Summary
Futurama plays on its own history as Amy tries to decide is she’s ready to be a mother.
This recap of Futurama Season 11 Episode 2, “Children of a Lesser Bog”, contains spoilers.
You can never quite predict how Futurama will set up an episode concept.
“Children of a Lesser Bog” starts with Fry sucking candy off his jacket collar, an activity that has kept him busy for quite some time, and after Zoidberg snaffles the residue and Fry realizes the candy was discontinued after being reclassified as an industrial adhesive, an attempt by Bender to recreate the recipe puts the Professor in a diabetic coma and loses Amy a couple of teeth.
When Amy opens her calendar to find space for an appointment, she realizes that it’s 1000 years to the day since the Season 4 episode that saw Kif get pregnant. It’s the due date for his and Amy’s tadpole babies.
Futurama Season 11 Episode 2 Recap
So, Kif shows up, asks Amy if she’s ready to be a parent now, since she wasn’t at the time, and she’s all in on the idea. The PlanEx crew return to Amphibios 9 for the birth ceremony, conducted by a Grand Midwife and attended by Amy’s parents, Inez and Leo.
Much to the disgust of Amy’s parents, she and Kif meet their three differently sized children, who have gestated in varyingly temperate waters and so appear as a baby, a toddler, and a teenager, more or less. Newt, the littlest one, has one eye and calls Leela “Mama”, which doesn’t bode well.
Who is the mother of Kif’s kids?
Thanks to the Amphibiosans’ unique form of reproduction, despite Amy being Kif’s “Smizmar”, it was actually Leela’s DNA, transferred by her touching his hand while he was viable for pregnancy, that merged with Kif’s to create the kids.
While Kif is pulled away on D.O.O.P. duty, the kids run Amy ragged. In need of some rest, she tags in Leela, who tries to exhaust them on the ship’s conveyor belt, under observation from the Grand Midwife and Amy herself, who begins to develop a lot of resentment about the kids bonding with Leela.
Amy, distraught, eventually contacts Kif to tell him the kids prefer Leela, but as the Grand Midwife arrives to announce a challenge to Amy’s motherhood, she loses connection to Kif.
What are tardigrades?
Kif and Zapp investigate an outpost’s destroyed communication equipment and are informed by a Bear Biologist who hates bears – and will be recognizable to fans – that the equipment was destroyed by tardigrades, “stupid” and “ugly” creatures with four legs and sucker faces.
The tardigrades also have a taste for human food, so Zapp’s snack break drives them insane which results in him getting dragged kicking and screaming into a cave. Kif is forced to rescue him, and a cutaway followed by gunshots implies that he might have gunned down the two tardigrades protecting a trio of their offspring.
Of course not, though. Once Kif gets back in the midst of Amy’s motherhood inquisition – the kids have DNA provided by Leela and Herman, and the test will determine who will raise them – it’s revealed that he actually destroyed the catwalk supports allowing the tardigrades to eat the bear biologist.
Futurama Season 11 Episode 2 Ending Explained
Who wins the Motherhood Contest?
After this, Amy is to be subject to a “a battery of genetic tests and a full neuropsychological exam”, while the challenge will play out over weeks or months in the Inquis-dome.
However, after apologizing to and subsequently bonding with Leela over her relationship with the children, Amy completes the test immediately by honestly answering a simple question: Does she love the children? Since she does, and that’s all that matters, the challenge ends.
You can stream Futurama Season 11 Episode 2, “Children of a Lesser Bog” exclusively on Hulu.
