Tag: Tress MacNeille

Futurama Fridays – S7E25 “Stench and Stenchibility”

Zoidberg, of all people, finds love.

SUMMARY

Zoidberg (Billy West) has been online dating an alien woman named Zindy (Tress MacNeille). Fry, Bender, and Leela (West, John DiMaggio, and Katey Sagal) help Zoidberg clean out his dumpster and a bug bomb leads Bender to be discovered by Fry’s friend Randy (DiMaggio), who invites Bender to try tap dancing. Zoidberg buys some flowers for Zindy, but when she meets him, she can’t stand the way he smells and leaves him. Zoidberg tries to return the flowers to the florist, Marianne (Emilia Clarke), who reveals that she cannot give him a refund as she is broke. The pair are attacked by Roberto (David Herman), but Zoidberg’s stench drives him away. Marianne is impressed by his bravery, revealing she has no sense of smell, and the two begin to date. At the same time, Bender discovers that a six-year-old tap dancer with a heart condition named Tonya (Tara Strong) is his main rival. He attempts to defeat her through cheating, only for her to break his leg with a baton.

Ah, the traditional flower robbery.

Zoidberg is happy with Marianne, but she laments being unable to smell. Zoidberg agrees to give her a nose transplant after initially hiding it from her, even though it means that she will likely break up with him immediately. Bender asks for help with his broken leg, but Zoidberg is too busy prepping to do Marianne’s surgery. As Bender and Tonya try to compete, she mocks him mercilessly and ends up winning. In the middle of her award speech, she has a heart attack and dies. Bender dances on her corpse, but inadvertently revives her, causing the audience to love him. Marianne awakens and smells something horrible when Zoidberg brings her flowers, but she realizes that she hates the smell of the flowers, not Zoidberg. She points out that she loves the way Zoidberg smells, because she loves him. She becomes a garbage truck driver and they live happily ever after, I assume.

Skunks don’t actually smell bad if they don’t spray, but they can be ornery.

END SUMMARY

I genuinely love this episode because it finally gives Zoidberg the happy ending that he mostly deserves. It’s true that Zoidberg is sometimes a jerk, but most of the time he gets hit with a lot more than he has merited. He lives in a dumpster because he’s poor despite the fact that, according to Farnsworth, he’d be a great doctor if he was on any planet other than Earth. Even more, he’s only here because he’s friends with Farnsworth, despite the fact that Farnsworth doesn’t pay him enough to live indoors. It’s really sad when you think about it, particularly since we’ve had multiple episodes about Zoidberg being forever alone. This episode finally gives him happiness and does it in a genuinely sweet way, especially when you realize that he is willing to sacrifice his relationship to help the woman he loves. As the penultimate episode, this one gives us closure on Zoidberg and that just leaves Fry and Leela for the finale.

If you can’t smell, your sense of taste is muted, so I hope he went cheap on the wine, too.

I will also add that I think the subplot about Bender fighting a young tap dancer who Tonya Hardings him is hilarious. Bender, who is a vicious competitor and an outright criminal, still calls her a monster and, moreover, appears to be correct. It’s hilarious to watch Bender be outdone by a small child. It’s even funnier to watch him dance on the dead body of a small child and for him to be horrified that he accidentally resurrects her. It’s really among the lowest things Bender has ever done, although it does lead to their odd friendship and partnership. 

Two evil monsters.

Overall, solid episode. One more to go!

FAVORITE JOKE

The bug bombs that they use to get rid of the roaches in Zoidberg’s dumpster are called “Hal’s Roach Bombs.” This is a reference to Hal Roach, the director of several Laurel and Hardy films, as well as the creator of the Our Gang series, better known now as The Little Rascals. The bug bomb’s slogan is, hilariously, “Kills the Little Rascals.” Look, if you can’t laugh at jokes about killing characters from the 1920s, what can you laugh at?

Bender might think it’s a bit uncouth.

See you next week, meatbags.

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Futurama Fridays – S7E22 “Leela and the Genestalk”

Leela’s going through changes and Fry is determined to help her.

SUMMARY

Leela (Katey Sagal) discovers that she is breaking out in suction cups. It turns out that her mutation is accelerating through a process called squidification, meaning that she will soon be transformed into a mass of tentacles. There is no cure for the condition, but there is a surgery which can prolong the tentacles for a few months. To pay for the surgery, Fry (Billy West) is sent to sell “Bessie,” the Planet Express ship. However, Fry meets a con artist who trades the ship for some “magic” beans. When Fry returns, the Professor (West) is so angry he knocks the beans out of the window. Naturally, they grow into a colossal beanstalk. Leela, who was going to run away, instead climbs the beanstalk and finds a castle filled with strange creatures before being captured by Mom (Tress MacNeille). It turns out the castle is a genetic engineering facility where Mom creates beanstalks that ostensibly can feed the poor. Leela is imprisoned.

Let’s be fair, if you saw this, you’d climb it too.

After a few weeks, Fry and Bender (John DiMaggio) are hit by Leela’s falling boots and fly up to Mom’s castle to find Leela. Unfortunately, Leela has now been transformed into a mass of tentacles. While trying to escape, the trio encounter a giant bound to an operating table. Leela frees the captive, only to be chased by him until they escape down the giant’s sink. Leela confronts Mom and unsuccessfully tries to destroy the facility before the three escape. Later, Mom thanks Leela for “lending” her DNA. The giant is revealed to be cured of his gigantism thanks to Mom and that Leela’s DNA have made the beanstalks perfect. Leela protests the genetic modification until Mom offers to cure her, which she immediately accepts.

