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I have to iterate that from what I have seen so far, this is a seriously good series. I would hesitate to judge somebody for being less interested in it, though. Even if you have nothing against comedies, the formula of rapid-fire jokes may be more mind-numbing than entertaining. It is not like the dramedy King of the Hill, which heavily favors realism in both pacing and setting, or the film Wrong, which takes its time as it delivers its bizarre yet strangely plausible jokes (and I like both King of the Hill and Wrong, by the way). These scripts have a style that not everybody with a sense of humor is going to find appealing. And that’s okay!
There is something that has been bothering me for a while now, though. Here is what one reviewer said of the show:
Instead of laying down funny stuff to a simple plot, Futurama relies on making a funny plot prevail throughout the episode. It doesn’t work. My attention span, as well as everyone else’s, is not capable of allowing it to work. We demand boom boom boom funniness.
Having watched three seasons now, I find this criticism utterly baffling. It is rare for Futurama to go more than one minute without cracking a joke, and some of the jokes are not even essential to the plot, so I am curious to see how someone could reach this conclusion. (Given that he wrote that criticism almost two decades ago, it is unlikely that he remembers.) Anybody who knows what he is talking about is more than welcome to help me.
Now then, it’s time to shut up and talk about this season!
Amazon Women in the Mood: Ugh… not a good start to the season.
At first, this episode seems okay: I can certainly sympathize with Kif struggling against the twin demons of social anxiety and social awkwardness, and I was almost fascinated looking at the Amazons’ monogendered matriarchal society. Nevertheless, the story goes downhill when the Amazons agree to punish Fry, Zapp, and Kif with ‘snu snu’ (sexual contact), provoking mixed reactions from Fry and Zapp but complete negativity from Kif. I don’t care if the showrunners had innocent intentions: this is a rape joke and it contributes to the toxic stereotype that men always want sex.
I understand why it is supposed to be funny: we hear incongruous combinations of pleasure and pain from both Fry and Zapp behind closed doors, and even today there remains a common assumption within society that being raped by women is no big deal, so it wouldn’t make for a horrible punishment. But the problem is not that I don’t ‘get it’. The problem is that the joke relies on society’s unhealthy misconceptions of rape and sex to work.
The more that I think about it, the more disgusted that I feel.
In conclusion: while I have seen worse than this, I find this episode hard to recommend.
Parasites Lost: I was pleasantly surprised when Fry told Leela ‘I love you’ without any interruption. I was expecting him to have an emergency before he could spell that out. The creators still managed to ‘qualify’ this surprise, though.
This may well end up being my favourite entry in the season. There is the first quest that the Planet Express undergoes in Fry’s body, Fry’s transformation into a perfect gentleman, Leela sabotaging the quest to cure Fry, the developing romance between Fry and Leela, Fry’s quest to find out if Leela truly loves him or the parasites controlling him—the entire thing is grand. It would have been easy to make this a straightforward mission to fix Fry (or, less likely, keep the parasites forever), but the showrunners did not take the easy way out here, and I love it.
The only negative is that there is a little more gross-out humor than usual, but if you can get past that hurdle, you are in for one hell of an episode. Highly recommended!
A Tale of Two Santas: Another Xmas episode that I like! Here we see Santa Claus’s lair for the first time, and it suits him perfectly: a bellicist’s dystopian dictatorship. Nevertheless, Leela manages to subdue Santa and Bender unwillingly becomes his benevolent substitute. The trouble is, everybody on Earth mistakes him for the real Santa Claus and treat him accordingly. This makes Santa Claus’s belligerence slightly easier to understand!
This is an unusual example where I have to say that the first half is the better one. The latter half is still good, but I found it less interesting than seeing Santa’s lair for the first time, and seeing numerous characters harshly mistreat Bender is mildly uncomfortable to watch (even though Bender is a jerk at times, including later in this story where he teams up with the real Santa to cause havoc). Still, this is a good episode, and the lesson at the end—that fear can breed unity—is pretty sweet.
