Yesterday ’s episode of Futurama give us an intentionally ready-made battle of the sexes , surveil by the ultimate tribute to Bender ’s existence - destroy laziness . While neither episode was perfect , they provided a funny , opinion - provoking , and wonderfully disturb launching for the latest time of year .
Futurama begins its latest 13 - episode season in quite maybe the strongest emplacement it has ever been in . Thanks to Comedy Central ’s extra 26 - episode order , last nighttime ’s episodes are the first of thirty - nine guaranteed unexampled episodes . It ’s only taken twelve years , but the show is ultimately playing from a position of military posture , and I think we ’ve officially reached the point in time where we can stop worry about the show ’s cancellation . That ’s a weird thought – after all , clamoring for the show ’s survival has been pretty much a style of sprightliness for Futurama devotee for well-nigh a decade . But still , while I ’m affirmative Futurama has quite a few more seasons pull up stakes in it , if the show does wrap up up for honorable in 2013 after 140 episode , I ’d be perfectly satisfied with that result . So then , fresh with this new , more content outlook about the show ’s future , let ’s examine last dark ’s episodes .
In “ Neutopia ” , Planet Express is once again on the verge of going out of business . The men , who are apparently in a misogynistic mood this week , exploit a rule in the company condense that forces Leela and Amy ( and Hermes ’s wife , the new hired LaBarbara ) to stupefy for a nude calendar . When this idea flush it , the Professor steal Leela ’s thought and work Planet Express into an interstellar airline business . The ship crash onto a planet dwell by strange , genderless rock brute , and one of these aliens run for a serial of experiments to better understand why humans have genders . After judging genders to be nothing but fuss , the stranger turns the crew into altered versions of themselves , and then accidentally swap everyone ’s gender when he ’s asked to convert them back .
Futurama has playact around with gender stereotype before , most notably in “ Amazon Women in the Mood ” and “ Bend Her . ” Like those earlier effort , “ Neutopia ” get it well-defined that the man of Planet Express are reproof chauvinists , and they ’re very distinctly being huge jolt that we ’re not in any way guess to root for . To a sure extent , we ’re running into the problem of diminishing return here – the first one-half of the sequence , which is taken up with a lot of pointedly over - the - top sexist jokes , does n’t do much that those earliest episodes had n’t done before . This line of humor also force most of the cast to be , if not exactly out of character — you could definitely argue that at least Bender and the Professor are always this horrifying — then at least playing up their most unpleasant timbre .
Still , I in reality enjoyed “ Neutopia ” a whole mickle , and much of that has to do with the rock alien . It ’s the rare all - potent being that ’s also a morsel of an idiot , and its tests of grammatical gender superiority ( initiate with “ Who can drink the most sulfur ? ” and then “ Who can drink the most arsenic ? ” ) are hilariously awful . Again , this is treading into conversant soil for Futurama – a lone omnipotent alien playing around with humanity recalls Melllvar in “ Where No Fan Has Gone Before ” – but this experience like a fresh take on the old trope .
The alien is an amusingly easygoing brute , so casually assume of its own shortcoming as a super - being , and Maurice LaMarche really lifts up the instalment with his performance . The altered and gender - reverse human beings were also a highlight . frankly , these really should have taken up a lot more of the episode , and delving profoundly into these concept might have knocked “ Neutopia ” up a notch . If nothing else , I did have intercourse how deliciously disgust the second calendar shoot at the last of the episode really was . As Leela observed , “ give thanks god most of our devotee are huge perverts . ” Indeed we are , and I for one am all-fired proud of it .
“ Neutopia ” also highlight one of the more interesting view about Futurama – for all its science fable trappings , its horse sense of sense of humor is often weirdly old - fashioned . This episode swear on going through every gender stereotype in the book , no matter how old and hackneyed , to the point that it somewhat diffuses a wad of the possible offensiveness . Of course the world do n’t ask for directions when their life reckon on it , and of class the char hallucinate a shopping center . It ’s not just the sex humour that falls into this class – Futurama often gets away with lightning - degraded plot developments and hugely improbable twist by calling attention to how ludicrous they are .
If done the right way , the whole thing is meant to play as one Brobdingnagian meta - joke in which a large part of the humor comes from how bad a lot of the gags in reality are ( Hermes and LaBarbara ’s tortured paronomasia also fall into this family ) . I do n’t think it quite crop as well as it needs to , and there are moments when the layer of irony break down and a laugh that does feel mistily sexist slips through , but overall I was extremely amused and only ever so slightly offended , which is n’t such a bad thing for drollery anyway .
“ Benderama ” is an illustration of an sequence type that pretty much only Futurama is up to of doing : taking an off-the-wall but mistily plausible scientific idea and letting that guide the story . Some all - prison term great installment have come from this approach : “ The Farnsworth Parabox ” did this with alternate universes , Bender ’s Big Score used time paradoxes ( or the lack thereof ) , and “ The Prisoner of Benda ” focused on nous - switching . This sentence around , the topic is the grey goo scenario of nanotechnology , as Bender gains the power to create two diminished duplicates of himself , who in turn can each produce two smaller duplicate of themselves , who in twist … well , you get the idea . Also , the gang consider with Patton Oswalt ’s hideous space colossus , who can only take so much mockery of his show .
Part of what take a leak this installment merriment is that the grey goo dilemma is such a instinctive outgrowth of his character . The entire Earth is at danger of destruction because Bender is simply too indolent to fold a couple jumper , and because all the Benders are far too amoral to look past their own straightaway need . Even when the microscopic horde of Benders comes together to save the earthly concern from the space giant , Bender can only see it as an abject object lesson in never attacking people more handsome than oneself .
Bender ’s staring narcissism and irresponsibleness is pushed to its logical extreme here and then several light - years beyond , as even after the Bender sludge has departed Earth he still proceed one around to fold his sweaters , mean Earth will never get off the nemesis of infinite microscopic Benders . ( Well , at least not until next hebdomad . ) I also loved Bender ’s eccentric conception of math , in which any one matter – include lay aside the world – is easier than doing two things , such as folding the Professor ’s unexampled sweaters .
On remainder , “ Bendarama ” is one of those Futurama episode that get by more on its approximation than its jokes . There are some funny moments here – Patton Oswalt is a delectation as a blank giant trying desperately to remain well - adjusted in the case of a cruel population , Morbo and Linda get some great moments , and I will never get enough of the show ’s Twilight Zone pastiche in the phase of The Scary Door – but I ’m give birth a unvoiced time intellection of too many quotable lines , even after look out the installment twice .
For most comedy appearance , that would be a somewhat big job , but then most comedy display do n’t build stories around divergent series or feature subatomic rendering of a main character turn the entire world ’s urine supply into booze . No show goes deeper into hardcore science territory than Futurama , and surely no other show is as wonderfully irreverent about it . It ’s not quite enough for me to consider “ Benderama ” a classic – not when I can point to the likes of “ The Farnsworth Parabox ” and “ The Prisoner of Benda ” as ranking exercise of this type of installment – but it ’s still a fortune of fun and , along with “ Neutopia ” , a suitable origin for this latest ( but emphatically not the last ) mass of episodes .
FuturamaMatt GroeningPatton OswaltTelevision
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