Genetic Engineers don’t usually live in castles.

END SUMMARY

This episode is yet another entry into the “we’re building up to the finale” series, but this one was actually created to answer an animator error. In the second season of Futurama, when you see Leela’s mom Munda, she has normal human arms. In the second season, Munda has tentacles. This episode seems to have been created just because people kept pointing out this error to the showrunners and they wanted to say “see, we had a point the whole time!” In any case, this episode does a decent job exploring Leela’s feelings towards her history, a thing that has been a big part of her story arc and finally helps her move past it so that she’s ready to find something new in her life in the finale. 

Kinda ridiculous, since almost no one even saw them in that first episode.

The other thing this episode does really well is the Momsanto corporation. There are strange creations everywhere, representing the nightmarish fears that people have of genetic engineering. In this show, Leela represents the cautious party who thinks that toying with nature is inherently a bad idea. However, like many of those people in real life, that caution is eliminated the moment that genetic engineering provides them with a cure to their own problems (you know, like how it has fed billions of people or cured various diseases). It’s not that Leela’s wrong to encourage caution about genetic research, she’s absolutely right to do it, but even evil companies like Monsanto (sorry, MOMsanto) do occasionally provide benefits to all mankind. They’re still evil, to be sure, but the people who are able to be fed probably don’t see it that way.

Line dancing survives another millennium. Why.

Overall, solid episode. Can’t believe we’re so close to the end. 

FAVORITE JOKE

Okay, this is a legit tie. First: While climbing the building into Monsanto using Leela’s “hair” tentacles, Fry and Bender pass a window that has Adam West and Burt Ward in it. Adam West is a man-bat and Ward is a robot with Robin’s coloring. The entire scene is a reference to the times that Batman and Robin would interact with celebrities while climbing up buildings. They even have Ward say “Holy Rapunzel, Man-bat!” and call Fry and Bender a duo, though not a dynamic one. Just such a great cameo. 

Well, back to horrible experiments, old chum.

However, that cameo is matched by the fact that the pair later find Finn and Jake from Adventure Time chained to the wall of Momsanto’s dungeon. It’s a short scene and the only interaction is Jake asking “What time is it?” right before Bender says “Time for you to shut up!” The joke here is more about the fact that John DiMaggio voices both characters in a fairly similar way, leading people to compare the two, personality-wise. 

This is canon to Adventure Time… in my head.

See you next week, meatbags.

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Futurama Fridays – S7E17 “Fry and Leela’s Big Fling”

Fry and Leela take a vacation… with sexy results.

SUMMARY

Fry and Leela (Billy West and Katey Sagal) have been secretly trying to rekindle their relationship, but they keep getting interrupted by various things and people, whether it’s Bender (John DiMaggio) mugging them or Zoidberg (West) being their incompetent busboy. Even at Leela’s apartment, they can’t avoid Nibbler (Frank Welker). Leela gets a targeted advertisement for a resort that boasts total isolation and Leela gets a discount because she took a trip there before with her ex-boyfriend Sean (to Fry’s annoyance) (David Herman). When they arrive, they find that the previous people are still there, and that one of them is actually Sean, who interrupts them trying to be intimate. Leela tries to catch up with Sean, angering Fry, but it becomes clear she finds Sean uninteresting now. Fry picks a fight with Sean until Sean’s wife, Darlene (Tress MacNeille), pulls them apart and leaves with Sean. 

This. This is the ex she couldn’t get over for a decade. Yikes.

Meanwhile, Amy (Lauren Tom), Zoidberg, and Bender are sent to Simian 7, the planet of the apes, where humans are outlawed (Amy wears marmoset pajamas to pass). When they arrive, they run into Guenter (MacNeille) from Mars University, who takes them on a tour of the city. They eventually end up at the local Zoo where they discover that Fry and Leela’s resort is actually a zoo exhibit of humans. They visit the zoo director, revealed to be the Creationist professor Doctor Banjo (David Herman). He explains that the resort is how they keep humans on display without cruelty, driving his point home by showing them video of Fry and Leela mocking their coworkers. Banjo also sounds the alarm on Amy, who he recognizes, and the crew flee to try and save Fry and Leela before being eaten by a moon worm. A week later, they pass through the worm’s intestines, just in time to see Fry and Leela leave. When they arrive home, they plan on not telling Fry and Leela that they’d been a display until Fry and Leela start to mock them, leading Bender to tell them they were in a zoo.

END SUMMARY

This episode has one of my favorite endings, where Amy says “let ‘er rip” and the screen cuts to black, only to cut back to Bender shouting “YOU WERE IN A ZOO!” It’s a great fake-out that you’re not going to see the actual revelation and pretty much unique in the series. As to the actual plot, this is the start of what I feel like is the final push to wrap up the plotlines of the show, so it’s all about getting Fry and Leela back to the place where they could get a happy ending. It also finally shows us that Leela actually is over her oft-mentioned ex-boyfriend Sean, meaning that she really is ready to become serious with Fry and after he finally starts to get over his jealousy and immaturity, that Fry is ready to become serious with her. 