The Luck of the Fryrish: This story nearly had me in tears at the end. Philip Fry’s older brother, Yancy, resents him from the moment of infancy and repeatedly copies him from sports to dancing. This supports Philip’s assumption that Yancy must have taken the name Philip (like Yancy originally wanted) and willingly stole his ultrarare seven-leaf clover.
At the end…
…when Philip Fry and his friends Leela and Bender visit a cemetery to rob a relative’s grave, Philip Fry learns that Yancy never stole his name at all, and did not always hang onto the seven-leaf clover either. Rather, Yancy named his newborn son Philip in honor of his brother, whom he missed very much, and he passed the clover down to him. In a way, all of the fame and glory that Philip’s nephew presumably ‘stole’ from him was really in honour of him. In return, uncle Philip leaves the clover in his nephew’s grave where he found it and lets go of his grudge.
It’s a very sweet ending that redeems Yancy, shows how maturity changes people, and implies that Yancy might have emulated his little brother more out of admiration than resentment.
Although it sounds like the ending does the heavy lifting, there is plenty of good stuff in the middle, too. Many of the jokes work, like Farnsworth stating the obvious (‘Dirt doesn’t need luck!’), Leela remains the voice of reason, and Bender’s mischief is charming in its own depraved way. The story has more emotion than usual, but in other respects it feels much like any other episode in the series.
This episode is nothing short of excellent. Highly recommended.
The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz: Another timely episode, sadly, given the recent history of oil spills and ineffectual protests. (On the other hand, petrol in the fourth millennium? Really…? Eh, whatever.)
There seems to be a message here that environmentalism is harmful. That may be true on occasion, but if the showrunners are saying that it is always or usually harmful then they’re being grossly unfair. I hope that that wasn’t their point! Otherwise, this episode is fine.
Bendless Love: I feel like I should dislike Bender for his irrationality and manipulation, but I can’t. There is something about him—maybe his better moments with Angleyne, or maybe his selfless if misguided intentions here—that keep me from resenting him.
Uncool fact: Angleyne’s voice actor—Jan Hooks—expired thirteen years after they published this episode, and this was Hooks’s only contribution to the series.
Otherwise, this is another good episode, and it is solid evidence that Bender is a more nuanced and stylish character than an obnoxious bore like Eric Cartman.
If I had one gripe, it is that they could have done more with the robots going on strike, which is a pity since we don’t get many good episodes in either this cartoon or other television programs about organized labor, but this story is good for what it is.
The Day the Earth Stood Stupid: In this hilarious episode, we see Fry use his unimpressive intellect to foil an alien brain’s quest for world domination. It is a surprising twist and a quaint lesson that one need not be ingenious to be heroic. I love the jokes here, like the mayor responding to a train wreck by simply sending in more trains. Highly recommended!
That’s Lobstertainment!: I would have been more interested if this story kept following Dr. Zoidberg’s want of comedic talent, but instead we get a family episode where Dr. Zoidberg struggles to redeem his Ashkenazi-coded father. I can’t say that I felt heavily invested in this relationship, but all in all, this episode is okay.
The Cyber House Rules: Leela learns to accept herself for whom she is, and Bender learns that he is too irresponsible to raise children.
This story is all right. I feel like I should have more to say about it given its important messaging, but the moral about accepting our appearances is not something that I find mindblowing. I could gripe about how this episode does not show the long-term consequences of bullying (unless you count getting cosmetic surgery), but it is adequate for what it is.
Where the Buggalo Roam: Here we finally get a Kif-centred story, and he shows off his knowledge and… incoherent courage. It is certainly nice to see him do more than be Zapp Brannigan’s scapegoat. So if you don’t sympathise with Amy’s parents, that’s fine, because the attraction here is seeing how the pedantic, weak, and socially awkward Kif survives the wilds and rescues his lover.
This is a mostly fine episode, but aside from how it is ickier than usual, you might find the martians too cringeworthy, since they are very clearly coded as Native Americans of some sort. Disappointingly, none of the voice actors is Native American either: Billy West voices most of them and Tress MacNeille voices the female ones. So I certainly would not judge anybody for despising this episode.
