The first show tonight, "31st Century Fox", had a germ of a fun idea - Bender crusading against robot violence after witnessing a fox robot hunt. And, to their credit, the second act started to have some fun with the concept, as Bender takes down robot egg farms, a robot duck shooting gallery at a fair, and even a robot butcher shop (where a robot pig was sliced, diced, and ground into robot sausage). But it ended up being wrapped in a weak fox hunting plot line… and even worse, it managed to waste the considerable talent of guest star Sir Patrick Stewart, who played the fox hunt master. But there were still some fun sight gags - such as the Planet Express crew trying on famous sci-fi uniforms, from Red Shirt Fry to Farnsworth's Zardoz gear. And the ultimately ludicrous nature of the club - robot fox hunters hunting robot foxes with robot hounds - was an amusing way to end the episode. But the overall execution led to surprisingly few memorable moments for a typical Futurama installment.
And then, there was tonight's second episode, "Naturama". Now, the trilogy episode has been a common recurrence on Futurama, starting with the "Anthologies of Interest". In fact, every year on Comedy Central has brought us such an episode… from "The Futurama Holiday Spectacular" to last year's absolutely awesome "Reincarnation", which reworked the show into three genres: old-timey black-and-white animation; a riff on video games; and an anime adventure. But tonight's episode, as different and high-concept as it was, just lacked the creative energy that I would've expected.
The episode was structured as a spoof of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom - here rechristened as Mutual of Omnicron's Wild Universe, sponsored by Mutual of Omnicron: "Have you insured your planet?" With the help of Phil LaMarr's Morgan Freeman-esque narration, we were treated to the life cycles of three creatures. In the first episode, we witnessed the mating of salmon, with Salmon Fry hoping to woo Salmon Leela from Salmon Zapp. The second episode takes place on the Galapagos Islands, with Farnsworth as the last male Pinta Island tortoise, who, with the help of various characters -as-finches (including Bender, Leela, Amy and Hermes) and an iguana version of Bender - makes an arduous 100-yard trek to find a mate and save his species. The final installment focuses on "the clown of the sea", the elephant seal, with Seal Kif hoping to win Seal Amy from Bender, the seal beachmaster.
As you can start to tell, there's not much inventiveness to the episode, aside from the recasting of our characters as various creatures. All they've done is rehashed the various romantic plot threads from the serious in a nature-documentary construct… which isn't much. And once you get past seeing our characters in various permutations - from the Hedonismbot salmon to a Nibler fish - there's not much comedic energy left to milk. The one great Futurama touch was how each story ends with as much death and depression as absolutely possible - an aspect amplified by LaMarr's narration. (Sample line: "And so the endless circle of life comes to an end… meaningless and grim.")
I feel like I'm in a weird position with tonight's shows, because even the weaker episodes still have tons of strengths to their credit. But I just wasn't impressed that much, and so I'm inclined to think that maybe, just maybe, I watched it wrong. But hopefully, this isn't a sign that Futurama's creative steam is running out. Remember, we've still got 13 episodes left to air next summer… and although it's looking increasingly likely that next year will be the last batch of Futurama episodes that we'll get, I'm still hoping that we'll get some quality installments. (Supposedly, the last episode to air next year has been written as a series finale, in case Comedy Central decides not to order another season.) Feel free to let me know if you think I'm in the wrong, but tonight's hour just didn't hit as well as I would've hoped.
And that's it! Thanks for reading our Futurama coverage this summer, and hopefully we'll see you here next June!
Random notes:
- Other uniforms included Storm Trooper Zoidberg, Barbarella Leela, and Amy in the stewardess uniform from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
- "Hey, you people can't just burst in like that and cut off my hand!"
- "Today, we hunt the most dangerous game - aside from lawn darts!"
- "Fox news, everyone!"
- Mmm… Newmar's Own Catnip!
- "We're hot on his heels! Ah… one of his heels!"
- "Tell Your Parents It's Educational!"
- "I'm a Pisces! We're all Pisces!"
- Nature's waterfall: the cliff of the waters!
- My single biggest laugh of "Naturama": "I am Brrr, devourer of fish and honey!!!!!!!!"
- "And so, the extinction of the Pinta Island tortoise is assured… For in the end, nature is horrific and teaches us nothing!"
- "I'm 40% ass!"
- "Kill all penguins… kill all penguins…"
- "For a holographic brain injection of tonight's program, send $5 to this station courtesy of me, the Narrator!"
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