The romantic dinner was cute, to be fair.

The planet of the apes in this episode is a great gag. I like the reference to the movie, but the concept of a planet populated by the abused test monkeys that scientists have experimented on is what really sells it. Given how many times the Professor alone has alluded to killing or mutating monkeys (to the point that he can no longer notice the smell of burning rhesus monkey), this seems like a planet that was inevitable. It is interesting that some monkeys and apes appear to have naturally evolved to be sentient and capable of talking and that others were artificially enhanced (like Guenter). I appreciate that, regardless of how it happened, the planet actually has a more considerate zoo than Earth.

And this is the best boardroom ever.

Overall, solid episode, and it’s a good set-up for the finale.

FAVORITE JOKE

I hate everything about myself for what I am about to say, but it’s the advertisement on Simian 7 that says “BLUE ASS GROUP.” I love how many shots that this show has taken towards the Blue Man Group, but this parody is probably my favorite reference. It’s a group of Mandrills, meaning that they could easily have called it “BLUE MANDRILL GROUP” for the same joke, but they just ignored the pun and went straight for a big old picture of ape butts. Beautiful.

It’s… just so beautiful.

See you next week, meatbags.

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Animaniacs (2020): It’s Mostly Insany – Hulu Review

The Warner Brothers and the Warner Sister are back.

SUMMARY (Spoilers are essentially impossible)

Back in the ‘90s, they were in a very famous TV show. No, it’s not BoJack Horseman, it’s Yakko, Wakko, and Dot Warner (Rob Paulsen, Jess Harnell, Tress MacNeille). Then, in 1998, the show stopped and, aside from a film in 1999, the trio have mostly been gone from the public eye. However, since Hollywood is completely out of ideas, the trio have been brought back to run rampant all over the Warner Studios and society once more. They’re sharing a large amount of the billing with everyone’s favorite mice, Pinky and the Brain (Paulsen and Maurice LaMarche). Welcome to the new world, same as the old world, but a little wackier.

There are parodies galore.

END SUMMARY

It’s tough to review a reboot like this, because this show was a huge part of my childhood that it definitely has a huge nostalgia factor when evaluating, for better or for worse. On balance, I think it actually made me a little more critical of this show than I might have been. While the Warners and Pinky and the Brain have returned, almost no other characters return from the previous series, something that I think might be attributed to the fact that almost none of the writers or creators from the previous show returned. Yes, Steven Spielberg is still producing, but the creative teams for the shows are almost completely different. I guess after 22 years, everyone else had other stuff to do or wanted more money (or, sadly, had passed away). Because of that, while the show does have some of the feel of the previous series, it lacks some of the memorable characters and, rather than replacing them, mostly just focused on the Warners more. It’s tough to not miss the Goodfeathers or Slappy Squirrel. 

A few of the new characters work pretty well, though.

That said, the new show is still really, really funny. It’s definitely aiming for a more mature crowd than the original, with wordplay and references that would fly way over the heads of the average kid. Kids will still like it for the slapstick and the sight gags, though. The show definitely gets away with some dirty jokes, but if you are surprised by that, you clearly didn’t see the original Animaniacs. The fourth-wall breaks that were fairly frequent in the last show are moved up to an entirely new level of meta-humor at times and it is often great. They also fully embrace their tradition of bad jokes that are so bad they loop all the way around to hilarious. Many of the puns fit this mold exactly.

They do a lot of jokes about Spielberg.

I know a number of people have said that the show is pushing an agenda and I can only say that yes, they’re absolutely right. This show clearly disliked the Trump administration and they are not subtle about letting you know it. Compared to the relatively more “everyone’s a target” feeling of the original show, this probably will put some people off, but honestly it came up only a few times so you might not even notice.

Pinky and the Brain tend to be better this season than the Warners.

Overall, I really missed this series and I’m glad it came back. 

If you want to check out some more by the Joker on the Sofa, check out the 100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time, Collection of TV Episodes, Collection of Movie Reviews, or the Joker on the Sofa Reviews.

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Futurama Fridays – S7E9 “Free Will Hunting”

Bender tackles the eternal question and the answer is “find better engineers.”

SUMMARY

Bender (John DiMaggio) starts his day by deciding to wear nerd glasses. This leads him to get invited to a sorority party, which leads him to enroll in college, which leads to him getting student loans from the mafia. He then drops out of school, gets addicted to drugs, and vomits on the Hendonismbot (Maurice LaMarche) for money. Eventually, he’s arrested and put on trial, but his lawyer successfully argues that Bender, as a robot, lacks free will and therefore cannot make any decisions, negating mens rea. Bender is despondent over the revelation that he might not have free will, and, during a delivery to the robot home world, stays on the planet to try and figure out if he has free will. Eventually, he finds a robot temple where the robot monks have adopted a position that, while they are automatons, they can still be happy. Bender stays with the monks until he discovers that he has a “free will” slot created by Mom (Tress MacNeille) so that they could get free will upgrades. 

It was a very long day.

