It's a show about the future... so why does it seem so outdated?
Futurama remains one of my favorite TV shows ever. It's smart, it's funny, and it has a great cast of characters, and that's not even delving into the superb animation and sound. So any time new episodes pop up, I feel compelled to watch them. But even so, it's hard for me to deny that the series should have ended for good when it was cancelled by Fox. Though some decent episodes have come out since the move to Comedy Central, as a whole it really just isn't the same anymore. It's never fully lived up to what it used to be; the cleverness of the writing has been replaced by the odd mathematics reference dropped un-humorously into a pool of trite sex jokes, and the characters - like their Simpsons brethren before them - have devolved into shallow collections of running gags and bland personalities. Even so, when the latest batch of new episodes appeared, I watched them. There's always the chance that the writers will rediscover their old genius. I suppose there may come a day when I give up on the series entirely, just as I gave up on The Simpsons some... sigh... thirteen years ago. Until then, I'll have to sit through these hours of sad disappointment.
The latest season opened up with an episode titled "Neutopia". God only knows why; the Neutopia section of the episode lasts for all of a minute and a half before it's completely forgotten about. But I'll get to that. The episode starts out with Planet Express running out of money and the employees scrambling to find ways of making money. The discussion quickly becomes divided along gender lines as Leela and Amy suggest retooling the company as an interstellar airline and the men want to make a calendar with photos of the women. This... this is going to be one of those episodes, isn't it? One of those "battle of the sexes" episodes that pretends to promote harmony while it really just reinforces gender stereotypes? Really, writers? Did you think this was a new and innovative idea? Because it isn't. Christ, even this very series has used it before, back in season three with "Amazon Women in the Mood". The difference is, that episode actually worked, because it focused more on the characters' relationships than on bland observations about gender, and the jokes reveled in their own pettiness and hypocrisy because that's the joke. The jokes in "Neutopia" don't even seem to know what they're aiming at.
And I know it's a weird thing to say, but exactly why are Leela and Amy so opposed to taking their clothes off all of a sudden? I mean, that makes sense in our society, but in the future society of Futurama, modesty has supposedly become a thing of the past, and casual nudity is often a part of everyday life.We've seen it in numerous past episodes. I suppose you could say there's a difference between that and stripping for the exact purpose of actually being ogled, but I still find it to be a weird shift in attitude.
Anyway, after some blatant fanservice the crew decides that there aren't enough women in the company to make a full calendar, so they try the airline idea. For some reason this requires them to remodel the ship into a propeller-driven airplane - and you'd think that'd take a lot of that money they aren't supposed to have - but that's the sort of detail I'll let slide for the sake of comedy. Their first passenger load is made up of recurring secondary characters, and Fry is piloting. This ends up causing the ship to run out of fuel and crash on an uncharted planet. Hmm. OK, three things: 1) This sudden rash of sexism in not letting Leela pilot the ship is completely contrary to everything we've seen before. The professor picked her as captain without any hesitation when the series started. 2) Fry has piloted the ship in the past. Shouldn't he be at least halfway decent at it by now? 3) Even if we forgive the other two points, Fry starts the flight by turning on an autopilot system. How can the ship crash on a random planet under those conditions? It may seem like nitpicking, but these are the kinds of details that the series once rewarded the viewer for paying attention to.
The crew and their passengers argue over who's in charge of their group, curiously dividing once again by gender. The men vote for Hermes, while the women side with his wife LeBarbara. They all meet a rock creature who proposes that they settle the matter by competing in a race to reach shelter before the heat of the sun makes their present location uninhabitable. But after the men refuse to ask directions and the women stop at what they believe is a mall sale (seriously?) both groups fail to reach the specified cave in time, and the rock creature decides that their genders are holding them back. By some sort of magic, he makes them all gender neutral. This makes them all happy and forms the "Neutopia" of the title, but almost immediately Hermes and LeBarbara decide they want to bone, so they demand that the creature turn them back. The rock creature agrees, but accidentally gets all of their genders backwards. Before he can fix his mistake he is blasted into bits by Zapp Brannagan. After Zapp brings them all home, they try to think of other ways to save Planet Express. They decide to finish the girly calendar by taking pictures of the gender-swapped men, and the revenue is enough to save the company. At this point another rock creature previously alluded to by the other one arrives via meteor and switches everyone's gender back to normal.
This episode is a mess. The jokes were shallow and dull, the characters showed no depth, and the plot bounced from scenario to scenario without dwelling on anything long enough to make it funny. Seriously: making a calendar, running an airline, racing for survival, living with no gender, and then living as opposite genders... that's five different premises in one episode. That's like an episode of Family Guy, and that is about the worst thing anyone can say about a sitcom. It's not the worst thing I've ever seen, but it's just bland and uninteresting.
