Episode 3 starts with Doop headquarters with Glab forming an alliance with the Vampire Empire with a special piano, using Fry and Bender to deliver it to their home world, along with Zapp and Kif. While delivering it, a ship starts to open fire on them. Fry calls Leela to help, so the crew heads to the ship to save them.
At first they can’t find them, but they eventually find a pirate ship and head in to investigate, where they find Zapp behind a DJ booth. Zapp reveals that he was marooned by space pirates, who took Bender, Fry and the Piano, and left him there. He also says that the reason they got on the ship was because Kif let them on instead of putting up the shields. With hopes lost that Bender Kif and Fry will be found, Professor Farnsworth realizes that the crystals on the piano are pure gemjewlium. They will have left a faint trail of radiation, so Leela guns it to follow the trail.
They arrive at the pirate republic, but end up getting caught by the pirates. Leela pretends that they are also pirates and that they want to join. They are at first denied, but accepted when Amy gives them a Starbucks gift card with $500,000 on it. During the pirate party, Fry and Bender are found in the cage, but Kif is nowhere in sight.
After singing the pirate anthem, everyone is fast asleep, but Amy wakes up the Planet Express crew to try and find Kif. While searching the hut, they find Kif with the pirate leader Long John Longjohns, prying the jewels out of the piano to split half and half. When confronted, Admirella appears and explains that President Glab was going to engineer a third term and be president forever. Admirella further explains that she was packing the assembly with dictators, and that the vampire empire would give her the tie breaking oath. They staged the raid to steal the piano and foil Glab’s plan. The piano is also revealed to be a weapon of mass destruction. The strings are pulled so tight, it could implode if played wrong, and the gemjewlium would amplify it.
At the vote, everything is tied, when the crew comes in with the piano. They then play the vampire anthem so the vampires can vote, which turns out to be “Whole Lotta Shakin Going On.” The playing starts making the piano crack, and eventually Glab folds and makes Admirella her permanent successor to stop the piano from imploding. Though the playing stopped, the piano implodes anyway. Fortunately, the pirates switched the gems with cubic zirconium, which is only slightly reactive.
This was another good episode. It wasn’t crazy funny, but it had some silly moments in it, especially the “Whole Lotta Shaking Going On,” and the disclaimer in the beginning about the pirates and vampires. It might have been a little better than the first episode, but all of the episodes so far have been pretty good. The pirate anthem was silly too.
Rating: 7.5/10