Fry (Billy West) misses Bender and complains to Leela (Katey Sagal), with whom he is once again romantically involved. Bender returns and convinces the pair to help him steal the free will unit prototype, reasoning that he does not have free will to commit the crime. They successfully get in, only to have Mom explain that she never had the prototype because the Professor (West) never finished it. Bender realizes that the Professor clearly did complete it and threatens him into giving it. However, the Professor reveals that Bender can’t hurt him, because the Professor programmed all MomCorp robots not to harm him. Seeing Bender sad, the Professor installs the free will unit in his head, which leads Bender to shoot the Professor in order to test it out. Bender is prosecuted successfully for the crime, much to his delight.

END SUMMARY

I think this is one of my favorite episodes of this show because it addresses a huge existential problem, whether free will exists, and manages to couch it in a funny parable by applying it to Bender rather than one of the other characters. As Amy (Lauren Tom) points out, no one is positive that humans even have free will, or if we’re just extremely convoluted mechanisms following intricate programming. Bender, naturally, just moves past that, but it does at least remind the viewer that everything Bender worries about in this episode has been contemplated by philosophers throughout the ages. As in the episode, some people get depressed over the unknowability of the answer, some are too busy to care, and some turn to religion or philosophy in order to be happy without knowing. Ultimately, though, this episode actually proposes that eventually science will be able to just tell us the answer or possibly even give us free will using Quantum Theory. It’s a very Futurama resolution.

Some of the better elements of this episode are the way that it highlights or even exaggerates many of Bender’s more human traits despite focusing on how he believes himself to be different than humans. Throughout the entire episode he’s prone to whimsy, then stuck in a need for self-discovery, and finally convinces the Professor not through logic, but through triggering his emotional empathy. Bender is at his least robotic during this episode and it works perfectly.

He suffers a lot from peer pressure, too.

Overall, just a great episode of Futurama. 

FAVORITE JOKE

Pretty much everything about the Robot Monastery. First off, the idea that robots, who confirm that they have no free will and thus should operate perfectly logically, end up using religion as a way to resolve their existential crisis is inherently hilarious. Second, they read from “The Whole eBook,” rather than the Holy Book, which is a nice robot religion joke. Third, most of what the monks preach is based not on actual religious theory, but instead on the absurdist philosophy of Albert Camus, reinforced by the image of the monks working in an M.C. Escher setting. Last, the head abbot is named Ab-Bot, and that’s just fun.

It’s just fun.

See you next week, meatbags.

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Futurama Fridays: S7E5 “Zapp Dingbat”

Zapp Brannigan decides to date his ex’s mom.

SUMMARY

Leela (Katey Sagal) hosts a party for her parents’ 40th wedding anniversary. Unfortunately, as Leela talks about their lives, her mother, Munda (Tress MacNeille) becomes angry at her husband, Morris (David Herman), for never taking her into outer space. She’d always dreamed of seeing the universe, going so far as to get a degree in alien languages, while Morris just wanted to surf the sewers. This leads them to divorce quickly. Leela takes her mother out with Fry and Bender (Billy West and John DiMaggio) where they run into Zapp Brannigan (West), with whom Leela had a one-night-stand. Twice. Zapp almost starts an intergalactic war, but Munda’s knowledge of languages saves him. They soon begin dating, infuriating Leela. Zapp even hires Munda as his translator so they can travel the universe together. Morris goes on a surfing trip with Bender and Fry in order to cope with the divorce.

Surfing a tide of sewage. That’s a metaphor, probably.

Leela attempts to break up Zapp and Munda by seducing him, but he rejects her and proposes to Munda, who accepts. Fry convinces Leela to accept Munda’s decision and support her, but when Zapp reveals that he is planning to massacre a peace summit, Munda calls off the wedding. Unfortunately, she tells the aliens what Zapp intended, so they start shooting up the ship. The Nimbus’s controls are disabled, but Morris arrives and uses his surfing skills to help the ship ride the aliens’ energy wave attacks. Morris and Munda then remarry. 

This was an awkward moment on many levels.

END SUMMARY

This episode has one of the strangest title choices in the show’s entire run. “Zapp Dingbat” is a reference to Zapf Dingbats, a wingdings-like font composed entirely of symbols, as well as a reference to the fact that Zapp is an idiot. I’m thinking that the fact that it’s about a font relates to Munda’s study of alien language like the symbolic languages that the show used, but I still find it a bizarre choice. The working title of the episode was “Blue Munda,” which, honestly, is a much better choice. Blue Munda would be a reference to Blue Monday, a day in January which is considered the most depressing day of the year, which would reference the fact that Munda is depressed and wants change. It was also a song by New Order that contains multiple lines that could reference this episode. It’s like they had a solid idea then went with a bizarre pun instead. 

Although, she wasn’t the sad one in the divorce.

The idea of one of your exes, even just a person you had a brief fling with, dating a parent is probably horrifying to almost everyone. This episode combines that with a story about parents splitting up due to their differences. The former plotline feels a little forced, particularly since everyone in Leela’s circle of friends is aware that Zapp is an incompetent idiot and Munda doesn’t seem to be a fool herself. However, the latter actually makes a decent amount of sense. Munda has been dreaming of getting out of the sewers for most of her life, whereas Morris always seems to be happiest at home or with his friends. That’s been apparent since the reveal of their characters and throughout the series since. 

His negotiation with the shark people is also an example of his idiocy.

