Futurama Episodes

The staff writers and show runners for Futurama aren’t your typical batch of comedy nerds or egghead wordsmiths.

They are a level-up in smarts and braininess. Their frontal lobe contains deep, complex knowledge on scientific and mathematical concepts that could make even the smartest AP calculus student switch his major to English.

Their scripts and sets contains tons of hidden “in-jokes” that only a handful of mathematicians and physicists would find remotely interesting. Tonight’s episode took an entire theory and wrapped it completely around the plot and the truly genius part of it was that even a dumba** like me could enjoy it.

On the surface, it appears to be just a typical character-switching episode that would have been thrown on the “Jump the Shark” scrap heap, if that scrap heap hadn’t been sold, recycled and sacrificed to the gods of TV Guide long ago. The Professor unleashes a mind-switching machine on his usual gang of idiots, aliens and whatevers and, as they say in the business, chaos ensues.

Instead, it turns into a multifaceted, complex and layered adventure with more characters switching brains and bodies and pairing each other up in some very clever and comic situations. ‘Futurama’ has done this since the dawn of its dawn-like title screen, utilizing very simple methods (the famed “Tales of Interest” episode that had the characters rewriting scenarios with the “What If?” machine) to the complex (the “Three Hundred Big Boys” episode). It takes a very simple concept and turns it on its head over and over until it can’t tell what its neck is on its shoulders or sticking out of its crotch and somehow, it manages to bring them all together in the most twisted bit of literary surgery since ‘The Human Centipede.’

Last night’s episode took this not-so-simple concept one step further. Ken Keeler, the twisted mind who wrote the episode, actually the plot around a theorem on group theory that he created, something that’s no small feat for him since he also has a PhD in mathematics, according to the American Physical Society. The article doesn’t explain exactly how the theorem works or how it fits into the episode, but that’s probably because it makes us normals’ brains explode and ‘Futurama’ still needs all the viewers it can get.

The beauty of it is it didn’t make the episode less enjoyable or harder to watch it because it was so complex. In fact, the sheer madness of having to switch brains and bodies from their abnormal to their normal state sucked me into the gripping conclusion. It found new ways to f#*$ with my mind. Even as I was watching it, I knew this brain-switching business had to be based on some complex equation or mathematical theory that I couldn’t possibly understand without the use of flash cards and that just made me want to watch it again.

Of course, the fact that it still manages to be pretty damn funny also helped. The level of deep complexity over concepts I could barely understand may have sucked me in, but its usual caliber of clever comedy made me want to stay. It proves that television comedy doesn’t have to sacrifice brains in order to score laughs.

In other words, it was the quintessential ‘Futurama‘ adventure.

It’s always nice when a television sitcom can manage to be funny and still have something interesting to say. It’s like getting a delicious ice cream cone and discovering a healthy stalk of broccoli inside of it.

Last night’s episode of Futurama took on the never-ending heated debate between science and creationism in a way that not only got in a couple of good swipes at either side, but did so in a way that didn’t detract from the meat of the meatbags’ main conflict.

The Planet Express team, who still seem to spend every waking minute doing things except delivering packages, took on the creationist movement, led by science guy Dr. Farnsworth, to find the “missing missing link” in man’s evolutionary structure. When the snooty Dr. Banjo one-upped Dr. Farnsworth’s one-up, he left Earth for a lifeless planet and accidentally unleashed a brand of evolving robots. The whole structure of the planet seemed destined for a pro-science ending, but it ended with a very interesting dual symmetry of the setup plot that shows no one theory on either side is perfect without beating you over the head with a beaker or a Bible.

The philosophical side of the episode didn’t utilize as much humor as the action packed side, featuring the crew in a rapidly evolving robot world designed to perfectly parody “One Million B.C.,” from robotic dinosaurs down to Amy’s skimpy two-piece cavewoman suit. I’ve always loved how ‘Futurama’ tries to make jokes out of things that only a small core of their audience can appreciate and doesn’t worry about pleasing everyone with every bit or plot device. It makes you feel like you’re sharing inside jokes with your nerdy little buddies without the pain and humiliation of real life.