Insane in the Mainframe: I love this story. Due to a want of room in human asyla, the authorities place Fry in an asylum for automata. The employés all insist that he must be in the correct building, and Fry’s friends are of little help. Soon, Fry actually believes that he is an automaton, and he unintentionally frustrates his co-employés. Fry eventually reecounters the criminal who framed him, but because this criminal is also out of touch with reality, the duel is surprisingly easy. When Fry notices that he bleeds like we do, he returns to normal.
I was in a mental hospital once, and while it was not traumatic like Fry’s, I can’t say that I enjoyed the experience either. It is tempting to suggest that there is a commentary here on how inadequate mental hospitals in the U.S. are, but I doubt that that was intentional. What I really like is how this story shows Fry rescuing his friends in spite of his delusion. Too many sane people demonize minds like mine as untrustworthy or dangerous, and this story complicates that stereotype. This story is not as great as The Ninth Configuration, a film that deals with mental illness in a more interesting manner, but it is worthwhile all the same.
The Route of All Evil: There is more than one newspaper business in the fourth millennium…? Oh well, let’s roll with it. As always, there are some good moments herein: Cubert Farnsworth’s wisecracking clone still amuses me, and Hermes’s son is quite a reliable sidekick. Since the boys outperform their fathers, the fathers learn a lesson about being more respectful of their children. This episode is all right.
My favorite part: the newspaper turret in the latter half.
Bendin’ in the Wind: This episode is okay. Bender thinks that he has become permanently disabled but lucks out when somebody teaches him to make music with a disability aid. It turns out that his disability was permanent, and he unsuccessfully tries to hide this from his permanently disabled fans, who later pursue him in rage. I could most well be missing the point, but the lesson seems to be that nobody should constantly pretend to be disabled: a good moral but not one that many people need (or so I hope).
Time Keeps on Slippin’: The main characters disrupt the flow of time by messing with some particles, resulting in a joke where the scenes fast-forward to points in the near future. The interruptions are kind of funny, but most people would be more interested in the romantic plot: Fry briefly succeeds at marrying Leela, then they divorce, and Fry thinks that the reason that she fell for him was all of the effort that he put into writing the message ‘I LOVE YOU, LEELA’ in outer space. Sadly for him—and us—a black hole erases the message and nobody else gets to see it.
There is a clue earlier in the story that this might have been the wrong answer, as Leela mentioned how her problem with Fry is his childishness, and of course they ended up divorcing anyway, so the message’s erasure was not quite as tragic for me as it was for others. In any event, this is another worthwhile episode.
I Dated a Robot: This episode is hilarious. We start out with a funny, fast-paced parody of The Twilight Zone before getting into the subject matter of using an automaton as a substitute for a lover. This story might have aged better than anybody anticipated, as humans using A.I. as substitutes for relationships is becoming increasingly possible. We then get scenes where the main characters have to fend off an army of robotic celebrities, and Fry learns an important lesson about loving a real person over the image thereof.
Highly recommended, but one more observation: I was unaware until reading a comment section that that Scary Door segment referenced numerous Twilight Zone episodes in the span of one minute. It is another great example of how the way that the writers deploy pop-culture references is funny even when you have no idea that they were referencing anything at all.
A Leela of Her Own: This story has suddenly made me curious about the relations between Jews and Italian-Americans.
One thing that dissatisfies me is how quickly the plot went from improving an immigrant’s restaurant to teaching them a sport, and no-one notices this awkward transition. What the heck? The immigrants do reappear a couple of times, but in both cases they are inessential to the story. It’s like the first draft was about a restaurant and this was all that was left.
Anyway, this story is about how Leela (very quickly) becomes a sports star, not by skill, but by how consistently she hits the pitchers. Her incompetence is unclear until Jackie Anderson tells her. At first I thought that Leela’s problem was how she indulged in the commercialism. It turns out that repeatedly injuring pitchers makes you a lousy player!
The lesson is interesting: even though Leela becomes the new worst blernsball player in history, her example inspires women to do better than her. There may be some wisdom in this: retired NHL defenceman Bill Mikkelson is infamous for having the worst plus/minus rating in single-season NHL history, yet his daughter Meaghan Mikkelson has won numerous gold and silver medals for her hockey-playing. I can’t say if her father’s abysmal record inspired her to atone for anything, but it certainly did not stop her!