Overall, though, it’s an okay episode. 

FAVORITE JOKE

While I don’t think there are a lot of great stand-outs in this episode, I will say I always chuckle when Leela says “I don’t want to put a rat in your face cage, or whatever you kids say nowadays…” to her father. First, referring to her father, who is going through a midlife crisis as a kid is pretty funny, particularly since he just asked if he could call her “dude.” Second, Leela, who is herself not that old, using the phrase “whatever you kids say nowadays,” is ridiculous. Lastly, though, “rat in your face-cage,” which has never been an expression, is a reference to one of the most infamous scenes in George Orwell’s 1984, in which Winston Smith is threatened with having rats put in a cage around his cage which ends up breaking him of his independent worldview. Given that she wants her father to quit his new lifestyle and return to his previous state with Munda, this is an apt expression.

See you next week, meatbags.

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Futurama Fridays – S6E25 “Overclockwise”

Bender enhances his robotic intellect so much that he becomes nearly omniscient.

SUMMARY

Cubert (Kath Soucie), Fry (Billy West), and Bender (John DiMaggio) are playing a WWII combat game online, but keep losing badly to Walt, Igner, and Larry (Maurice Lamarche and DiMaggio), Mom’s (Tress MacNeille) idiot sons. Cubert says Bender is the weak link, something that Bender acknowledges due to his hardware being out of date. Cubert overclocks Bender’s CPU to compensate and Bender quickly becomes much more intelligent. Mom, discovering that Cubert violated Bender’s user agreement, sends an army of robots to reclaim him and has Cubert and the Professor (West) arrested. Bender manages to overclock his own secondary processor, making him smart enough to avoid Mom’s attacks and continually increase his own intellect. He leaves Planet Express to find seclusion from Mom. 

Graphics are a bit lackluster for 1000 years in the future.

At the same time, Fry and Leela (Katey Segal) are discussing their relationship when she starts to express doubt about the future. Eventually, when the Professor and Cubert are put on trial, Leela leaves Planet Express to go find a new purpose. Fry tries to find a new friend in Randy (DiMaggio), but ends up trying to kill himself by going over Niagara Falls. He survives and finds a cave containing Bender, who is now a mostly non-corporeal existence. Bender has hacked himself so much that he is now using reality as a processor, giving him essential omniscience. He informs Fry that Cubert and the Professor are going to be convicted and declines to explain if Fry and Leela will end up together.

Mom has pin-ups of herself. That’s disturbing and vain.

At the trial, the deliberations conclude, only for Bender to show up a few moments later. He is denied the opportunity to testify, but then mentions loudly that the Jury probably won’t convict Cubert. Mom makes the prosecutor drop the case against Cubert, but Bender then points out that Cubert and Farnsworth are the same person, legally, so dropping a case against one drops them both. He is then picked up by Mom’s robots and reset to his old intellect. Leela later comes back to see Fry and ask Bender about their future. It’s revealed that Bender wrote down how Fry and Leela will end up. The pair read it and, although the audience doesn’t see what it says, it indicates that the two will be happy.

END SUMMARY

This is the third of Futurama’s four finales along with “The Devil’s Hands are Idle Playthings,” “Into the Wild Green Yonder,” and “Meanwhile.” I’ve stated before that all of these are excellent episodes, but this one feels the least like an actual finale, possibly because it focuses the least on Fry and Leela, who really were the emotional core of the show. However, this episode is still excellent, even if the ending feels a little tacked on, as does the C plot of Leela questioning her and Fry’s relationship. Also, it’s weird that this isn’t the season finale, given that it was originally the series finale.

Hey, I just realized that the mutants can be jurors. That’s progress.

This episode does a good job of having the A and B plots both arise from the same incident, which is a useful narrative tool in sitcoms, particularly since they both sort of represent two different viewpoints on modern computing. Bender’s plotline involves overclocking his central processing unit, which is a term for attempting to increase a CPU’s clock rate, or how often a computer sends an electrical pulse to synchronize all its components. When this is increased it can theoretically make a component’s operating speed higher, but it risks causing overheating issues or power issues if not done properly. If it works, though, you can make parts exceed their factory settings. On the other side, though, most companies will either consider a part warranty void if the part is overclocked (which makes sense as it reduces the lifespan of the component), or, as in this episode, will require users to sign contracts stating they won’t overclock it. That policy, as is stated in this episode, is kind of crazy, because it means that a person who has a part in their computer cannot use it as they want without it potentially violating that agreement. Moreover, some software actually contains licensing agreements (remember, you don’t actually own your software, which is a discussion for another time) which ban the software from being run with overclocked parts. So, you can’t improve your own property. I appreciate that this episode addresses the issue in a funny way.

And yes, you probably have some of these right now.

Overall, aside from the part where Fry and Leela just spontaneously have a weird talk about being on-again off-again, this is a pretty great episode.

FAVORITE JOKE

I’m going to do two. First, the fact that Bender uses Niagara Falls as both a power source and a cooling source is a reference to an apocryphal prediction by a supposed “Professor of Electrical Engineering” from New York. If you take an electrical engineering class, you’ll probably hear some mention of a supposed professor from before the microchip was invented who predicted that supercomputers were impossible, because you’d need Niagara Falls to cool all of the Vacuum Tubes required. Nowhere on the internet have I even seen someone try to name this professor, which should tell you how real the quote is, but it still gets around. 