The second episode of the one-hour season premiere was titled "Benderama" and perhaps you're getting the vague sense of foreboding about the episode that I had. This certainly isn't the first episode named after Bender, but the others have all been puns or references dealing with the episode's plot. "Bendless Love" was primarily built on a romance plot, for instance, while "Bendin' in the Wind" was about folk music. "Benderama" has nothing to do with anything. It just serves to point out the fact that there is a character in the series named Bender. Yes, Bender is the most iconic character in the show, but now the writers are giving the impression that they're banking on him to carry the entire series. That's a bad sign, frankly, because if they can't make the other characters interesting, they aren't going to be able to make Bender interesting either.
The episode starts with the Professor unveiling a new invention. This device scans an object, then creates two duplicates of it at 60% of the original size. And I have to admit, out of all the zany inventions he's cooked up over the years, this one actually does seem slightly more useful than the average. He asks Bender to fold the two sweaters he created with the device, but Bender is suddenly too lazy to do such simple tasks, and he instead uses the device to create two duplicates to do it for him.The crew is then sent on a mission to deliver various hygiene products to a unsightly giant. While on said mission, Bender and his duplicates antagonize the giant by making fun of his appearance and insulting his mother. Luckily they are able to escape before he can do them any harm. Put a pin in that subplot because we're going to forget about it for a while.
The duplicate Benders are also too lazy to do any work, so they create duplicates of themselves, and those duplicates create duplicates, and so on. You'd think that at some point they'd figure out that this plan just isn't going to work, but since when has logic ever played a role in a Futurama episode? Oh, right, since every episode before Comedy Central. Anyway, it seems that as the Benders continue to duplicate themselves, they will inevitably use up all the matter on Earth, but it is decided that the problem will solve itself when they use up all of Earth's alcohol and are rendered unable to function. Why no one is considering how this will affect the rest of the robots on Earth is a question that never gets addressed, but never mind that; it turns out that some of the Benders are so tiny that they can manipulate molecular structures and turn water into alcohol. Um... so... if they're the size of molecules, how are they maintaining the properties of a full-sized robot? Whatever. As the Benders turn all water on Earth into alcohol, the entire human population is reduced to a drunken stupor. As opposed to being... dead. One would think it would more likely reduce them to being dead. But what do I know?
The ugly giant from earlier picks this moment to come to Earth, trying to apologize for attacking the PlanEx crew, but everyone is so drunk that they can't resist the urge to make fun of him some more. Driven into a rage, the giant starts wrecking the place. Somehow or other, everyone decides that only Bender is capable of stopping him, since he's the only clear-headed one left. Um... no he isn't. There are dozens of robots in New New York alone, all of which run on alcohol just like Bender. Wouldn't any number of them be just as capable of fighting a giant, if not more so? I mean, I seem to recall a robot named Destructo hanging around somewhere. Why not let him handle it? But whatever, apparently Bender's the only robot on Earth for this particular five-minute span of time. Bender calls together all of his mini-clones and they join together to... make... a... giant... wait, now they're just shamelessly recycling their own episodes. A giant Bender fighting another giant throughout New New York. That's a scene from the first Anthology of Interest. Yes, that was a what-if episode, but it still counts. They've done it before. If the writers are just going to recycle ideas, what's the good in even resurrecting the series?
So Bender beats the giant and the day is saved... I guess... and the Bender duplicates conveniently decide to leave Earth forever, for no reason. And yes, they've used that idea before too, but that time the plot hole was a plot point. Wait. Whatever, never mind. Again, this episode was a mess. The plot made no sense and everything revolved around Bender's sudden and unprecedented laziness, which I suspect will never be mentioned again. But the worst part of it is that it's just pointless. I mean, what is this episode even trying to accomplish? Futurama was once a brilliant series, and a great bit of what made it brilliant is that the episodes actually had a point to them. Characters were developed, themes were delved into, statements were made. True, that stuff was usually under the surface, which is where it's meant to be, but when it's not there at all it leaves a noticeable void. Seriously, what was the point of "Benderama"? It was just aimless thumb-twiddling. Even "Neutopia" had a point, even though it completely failed to convey it. "Benderama" was worthless.
These two episodes sucked. They were nothing like what Futurama is supposed to be, and it isn't worth the time to watch them. That is, unless you're writing reviews of stuff on your blog. That's why I'm going to keep watching and analyze each episode for any sign that the heart of the series has survived. Despair not! We'll get through this together. More will follow. Until then, I'm Karl, fight tedium one (or maybe two) sucktacular season premiers at a time.
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