| Season: | 4 |
| Episode: | 16 |
| Director: | Swinton O. Scott III |
| Production: | 4ACV16 |
| Guests: |
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| Opening Caption: | Voted "Best" |
| Opening Cartoon: | "Flop Goes the Weasel" (1943) |
| Prev: | The Farnsworth Parabox |
| Next: | Spanish Fry |
"Three Hundred Big Boys" is the sixteenth episode in the fourth season of the American animated television series Futurama, and the 70th episode of the series overall. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on June 15, 2003. Set in a retro-futuristic 31st century, the series follows the adventures of the employees of Planet Express, an interplanetary delivery company.
In this episode, Earth president Richard Nixon issues every citizen with a $300 tax rebate; with the episode following the Planet Express crew as they each spend their money. The episode was inspired by "22 Short Films About Springfield", an episode of The Simpsons.[1]
Zapp Brannigan leads an attack on Tarantulon VI, claiming numerous silken artworks for Earth. Earth President Richard Nixon considers this a windfall, and gives every citizen a $300 tax rebate. Brannigan later invites Leela and her friends to an exhibit of the silk treasures.
The Planet Express crew each contemplate how to spend their funds. Leela uses it to swim with a whale; Fry uses the money to buy and drink one hundred cups of coffee over the course of the episode, and Bender spends his on burglary tools to steal a $10,000 cigar, but refuses to smoke it until the exhibition. Others find their expenditures less thrilling: Professor Farnsworth uses the money to buy stem cells to give him a youthful appearance but discovers they only last temporarily, while Hermes buys a set of mechanical stilts for his son Dwight that inadvertently go haywire and drag the two off, rampaging through New New York. Kif buys a watch for his girlfriend Amy but accidentally loses it to the same whale that Leela was swimming with, though he eventually recovers it after a brief accusation of ambergris theft.
Eventually, they all gather for the exhibition. Just as Bender lights up the cigar, Hermes and Dwight, still stuck on the stilts, smash through the side of the building, causing the cigar to ignite the silk artworks. At the same time, Fry finishes the hundredth cup of coffee and enters a caffeine-induced state of hyperspeed, moving much faster than anyone else. Fry easily gathers all the guests onto a trolley, wheels them into an alley behind the museum, and extinguishes the fire before the hyperspeed ends. As they all recover from what just happened, they find that Zoidberg, who had been debating on how to spend his tax rebate on something that would make him happy, opted to spend it on a nice meal for a number of hobos. The guests join them for the meal, though Bender is soon caught by the cops and beaten up for the earlier robbery.
In its initial airing, the episode received a Nielsen rating of 3.6/7, placing it 79th among primetime shows for the week of June 9–15, 2003.[2] The episode received an A− rating from The A.V. Club.[3]