All is Bender. All will be Bender.

Second, one of the books that Bender reads is Ayn Rand McNally Atlas Shrugged. This is a combination of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and the classic Rand McNally Atlases. I love this one because, before this episode aired, I used the same joke at a trivia night I was hosting for a “Before and After” clue.

See you next week, meatbags.

PREVIOUS – Episode 100: Cold Warriors

NEXT – Episode 102: Reincarnation

If you want to check out some more by the Joker on the Sofa, check out the 100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time, Collection of TV Episodes, Collection of Movie Reviews, or the Joker on the Sofa Reviews.

If you enjoy these, please, like, share, tell your friends, like the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/JokerOnTheSofa/), follow on Twitter @JokerOnTheSofa, and just generally give me a little bump. I’m not getting paid, but I like to get feedback.

Futurama Fridays – S6E19 “Ghost in the Machines”

Bender dies and his spirit seeks revenge. Also, Ghostbusters.

SUMMARY

On Parade Day (the day with all the parades), Fry (Billy West) dives in front of a runaway float and saves a human, letting a robot die in the process. Bender (John DiMaggio) yells at him because this act indicates that Fry values human life more than robot life, something Fry admits is true. Bender threatens to kill himself, but the crew point out that he regularly says that and never does it. When he goes to the suicide booth, it turns out that the booth is Lynn (Tress MacNeille), one of Bender’s exes. Lynn kills Bender, leading the crew to believe that he really did commit suicide. 

Hence the takin’ off hats.

Unbeknownst to them, Bender is now a ghost. He doesn’t realize it at first, until the Robot Devil (Dan Castellaneta) tells him he’s dead and haunting the computational cloud. The Robot Devil offers Bender a deal: scare Fry to death and Bender gets to live again. If he fails, then he spends eternity in hell. Bender discovers that, although Fry can’t see him, he can possess technology and use it to scare Fry. The crew don’t believe Fry until Bender takes control of Leela’s (Katey Sagal) wristlojackimator. They call in the robot Gypsy (MacNeille), who tells them that a robot ghost is haunting them. The Reverend Preacherbot (Phil LaMarr) is called in to banish the ghost, which ends up working by providing Fry with a “sacramental firewall” that keeps Bender 20 feet away. Bender pushes through the firewall and possesses it, using the software to project horrifying images onto Fry, causing him to have a heart attack.

The devil is famous for his fair dealings.

Bender returns to the Robot Devil to collect, but it turns out Fry is still alive. Fry is sent to the Amish Homeworld, where electronics are forbidden, so that he won’t get shocked again. As Bender tries to kill him one last time, Fry laments that he misses Bender and that he now respects robot life. So, Bender stops trying to kill Fry and follows him to the Amish Homeworld to watch over him. When the rest of the crew comes to visit Fry, the Robot Devil also comes to visit. He tricks Bender into scaring some oxen, which causes a giant dome to roll towards Fry. Bender possesses the Robot Devil and uses his body to save Fry. This leads Fry to head home and Bender to head to Robot Heaven. However, Bender annoys Robot God into kicking him back into his body. 

God formerly dated WALL-E, I think.

END SUMMARY

I love almost any episode with the Robot Devil and this is no exception, despite how little he actually appears in this one. The idea that the Robot Devil bears a grudge against Fry for taking his hands in “The Devil’s Hands are Idle Playthings” is amusing because it’s so petty. He’s literally got an entire underworld to run, but he also still complains about how his hands smell like candy corn because of Fry. The episode also takes a bunch of shots at some of his previous appearances, mostly his tendency to punctuate everything with a song. This time he does make it much more clear that the songs themselves are actually a big part of the torment of Robot Hell, including the fact that he’s rehearsing the exact song that he played for Bender in his debut episode. Admittedly, he does manage to rhyme pyrrhic later when improvising, so he clearly has a lot of talent.

His band is the drums, a saxophone, and a piano. Truly, it’s hell.

The concept of a robot afterlife has long been played with in the show, but this is the first time that we consider the ramifications of Artificial Intelligence existing as data outside of a physical body. I think this is a fun reflection of how much technology developed during the run of this show, because when the show started cloud computing had only been in its infancy, and wasn’t really commercially viable until after the show was cancelled the first time. However, by the time this episode was produced in 2010, Amazon and Google had both started to offer cloud computing services. If computer science were to advance to a certain point, then it is possible that the cloud could eventually process, transmit, and store an amount of data that is greater than the sum total of a human, or artificial, consciousness. Maybe it is inevitable that, like Bender in this episode, we’ll find out that we can create afterlives for our own consciousness. Am I saying this episode is a prequel to Black Mirror’s “San Junipero?” Yes, yes I am. 

San Junipero would have been much more interesting with technokinesis.

There are a number of other fun future touches in this episode that round it out. I think it’s hilarious that the Amish eventually move off-planet in order to maintain their lifestyle, but that, due to the passage of time, they still end up advancing technologically. Rather than just barns, they now live in geodesic domes. There’s a day dedicated solely to parades because there are too many holidays, which makes sense when you consider that Earth has been unified for hundreds of years. Also, this episode only makes sense because we learned in “Lethal Inspection” that Bender is mortal.