This episode is okay. Some of the jokes are good (like the team of ambulances at the blernsball field), and it has a bold message to offer, but the script is also a bit of a mess. It certainly does not approach the incoherence of ‘Kill the Alligator and Run’, but it still feels like there was a story in here that someone wasted.
A Pharaoh to Remember: I love how ambitious this story gets in the later half. Bender becomes a pharaoh and has thousands of slaves construct an absurdly big monument to him complete with voice lines—and once it’s finished he decides that they need to start all over! Not even his closest henchmen put up with that, so they bury him and, for some reason, Leela and Fry along with him.
After they escape from the burial site, Bender learns that people shall remember him for his tyranny rather than a monument, so he hilariously plots to conquer Earth. At first the lesson sounds unnecessary, but then you unforget about the arguments used to defend Confederate statues… so, in conclusion, this is another good episode.
Anthology of Interest II: The first segment is about Bender literally becoming human. This only causes him to overindulge in his vices and we get some ‘hur hur, fat people’ jokes at the end. I did not ‘hate’ this tale but I could understand someone else feeling that way.
The next tale is the classic question of what life would be like if it were more like a video game. In this case, most of the video games that they reference come from the 1980s, but some of the jokes still work, like Fry assigning his score to the initials ‘ASS’ (don’t tell me that you never thought of trying that). While I never laughed out loud here, this segment is nevertheless charming.
Our final tale is the funniest. Leela dreams about The Wizard of Oz, only she turns out to be more mischievous than the real Dorothy, coveting the rôle of a witch. It is a good parody that subverts the course of the film, and I think that most of the jokes would work well if you have never heard of The Wizard of Oz, like Scruffy’s apathy and Amy’s misadventure. All in all, this is another worthwhile episode.
Roswell that Ends Well: Another episode that I (vaguely) remember watching on Adult Swim. We learn more lore about Fry’s family (which, to my surprise, is perfectly compatible with what we learned in ‘The Luck of the Fryrish’), and the story gets hilarious in the last quarter, when Farnsworth explicitly says ‘Screw history!’ and Planet Express tears up Roswell. It is odd that the showrunners did not use the actual microwave oven invented in 1947, but that is more of a curiosity than a gripe. In any event, recommended.
Godfellas: In this story, we see Bender experiencing what it is like to be divine, as he clumsily cares for a tiny civilization that made its new home on his torso. After the civilisation perishes from war, Bender then meets another being—possibly G-d—and they become acquainted. Meanwhile, Fry struggles to recover his friend, and it is nearly heartbreaking how badly he wants Bender back.
This is a fun episode. At first it looks like another that deals extensively with religion, but it is more about monotheism. It humorously deals with questions about why the Almighty can intervene neither too much nor too little, and it is easy to interpret the script as ultimately taking an agnostic position on theism. So whether you strongly doubt G-d or not, you should enjoy this episode.
Future Stock: Judaism in the first two minutes! I like this story already.
That aside, most of this is about business competition and how it inhibits our relationships. It also illustrates how difficult it is to resist a corporation buying out its competition. It is all too tempting to interpret this script as anticapitalist, but apart from that likely being unintentional, the characters do not offer any long-term solutions (unless you think that deliberately keeping a business’s value down counts). You don’t need a grasp of stock markets to enjoy this episode.
The 30% Iron Chef: Bender comes across as especially unreasonable in the beginning, but his journey to redemption is entertaining to watch, featuring a montage where a rejected chef trains him and he competes with the most famous cook in the galaxy. We also get a funny subplot where Zoidberg frames his friend Fry but later suffers excessive guilt. I could gripe about how this is an odd choice for a season finale, but overall this episode is good.
As with the last seasons, nearly everything here is worth watching. The only entries that I find hard to recommend are ‘Amazon Women in the Mood’ and maybe ‘Where the Buggalo Roam’. They have their moments, but the prominent themes of carnal abuse and corny ethnic humour make them tempting to skip. You may argue otherwise, if you wish.
I hope that this review didn’t bore you to death, and I look forward to reviewing season 4. Until next time, be vigilant!