to the poker game along with his best buddy Nixon?

Why are there actors in a holophone opera? And why are they in their underwear? (I could see them being in their normal street clothes, or in some kind of partial costume for Fry to flesh out, or completely naked, but in their underwear?)

If Fry's favorite music is new wave (Katrina and the Waves) and rap (Young MC), doesn't it seem more likely that he'd compose a new wave opera or a rap opera? Maybe something like Shatner's musical version of "Julius Caesar"? (Now _that_ would be cool! Let slip the dogs of war! War! WAR! WAAARRR! WWWWAAAAAAAAARRR!" )

[Reply #12 on:]

 

Originally posted by Zack Brannigan:
How was it possible for Fry's organic hands to connect to the robot devils metal arms and vice versa?  Same with Leela and Calculon's ears.

ever heard of prosthetics?

[Reply #13 on:]

 

Originally posted by JDHannan:
 ever heard of prosthetics?

Yes, I know what prosthetics are, but Robot Devil's hands are complicated pieces of machinery which are undoubtedly connected to all sorts of intricate parts, and they most likely have wires leading to other parts wherein messages are sent from a central CPU for precise control.  Same with Calculon's ears.  Therefore, it would be impossible for the Robot Devil to slice off Fry's hands and just stick his own robotic hands on the end of an empty human forearm and expect them to work.  It was the only part of the episode that really bothered me.  It's weird to have a suspension of disbelief in a show where almost anything is possible, but it still bothered me.  (So I'll just say "The wizard did it" ).

One of my favorite episodes of all time, though . . .

[Reply #14 on:]

 

Originally posted by Zack Brannigan:
How was it possible for Fry's organic hands to connect to the robot devils metal arms and vice versa?  Same with Leela and Calculon's ears.

SCRIPT LOGIC!!!

[Reply #15 on:]

Or..... It's the future!     

Terry: Welcome, to the world of tommorrowwww!!

Farnsworth: You see,..
Fry: Magic, got it.

EDIT: Okay, I found an answer to my goof.  Fry is the best holophonist around.  So what musician fluent in orchestral transcription would pass up the chance to transcribe Fry's music into orchestral and voice parts?  Nobody, that's who!
Case closed   

[Reply #16 on:]

 

Originally posted by Action Jacktion:
you didn't have to be so cruel... sniff....

I didn't even know i was being cruel

maybe the songs are all like one second long
and they did say "over 30 minutes" of music... could be WAY over 

[Reply #17 on:]

Did you notice how sexy Leela looked in her Opera dress?

[Reply #18 on:]

 

Originally posted by VelourFog:
I didn't even know i was being cruel

That's not surprising!

 

Originally posted by MrB:
Did you notice how sexy Leela looked in her Opera dress?

Are you implying that sometimes she does not look sexy?

By the way, at one point Leela says she needs to find a pair of gloves, but earlier when we see Fry at Hovercar-negie Hall she's wearing gloves.  But I guess she meant another pair of gloves.

[Reply #19 on:]

I've said it in the featured episode board, but am I going mad, or did I see Homer and Marge driving a hovercar?

[Reply #20 on:]

The thing I don't undestand is: It is said, that it is the fault of frys hands, that he can't play the holophoner (stupid fingers), BUT in Parasites lost, when he was smart, he could play with his normal hands?! Or is there something I misunderstood?

[Reply #21 on:]

and dont you all forget:
Fry's hands are already artificial. That dinosaur bit of his hands in one episode. 'Uh, that tickles'
so the question of attaching them to a robot is not that highly sophisticated.
so are these robotic hands the fault for the failure of Fry?

[Reply #22 on:]

Bender-1729: Maybe he figured out a way of handling the holophoner more efficiently and then forgot it when he damaged his brain...

Ginster: Where does it say they're artificial? They might as well have been donated or come from the human farm.

How was Fry able to juggle Bender? He weighs 525lbs...


------------------
~ One software - one function(avoid bloat at all cost) ~
Coder, Absynth Interactive

[Reply #23 on:]

I Dated A Robot came after Parasites Lost, right? I'm thinking his Holophonor ability was due to the worms working on his body and brain, but he damaged his brain getting rid of the worms and he lost his worm-improved hands in IDAR and had to get less-effective replacement hands. Since Fry's pretty poor, he couldn't afford to get the latest model of replacement hands, so he had to settle for the "stupid hands" model. And practicing the Holophonor for a couple of years might have gotten his thinking-ability back up to the point where he could write a good Holophonor song if only his crappy hands could keep up. Or something.