I love that the Amish have wooden spacecraft.

Overall, I think this is one of the better episodes of Season 6. 

FAVORITE JOKE

This one is going to hurt a bit. I think my favorite joke is when Hermes is going to call someone to “bust” the ghost of Bender. When asked “who you gonna call,” he starts to say Ghostbusters, but is interrupted by a voice that tells him that the number he is dialing has been lame since 1989. Why 1989? Well, I think there are three reasons: First, that’s the year that Ghostbusters II came out and, let’s be fair, that movie is not as good as the first. While I don’t think it’s a bad movie, it still represents a controversial sequel to an amazing film. Second, in 1989, Ghostbusters was supposed to release a game on the Atari 2600. This ended up being so late in the Atari cycle that it was never actually put out, a sign that the franchise was behind the times. Last, Arsenio Hall stopped voicing Winston on The Real Ghostbusters in 1988, so I think we can agree that was when the cool started to leave that show and therefore the franchise. Still, I do love the hell out of the original.

See you next week, meatbags.

PREVIOUS – Episode 94: The Tip of the Zoidberg

NEXT – Episode 96: Neutopia

If you want to check out some more by the Joker on the Sofa, check out the 100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time, Collection of TV Episodes, Collection of Movie Reviews, or the Joker on the Sofa Reviews.

If you enjoy these, please, like, share, tell your friends, like the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/JokerOnTheSofa/), follow on Twitter @JokerOnTheSofa, and just generally give me a little bump. I’m not getting paid, but I like to get feedback.

Futurama Fridays – S6E18 “The Tip of the Zoidberg”

We finally see why someone would hire Zoidberg.

SUMMARY

After his incompetence causes a massive number of issues in the staff, the Planet Express crew demands that Professor Farnsworth (Billy West) fire Doctor Zoidberg (West). Farnsworth refuses, saying that Zoidberg is an expert in alien biology. It’s revealed that Zoidberg was assigned to accompany Farnsworth on a mission to kill a “Tritonian Yeti” decades ago. During the trip, Farnsworth became infected with hypermalaria, a horrible disease that can remain dormant for decades. After Zoidberg helps Farnsworth kill the yeti, saving the Professor’s life, Farnsworth hires Zoidberg so that Zoidberg can kill him if he starts to suffer from hypermalaria. 

Look at how young they were.

In the “present,” Farnsworth starts to show signs of the disease, so he tells Zoidberg that he has to kill him, but that it needs to be by surprise. After a number of failed attempts, the crew catches Zoidberg trying to kill the Professor and imprisons him. However, Zoidberg discovers a white hair on a lab coat, which leads him to realize that the Professor doesn’t have hypermalaria. He escapes to meet with Mom (Tress MacNeille), who is revealed to still have the Tritonian Yeti’s head. The Professor tells the crew that Zoidberg was trying to help kill him, so they build a giant Rube-Goldberg-Esque murder machine. As it goes off, Zoidberg returns to reveal that the Professor actually has Yetism. The Professor turns into a yeti, but Zoidberg cures Farnsworth using the former Yeti’s pineal gland. Zoidberg and the Professor celebrate as friends.

His glasses seem to grow.

END SUMMARY

I have a soft spot for episodes in which Zoidberg actually gets some kind of positive treatment, because he was always one of my favorite characters and he usually gets the short end of the stick. In this episode, we finally find out two key things about the character: Why he was hired and that he actually is pretty good at his job. The only problem is that his job is not actually what his title would indicate, because while he is a good doctor for alien biology, he doesn’t know anything about human anatomy. While it’s odd that he didn’t learn anything about human medicine in the ensuing 80 years of employment, I guess I would counter that most people don’t learn skills outside of their job or hobbies. Since the Professor was never going to fire him, and was his friend, there really wasn’t that much of an incentive to care about being a good human doctor. Also, you have to be a little impressed that he can keep removing and replacing spinal columns without killing anyone.

I mean, Scruffy being alive is impressive, honestly.

The idea of hypermalaria is similar to certain slow viruses or latent diseases, like rubella or chagas disease, but ironically not malaria. While malaria can recur if untreated, recurrences are usually lighter than the initial attack. The idea of having a lifelong condition that can spontaneously kill you, however, is one of Futurama’s darker bases for a gag or a story set-up. Of course, there was no chance that they were going to kill off the Professor, so the ending was kind of inevitable, but having Zoidberg save the day was still nice. 

In the meantime, we just feed the owls.

Overall, I admit this is in the bottom half of Futurama, but I still have a soft spot for it.

FAVORITE JOKE

Fry’s illnesses that Zoidberg causes at the beginning of the episode. First, he gets Simpson’s jaundice, a disease that makes him look like a character from the Simpsons, who are famously all yellow. Then, he turns orange and becomes grumpy, getting a condition called Garfield syndrome, like the comic cat. This is caused by an organ rejection, which I think is a reference to the fact that most hospitals do scheduled organ transplants on Monday so that the patient will have full staff for as long as possible. Garfield hates Mondays, so he hates the organs. Next, he gets “Muppet gangrene,” which makes him act like Kermit the Frog. He rightly states that it’s not easy being gangrenous, like Kermit would say it isn’t easy being green. Lastly, he gets an unspecified disease that makes him look like a Smurf. I think this is a subtle reference to Fry being near dead, because turning blue is a sign of not having enough oxygen. 

