[Futurama] The show's crew clearly didn't knew what to do with Dixie and Trixie (you know, the human girls who were sidekicks to Slurms MacKenzie) since the Comedy Central era

I'm gonna get serious with this one. If you've ever watched episodes like Fry and the Slurm Factory, Into the Wild Green Yonder (movie in this case), or The Butterjunk Effect, you may have seen two random chicks around (one is blonde and the other is African). Those, my friends, are Dixie and Trixie. And why am I talking about them? Because, to address the elephant in the room, those two have become some of the most mishandled minor characters in television history, and here's a breakdown of their chronology, from their start as Slurms' loyal party girls to their downfall in later episodes...

In Fry and the Slurm Factory, besides the legendary Slurms MacKenzie, audiences were also introduced to Dixie and Trixie, two girls who partied hard with him for 40 years until he just got tired of partying (so very tired) and then sacrificed himself, and despite their particularly small roles and screen time in the episode, their characterizations made them instantly relatable and memorable. What's more interesting is that Dixie, despite the fact she barely spoke, was guest voiced by Pamela Anderson in this episode, in contrast to Trixie who was voiced by series regular Lauren Tom. After the events of the episode, those two disappear from the show's canon (on-screen) for ten years, and after that, their fates were ambiguous

Then came Into the Wild Green Yonder in 2009, and this is where the two finally made their long-awaited on-screen return, but their execution was ANYTHING but good. They randomly appear out of nowhere as part of the Eco-Feministas, with no prequel scene or previous explanation, which not only caught fans off guard but also created a plot hole: how, when, and why did they join the Eco-Feministas? But given the fact they weren't seen with the Feministas earlier, not even in Leela's first mission with them, let's assume they joined right after Leela did. Anyway, when they joined this group, their personalities devolved into eco-extremists, a far cry from how we first knew them. But honestly, their inclusion in the Feministas felt unnecessary and forced. Why them, of all characters? A better pick could have been other females like Hattie and Morgan Proctor, and Dixie and Trixie could have better fit the movie's later audience scene. But after that, they became just as cruel as the other Feministas (because, let's face it, and I'm sorry to say this: nearly everyone in the main cast in the movie was heavily flanderized into caricatures of what they're supposed to represent in the movie), from jokes like Dixie showing her "pointy man-kicking boots" and Trixie going "Oh, those are cute!" to the implication they killed a rat to polish their nails with rat blood (what?!) in jail. But that doesn't matter, because what matters is how they get left behind (along with Linda and Petunia) by those idiots of Leela, Amy, LaBarbara, and Bender in the climactic prison escape scene, and while it's implied that Dixie and Trixie, along with Petunia and Linda, escaped off-screen, that just felt harsh. Why? Because while Petunia and Linda returned almost immediately in the regular Comedy Central episodes, Dixie and Trixie went missing again, and that honestly stung. But here's a fun fact: Dixie was now voiced by Tress MacNeille instead of Pam

Come July 18, 2012, and Comedy Central spectators could witness for the first time what could be only described as the very true middle finger to Dixie and Trixie's legacy; that's right, I'm talking about The Butterjunk Effect. This episode is all about Leela and Amy joining a roller derby, getting buffed up from some weird alien nectar, getting addicted to it, and becoming abusive to Fry and Kif, especially poor Fry as they try to kiss him repeatedly, right? Well, that's what gave the episode a mixed reception, but there's this one overlooked scene that stings harder than ItWGY: in one scene, Leela and Amy are in a roller derby battle against none other than Dixie and Trixie, and then, after Amy grabs a flying chair midair (seriously, what?!), and together, Leela and Amy knock them out brutally, with Amy hitting Dixie cold and Leela sitting in the chair to knock Trixie with one kick. The camera lingers on the defeated Dixie and Trixie as Dixie has hit the ground and now sports an anguished expression and then Trixie (also with an anguished face) falls over her, making Dixie let out a pain grunt and cause the audience to cheer for their defeat. Seriously, was that even NECESSARY?! Oh, but that's not all! Kif then praises Amy from the sidelines with a "That's my little sugar doodle!" which sounds more tone-deaf than... who knows. Amy then responds with "Cork your face bladder, I'm working!", causing Kif to say "Sorry" and then turn to Fry, telling him "I had that coming", before Fry crosses his arms, feeling kinda frustrated, and says "It's not easy being a derby wife" (Fry, weren't you wide eyed and confused moments earlier as Kif was praising Amy? What happened?), and then Abner Doubledeal shows up besides Leela and Amy, calling the latest fight a "bloodbath" and announces Leela and Amy's next match against the Murderflies. But let's be real here: earlier scenes showed up glimpses of other derby fighters, but Dixie and Trixie were nowhere to be seen, and after Leela and Amy brutally take them down, they never return in the episode. Moreover, they are never referred to by names in the episode, yet their appearances make them instantly recognizable. This makes me think they were added to the episode as plain filler or something. Either way, you decide how do you view Dixie and Trixie's sudden and random addition to the episode, if as disposable props or part of Leela and Amy's arc

Fast forward to the Hulu run, and we got any improvement? Not one, really. You got Trixie making an unexpected solo appearance in the episode One is Silicon and the Other Gold, in that Infyrno Fest commercial. Her solo return scene personally caught me off guard, but that's another story. The scene in the commercial showed her dancing inside a pill, and then a larger version of it swallowed it, then the larger version is in another pill that another larger version swallows, in a nutshell, it repeats on loop. And it gets faster with each swallowing that it then makes Bender's head explode. But what about Dixie? Across the 20 episodes of the Hulu run we've got as of late 2024, she's nowhere to be seen, which raises a lot of questions about her status. Is she dead? Comatose? Alive but MIA? While fans accept Dixie's status as alive, the fact that she didn't show up again after The Butterjunk Effect is compounded by how the show's canon offers no concrete answers or implications to her status, further reinforcing the idea that the crew didn't even knew what to do with those two after their Slurm days ended. I can already imagine Slurms MacKenzie rolling over in his grave over seeing how his party girls went under a hard de-evolution (by the way, I hope that Slurm commercial from The Impossible Stream featured an impersonation of Slurms rather than the real one!), and it's not hard to think that if Pam ever knows about how her character has been mishandled, she would be shocked and angry I guess.

But until then, we have to be optimistic. Futurama's been renewed at Hulu until at least 2026, so I think this could open the door to seeing Dixie returning at any time over the next 20 episodes (in 2025 or 2026). Because if the show managed to bring back Umbriel from The Deep South if she never appeared in the Comedy Central run, it's not hard to bring back Dixie, even if it's just a small cameo form. This would mean the world for those who really cared about her and Trixie as part of Slurms MacKenzie's legacy, and that would be good

Until then, here's to seeing Dixie get the justice she finally deserves....