The subplot between Cubert and Zoidberg, Cubert’s godfather, didn’t attach itself to the main plot other than they were the two characters who got left behind, so it didn’t feel necessary except to fill time and keep the main plot from getting too stale. It wasn’t particularly funny and just made me wish it would get back to the battling robotic dinosaur action faster. However, Cubert’s mistaking the word “loser” for “Zoidberg” gave me another laugh, even if it made loser — I mean Zoidberg — cry again on the inside.

In fact, just about all of the little jokes from the “Wozniak” school sign reference to Bender’s new found time to learn how to knit (if you didn’t see them, you really missed out) had a clever sense of humor and timing. ‘Futurama’ always had the best methods for taking a bad situation and making it hilariously worse.

It’s far from the best episode of the season, but that’s still saying a lot for a show that has managed to find new ways to stay fresh while it’s been in the can for so long.

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Futurama Season 7 Episode 8 : ‘Futurama’ is one of those rare shows that can find a lot of common ground in silliness and sweetness.

It can mine great humor from sheer cartoon insanity and still manage to turn into something that can warm your heart and make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, like your organs have been fitted with their own custom Snuggies (Snuggans? Orggies?).

It even managed to be just as entertaining and sweet this week, despite the fact that most of the episode centered around the cult-like ways of cats and general cat-dom.

And yes, before you gripe, I’m a dog person.

I have nothing personal against cats. They just seem so aloof and unloving that they harbor some kind of evil or dark side, like they’ve been plotting some big plan to overtake their human overlords all this time. Dogs could never pull this off. If dogs were planning to take over the world, all it would take is a squeaky toy or a dangling leash pulled out of a kitchen drawer to stop them from pulling the trigger on the death ray. That’s what made cats such perfect foibles for this week’s episode.

This time, cats turned out to be the evil race of aliens bent on destroying the Earth to save their own measly, cat-fancied planet of cush-terra and fish that act like chickens. The set up to the big reveal might have been spoiled by the ads, something Comedy Central could have avoided if they just used the setup portion of the plot to plug the show, but the twist was actually quite clever.

The episode had all sorts of little touches that made the plot work beautifully, like the opening scenes of Amy going for her doctorate at Mars University. Professor Katz turned out to be just a giant puppet being controlled by the evil cat in his lap, but you might have noticed that Katz and Dr. Katz (not the one in Squigglevision) had a scary sense of synchronicity. Wherever Dr. Katz looked, the cat in his lap followed like a ventriloquist controlling his puppet in order to trick the audience. Only this time, it was actually funny.

There also seemed to be more jokes crammed into this episode than previous efforts that focused more on using plot and structure to the drive the humor. That’s not a bad thing. In fact, it’s harder, and they made it work for the most part, like the “Must haz cat to enter” sign reference to “I Can Haz Cheeseburger” (the “asterik” bit that Bender made came so far out of left field that it had its own gravitational pull, don’t make me repeat it). Making individual bits of humor that still fit around the main story is more challenging than it looks. If it wasn’t, every show would be like ‘Family Guy.’

It was also nice to watch an Amy-heavy episode that didn’t involve her “Kiffy.” Kif Kroker is an interesting and funny character, but it was starting to get a little nauseating watching him and Amy play the sappy couple who are so in love with each other that they are willing to flaunt it in every human being’s face, short of buying a billboard to further their lovey-dovey message of love. Pairing her up with Nibbler, who spent most of the episode in his intelligent being form, was also a nice twist since most sub-character episodes usually just stick with one character throughout the whole affair. They did the same thing by pairing Bender and Hermes in the very touching ‘Lethal Inspection’ episode. In any other show, this would be a nuisance, but since ‘Futurama’ has almost as big of a character universe as ‘The Simpsons,’ the idea has a lot more mileage.

The ending also added a nice touch of sweetness to the whole adventure that wrapped up the main story nicely and drew some surprising “Awwws” out from the repaired relationship between Leela and Nibbler. And how can anyone not go “awww” over that little pooper-doodle? Even an angry cat-hater like me went “awwww.”

