Episode Recap: Bend Her

The 3004 Olympic Games are getting underway as the Planet Express crew watches from the stands. Bender is horrified when he realizes that he could not come close to competing with the male robot heavy equipment benders. In the 500 limbo, Hermes is neck and neck with the favorite when his slimming spandex bodysuit gives out and his flab nudges off the last limbo stick, disqualifying him. When the fembot bending contests are announced, Bender disguises himself as the fembot Coilette from Robonia and easily wins five gold medals. After gender testing is announced for all medalists, Bender forces the Professor to give him a sex change operation in the Robot Medical Tent—substantial gender changes occur immediately and become more complete over time. When Bender/Coilette reports for his/her gender test, he/she is a sexy, feminine bot with all of the trimmings.

After the Olympics are over, Coilette asks the Professor to switch her back into male robot before the gender change becomes irreversible, but delays the operation so she can appear on "Late Night with Humorbot 5.0." On the show, Coilette meets Calculon, lead hunkbot on the soap opera "All My Circuits", who asks her out to dinner. Coilette agrees, the two hit it off, and a series of romantic outings follow. Calculon showers Coilette with gifts and attention, but when Amy says that it looks like Calculon is really falling for her Coilette assures Amy that it’s merely a fling. Just then, Calculon burst through the Planet Express wall and asks Coilette to marry him. Coilette agrees.

After Calculon leaves, Coilette reassures the crew that the marriage is a scam. She plans on marrying Calculon, taking half his money, then turning back into a guybot. If Calculon refuses Coilette a divorce, she will threaten to tell the media that Calculon has married a former manbot. On a hot air balloon outing, Calculon professes his true love for Coilette and says he will even give up show business—all he wants is to be with her. Back at Planet Express Coilette says she can’t go through with a marriage scam based on true love. Leela comes up with a plan to get out of the marriage soap-opera style—at the wedding, Coilette, with the help of his/her friends, fakes a melodramatic death from a rare disease. Later, as Calculon stars in a TV movie about his love for Coilette, the Professor changes Coilette back into Bender in the nick of time—his antenna pops up, his voice changes back, and his sensitive, emotional side is destroyed.