The Professor decides to turbo-charge the ship to make it even faster than before. Leela is not too thrilled with the idea and gets the ship towed for being unsafe. The Professor manages to save the ship and join a street race gang while Leela gets a new ship that's completely safe.
Tropes
- Abusive Parents: Minx states that she had problems with her father's "unspoken verbal abuse"; it wasn't what he said, it's what he didn't say. At the end of the episode, he calls her and they make up.
- Another Dimension: Fry, Bender, Leela and Hubert collide at such high speeds, they enter the 2nd dimension.
- Boring, but Practical: The replacement Planet Express ship: it's much faster than their old ship and has an autopilot, but it's also a featureless grey rectangle with no means to view the space outside while travelling as described below.
- Borrowed Catchphrase: Leela uses the Professor's "Good news, everyone!" to unveil the new ship.
- Cool Old Guy: The Professor does what he can to make the ship faster and joins a street racing gang.
- Distracted by the Sexy: Scruffy stares at Leela's "Bazooms" and runs into the ship by mistake.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Leela gets a minivan-like ship, Bender and Fry start fighting in the ship like kids, and Leela has to do tasks such as pick up groceries and drop off Fry and Bender at karate.
- Hell-Bent for Leather: The Professor is wearing a leather lab coat because "he's cool".
- Mommy Mobile: The replacement Planet Express ship is not only extremely Boring, but Practical in a manner that calls to mind a minivan, it causes Leela to start acting like a minivan-driving soccer mom.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Inverted. The rainbow giant star is something to behold... but the new ship doesn't have a window or even a non-radar dashboard display. At least the audience gets to see it.
- Pop-Culture Pun Episode Title: The title referenced Two-Lane Blacktop.
- Reused Character Design: One of the street racers looks like Professor Frink from The Simpsons, just given a Palette Swap.
- Running Gag: Minx repeatedly brings up her tragic backstory of "unspoken verbal abuse" during inappropriate situations.
- Shackle Seat Trap: Bender assumes the loops at the ends of the replacement ship's passenger seats are cup holders. They're actually arm holders, which flip around and trap his wrists when activated.
- Shout-Out:
- Two of the cars at the junkyard are Speed Buggy and the Mach 5.
- 2-D space is compared directly to Flatland.
- The general arrangement, treatment, and behaviour of the street gang is an Affectionate Parody of the The Fast and the Furious films, down to the focus on surrogate family. Farnsworth mentions "Tokyo drifting" at one point.
- The episode's title comes from the film Two-Lane Blacktop
, which is about street racing.
- Take That!: Anytime Minx wishes to speak about her backstory, it's during moments when she shouldn't, which she instead points out. This is all making fun of any moments in any other media when this is done on purpose.
- What a Piece of Junk: After the Professor saves the Planet Express ship from being melted down in a junkyard due to the rest of the crew abandoning it and wanting to get a replacement (when it suffers engine failure and crashes at takeoff even though Professor just finished tuning it up), it looks like it's barely being held together by random bits of junk and moves so slowly it keeps holding up traffic. The street racers naturally mock it, causing the Professor to challenge them to a race, and during the countdown, it shakes off all the excess junk and reveals several additional thrusters, showing off that he modified it into a smaller, much faster ship which can also teleport by drifting between dimensions.