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Anyone who has ever said that the new Futurama episodes could never live up to the epic awesomeness of their seasonal predecessors can officially (according to the National Endowment for the Bureau of Determining Who Can Suck It) suck it.

Last night’s time-tripping paradox through the ends and beginnings of time and back again had everything that make a ‘Futurama’ episode great: lots of heart, deep and complicated plots and jokes that don’t suck.

It also finally addressed the slowly building love affair between Fry and Leela, something that felt like it should have been doing from day one (more like day 1.3). The wait, however, has been worth it. Instead of rushing into the relationship like so many cheap prom dates, its absence helps build the tension to a nice simmer in order to present the very sweet and silly story I was treated to last night.

Time travel plots are a natural for ‘Futurama’ since the entire concept is wrapped in the enigma of time and the frailty of the human condition. They are an easy way to allow for layered jokes that build on a single concept to reach a ridiculous outcome and create a complex plot that doesn’t make your brain explode like a potato in a microwave.

The Professor invented a time travel device, but, of course, it can only travel forward and so Fry, Bender and Farnsworth are doomed to forever move forward through the future until they reach the infinite nothingness and beyond. I love how the whole episode had the feel of an epic space journey, something that’s been missing since the new episodes started. This certainly beats any other space mission the Planet Express team has taken in the past or the future (although Bender’s short stint as a large metallic god comes pretty darn close). Heck, it beats just about every other epic journey in all of literature. This makes the ‘Journey to the Center of the Earth’ look like a road trip to Duluth, Minn.

The humor also had a great sense of construction. Punchlines led to more punchlines, and bits led to more bits, like the pure genius of the ‘Planet of the Apes’ reference that had Fry reenacting the iconic Charlton Heston “Damn you all to hell” scene to every future point on the evolutionary scale. It took a great concept and found new and funnier ways to build on it until the entire scene turned into an orgy of endorphin-producing laughter.

And since this was a time travel episode that takes place almost entirely in the same spot (the loading zone of the Professor’s laboratory), we hardcore ‘Futurama’ fans were treated to a whole host of inside jokes and references to episodes dating all the way back to the very first season. Even if you didn’t watch the show regularly enough to identify them all, it made you want to find out what they were all about. That being said, I’m glad they didn’t reference the ‘Bender’s Game’ DVD movie.

Of course, the crowning jewel on this comedy tiara was its unique and always surprising ability to show a lot of heart. Fry and Leela’s relationship has always felt like a great sense of struggle, even when they were close to sealing the deal. But now that they are together, they’ve found a new way to test it and even help each other grow in the ensuing emotional chaos.

However, the best and most enjoyable parts of the whole episode goes to (sing along with me!) “B-E-N-D-E-R! BENNNNNNDER! B-E-N-D-E-R! BENNNNNNDER! Saying B…E…N…DERRERRRERRR (mute).” His character has never been more in tune this season than he was in this episode. His jokes were hilarious, and his ability to create chaos in the plot just by being himself did more than just help move things along. It completely sold the entire episode. So next time, when he’s bragging about his greatness and flinging narcissistic spitwads at every meatbag in the room, don’t buy the hype. Believe it.

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‘Futurama‘ always works best, in my mind, when it tackles the pop tech world. When the show struggled to stay on Fox, no other show would even go near the subject in fear of alienating their cool audience by discussing things that only members of the high school audio-visual club could understand without their eyes bleeding.

Apple needed to be taken down a peg or two and that’s coming from someone who is pounding out this article on a dusty old MacBook, listening to an Elvis Costello compilation on an iPod and watching his stocks sink into the Earth’s core on his iPhone.

This time, the “EyePhone” gets the sharp end of Matt Groening and David X. Cohen’s very sharp pointing stick and it works … for the most part.

It’s really the perfect target for ‘Futurama‘ because it represents an unrelenting encroachment of technology on our lives and how society just drools at its awesome shininess while overlooking its obvious flaws. Nothing sums up that theme better than Fry’s encounter with a “Mom Store” employee who describes the “EyePhone” as a device that comes with only one service provider and get lousy reception, as dumb ol’ Fry screams: “Shut up and take my money!” The old saying, “It’s funny because it’s true,” is true.