PREVIOUS – Episode 93: Benderama

NEXT – Episode 95: Ghost in the Machines

If you want to check out some more by the Joker on the Sofa, check out the 100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time, Collection of TV Episodes, Collection of Movie Reviews, or the Joker on the Sofa Reviews.

If you enjoy these, please, like, share, tell your friends, like the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/JokerOnTheSofa/), follow on Twitter @JokerOnTheSofa, and just generally give me a little bump. I’m not getting paid, but I like to get feedback.

Futurama Fridays – S6E16 “Law and Oracle”

Welcome to Future Crime, where the computers use hand motions and the deaths don’t matter.

SUMMARY

Fry (Billy West) is sent on a prank delivery to the cryogenics lab, something that he apparently has had happen dozens of times. He becomes depressed about his perpetual status as a delivery boy, but then he witnesses NNYPD officers Smitty and Url (West and John DiMaggio) bust Roberto (David Herman). This inspires him to quit Planet Express and enroll in the police academy. He ends up graduating and is partnered with Url. After working the streets for a while, Fry and Url are promoted to the Future Crimes Division by Chief O’Mannahan (Tress MacNeille). Meanwhile, Leela and Bender (DiMaggio and Katey Sagal) try to do the deliveries, but find each other too grating without Fry as a buffer.

Bender and Leela go to a 3D planet. How, I don’t know.

In Future Crimes, Fry and Url are introduced to the cybernetic oracle, Pickles (Herman), a human-robot hybrid whose brain is programmed with the brain cells of all of humanity’s greatest detectives. Pickles’ mind can predict crimes before they happen, a la Minority Report. Fry helps prevent a murder, but then, when alone in the department, Fry sees a future vision of Bender burgling Hedonism Bot’s (Maurice LaMarche) cellar for a priceless bottle of liquor. During the vision, Fry shoots Bender. Trying to avoid this, Fry tells Bender not to do it, but ends up inspiring him to do the crime. Fry then sees what happens if he doesn’t shoot Bender: Bender shares the booze with the Planet Express crew, but they all die due to the potency of the alcohol, meaning if Fry doesn’t shoot him, everyone dies.

It’s really easy to get into Hedonismbot’s cellar… or anywhere.

Bender does the heist as envisioned and Fry arrives, but Bender decides not to steal anything. Fry claims that he changed the future, only for Pickles to arrive and reveal that this was all a ploy to steal the liquor himself so that he could drink it and kill his human brain. Fry attempts to shoot Pickles, but that ends up hitting Bender. Pickles then shoots Fry and drinks the liquor, killing his brain. The Chief and Url reveal themselves and Fry and Bender show that they’re wearing protective vests. Fry had realized that Pickles was lying to him because Bender would never share alcohol. Fry is fired for warning Bender about the crime and heads back to Planet Express, where he is promoted to “executive delivery boy,” a meaningless title. 

END SUMMARY

This episode is one of the better parodies in the series. It’s based on the story and movie Minority Report and manages to mock a number of the goofy things that were featured in that film, from the use of balls as a way to indicate pre-crime to the psychic floating in a bath to the weird hand-waving computers. Much like that movie, the end of this episode actually points out that most of pre-crime is pointless, because once someone becomes aware of the future, they can choose to change it, but the show does it in a ridiculous way. I always appreciate when the parody and the original prove the same themes.

Although, having the precognitive party be the villain is a nice twist.

The part that doesn’t age well, particularly as I write this during some nationwide riots against police in 2020, is how the episode makes jokes about the ease of getting through the police academy and the expectation of police violence. A particularly cringe-worthy line, at least at present, is when Url tells Fry not to stay up too late, because “We gotta lotta people to shoot tomorrow.” Yikes.

Robot Cop shooting people… I’ve seen that movie.

Overall, though, the episode makes me laugh. Some of the jokes are a little too dated, particularly the whole Avatar parody subplot, but you can enjoy the pre-crime story even if you don’t know Minority Report.

FAVORITE JOKE

Look, it was always going to be the joke about Erwin Schrodinger going on a police chase. It’s the least subtle physics joke that the show ever made, because it focuses on the famous “Schrodinger’s cat” thought experiment, which supposedly invalidated the Copenhagen model of quantum mechanics. Schrodinger says that he has a cat, some poison, and a caesium atom, which means that the cat is in a superposition of alive and dead until you collapse the wave function. However, the reason I actually find it hilarious is because after the cat attacks Fry, URL looks in the box and says “there’s also a lotta drugs in there.” It’s that final touch of realism that makes the absurdity so much better for me.

Guess that cat’s out of the ba… box.

See you next week, meatbags.

PREVIOUS – Episode 91: Mobius Dick

NEXT – Episode 93: Benderama

If you want to check out some more by the Joker on the Sofa, check out the 100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time, Collection of TV Episodes, Collection of Movie Reviews, or the Joker on the Sofa Reviews.

If you enjoy these, please, like, share, tell your friends, like the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/JokerOnTheSofa/), follow on Twitter @JokerOnTheSofa, and just generally give me a little bump. I’m not getting paid, but I like to get feedback.