[Reply #24 on:]

Well, I think he's not really smart enough to control his hands that well, but with robotic hands, he probably just has to think about what he has to do and it happens. Or maybe Bender's secretly a wizard.

[Reply #25 on:]

In "Parasites Lost," Leela says that "only a few people in the universe know how to play the Holophoner, and those people don't know how to play it well."  But you could see how well those kids were doing at the Holophoner.

[Reply #26 on:]

 

Originally posted by Ginster:
and dont you all forget:
Fry's hands are already artificial. That dinosaur bit of his hands in one episode.

They cloned him a new set of hands...
But that doesn't make them artificial.

[Reply #27 on:]

 

Originally posted by MrB:
Did you notice how sexy Leela looked in her Opera dress?

Yeah, i noticed there was a difference in her figure. As soon as she was in that dress her breasts and hips got huge and her waist got really narrow. She's normally curvy, but not that curvy. Whoever animated her in that scene had a little too much fun.   

[Reply #28 on:]

We have Wonder bras now. Perhaps that was a wonder gown. It is the Future. (and man what a gown)

And as for the other stuff.

I think the fault was fry's damage to the coordination center of his brain in Parasites Lost.

And the whole holophoner lessons. Well it wouldn't be the first time in history that parents forced their children to do something really difficult simply so that they could use their kid as a status symbol.

Oh and Fry's hands were probably cloned replacements. Exactly the same as his originals.

[Reply #29 on:]

Fry's replacement hands were of a different skin color. But I guess after a period of.. Two years? I think they'd blend in.

I doubt they cloned them; with the farm around it'd be much cheaper and easier to just buy hands by the dozen...

[Reply #30 on:]

 

Originally posted by MrB:
Did you notice how sexy Leela looked in her Opera dress?

We all did.         

[Reply #31 on:]

 

Originally posted by MrB:
Did you notice how sexy Leela looked in her Opera dress?

Oh yeah!   

[Reply #32 on:]

Did anyone else notice how Leela looked kinda, uh, "elven" with Calculon's ears? And how they didn't look too bad on her?

::ashamed::

[Reply #33 on:]

don't be ashamed i noticed it too, not the elven bit, but the didn't-look-bad-with-robot-ears bit.

[Reply #34 on:]

 

Originally posted by Tjoppen:
I doubt they cloned them; with the farm around it'd be much cheaper and easier to just buy hands by the dozen...

They were going to clone his nose in "Spanish Fry." What makes you think they wouldn't have cloned his hands? I seem to remember a "Hands While U Wait" or something like that which implies that they were made.


In response to Atticus, perhaps the Robot Devil's smart hands did the writing.

[Reply #35 on:]

Just a thought: Did Bender ever get his crotchplate back?  Cuase if the series is over AND Bender no longer has a shiney metal ass to kiss, I don't want to go on.  Well, actually I kinda do, but it's still depressing.

[Reply #36 on:]

Offcourse he will, remember when Bender was addicted to electricity?
In 1 scene his legs melted while standing on the ship in a electrical storm.
The next scene the were completely restored so he probarbly has some spare parts storage room 

Or he jacked them from Flexo 

[Reply #37 on:]

On Bender's assplate:  As soon as the robot devil acquired Bender's assplate, he threw it into the garbage can.  Bender could have easily retrieved it from the trash later on.

On Bender's legs(from "Hell is Other Robots):  If you would notice, in that same scene where you first see him with his new legs, you can also see a box of replacement robot legs near him.   

[Reply #38 on:]

Here's a fancy little connection to "Space Pilot 3000":

Leela's office poster(SP3K):


Amy's emotion flashcard to Leela(TDHAIP):


EDIT:  AUGHHOHNO!  I doubleposted!  Sorry about that   

[Reply #39 on:]

That guy from SP3K has appeared a few more times (he's mentioned in some DVD commentary).

Canned eggs: I think Bender in fact walked into the closet, then into Fry's room.

"That just raises further questions!" -Hermes, in "The Deep South"

It does, like how did Bender hear the holophoner from his room which isn't in the closet. And why was Bender wearing pyjama pants?