I was also happy to see the little funny touches that the writers and animators wrote into the background for us to find, like those tiny comic strips in the margins of ‘MAD’ magazine. Things like the bird flying through the smoke stack and coming out as a skeleton not only make the show funny, but give me a reason to watch it again. I hoped I would see more of them in the earlier episodes … or did I just miss them?

Of course, the evil “Mom,” one of the most ingenious characters on the show, is behind all of this “EyePhone” infatuation and it turns into yet another plan for world domination with Bender and Fry in the middle. The two are in a “Twitcher” race to attract one million followers and the loser has to do a double somersault into a hot tub sundae of “Puke-Me-Poop-U” vomit/diarrhea, a lovely crude crack at the original ‘Doctor Dolittle’ and its Tibetan “Pushmi-Pullyu.” Mom plans to release a virus through one of the two in order to turn their followers into walking zombies. Then, it gets weird.

The whole episode takes a huge spin into “Druggachussettes” when Fry discovered the singing “boil” on Leela’s ass, a not-so-subtle crack at singing sensation and Internet heroine Susan Boyle. It’s certainly more creative than just turning one-eyed Leela into a surprisingly good singer (it also made a nice little trick as it lead up to that moment) but it goes so far over the top that it’s hard to find it really funny. Craig Ferguson’s surprise cameo as the voice of “Susan Boil,” however, was a riot.

It also gave me an excuse to stare at Leela’s ass for the last ten minutes of the show. (At least this time it was an integral part of the plot.)

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The real challenge of ‘Futurama’s’ return is one of precarious balance.

In order to survive (again), the show has to find a way to please the hardcore fans that have kept it everyone’s consciousness and bring in new fans who haven’t kept up with it.

For the fans, that means sacrificing some of the facets that made the original so much fun and relying more on humor that can reach the broadest possible audience. The second episode of the new season, fortunately and unfortunately, featured a healthy mix of the two, healthy in a “gym class sex lesson” kind of way.

The episode really felt devoid of the usual ‘Futurama’ staples like the rage against technology and little in-jokes that drive its main humor. It also relied a lot more on crude humor that seems to have become the norm for Comedy Central’s newer, homegrown shows (i.e. the horrific ‘Secret Girlfriend’). ‘Futurama’ isn’t above such humor like the penultimate “Spanish Fry” episode, but it also have to be clever and less predictable.

Zapp Branigan is a selfish, piggish and pathetic lump of a man who clearly seems over his head in every situation he encounters whether it’s destroying a squadron of evil brains or trying to make it with a woman (Matt Groening described him as what the actual William Shatner would be like if he were a starship captain). So his very nature made the so-called “twist” of the episode very predictable. Anyone could see the execution of Zapp’s plan coming, even if it took longer than normal (see? I’m not above crude humor).

The execution was still a lot of fun. Zapp and Leela are marooned on an Eden-esque planet after fighting off a giant “Death Sphere” (a clever crack at ‘Star Wars’) that censors anything objectionable in its path with a giant black glob of censor bars. Professor Farnsworth learns the “Sphere” is a really an out-of-control “V-Chip” satellite that crashed with an FCC satellite and the people of Earth have to hold back on the lovin’ until they can stop it.

It was nice to see ‘Futurama’ stick with its satirical roots. The best of the old episodes always had a touch of something that spoke out about something (i.e. global warming in “Crimes of the Hot,” environmental awareness in “A Big Piece of Garbage”). It really knew how to drive the episode, both on plot and humor, and it works here, for the most part.

Still, this episode lacked a real sense of cleverness and the things that make ‘Futurama’ so unique. That and Bender. He barely had a chuckle the entire show! Come on ‘Futurama,’ you can’t keep a good Bender down. Next time, I want to see the robot with a drink in his hand and a chuckle in his mechanical heart for the entire episode. The preview with the two headed vomiting goat is a promising start.

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