Futurama - All the Presidents' Heads

Can they put this series back together again?

Well, welcome back to my series of reviews covering the current season of Futurama, which may or may not be finished by the time the next season starts. Admittedly, a big part of the delay in these reviews is simply that I have a hard time psyching myself up for them. I’ve already decided that the series is dead and will probably never again be what it once was, and apart from a few gems like “Lethal Inspection” and “Law and Oracle” the series has been mostly terrible ever since it was uncanceled. It’s hard to convince myself to put myself through this time and time again, and the only reason I’m still doing it is because I think it’s worth my time to analyze just how much this show has changed for the negative.

With that in mind, let’s talk about “The Sting”.

Ah ha... no. But kudos for your knowledge of Newman/Redford buddy movies.

“The Sting” isn’t the episode I’m reviewing today – I’ll get to that in a minute – but it’s an episode from season four (i.e., pre-reboot) that I think is worth considering. The plot, in basic terms, is that during a mission to collect honey from a hive of giant space bees, Fry is attacked and seemingly killed, causing Leela to snap and start hallucinating. It’s a fun episode with some cool psychological overtones, and it’s one of the few “all just a dream” endings that was set up well enough not to be miserably disappointing, but it’s only a brief segment in the middle that I need to discuss right now.

At one point in the episode, Leela spills a jar of the space bees’ royal jelly onto the sofa in the Planet Express break room and Fry suddenly appears. The explanation given is that Fry had touched the royal jelly in the hive, leaving an imprint of his DNA, and then that combined with the stray hairs and skin cells and such that Fry had left on the couch, rebuilding his entire body. In reality, this was all just another of Leela’s hallucinations. The reason I mention this is that executive producer David X. Cohen, mentioned in the episode’s DVD commentary (yes, I watch those things, on every DVD I own) that he was quite proud of writing for a science fiction series that had high enough standards to make it possible for him to write an explanation in this scenario that the audience would find unsatisfying. Futurama is a goofy series, yes, and it’s true that we somehow have to accept that scientists have increased the speed of light, but the original run of the series never half-assed the underlying science… even that “increasing the speed of light” business was the result of them putting in more effort than necessary to explain how spaceships are able to travel between galaxies within seemingly mere hours. This dedication and effort was a key factor in what made the original series great. Try to keep that in mind as I delve into “All the Presidents’ Heads”

Actually, it begins promisingly enough, with the Professor recounting some of the notable members of his family tree, including Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of television, and Dean Farnsworth, the inventor of the Farnsworth color blindness test. Hey, a joke that rewards me for knowing stuff! Now we’re talking! So after this bit of bragging about his family lineage, which clearly won’t have anything to do with the plot of the episode what in the world would make you think that, Fry heads off to his night job as a security guard at the Head Museum. Interestingly, I remember hearing that in one of the early conceptualizations of Futurama, Fry was going to be a security guard instead of a delivery boy. They scrapped that idea because it had less potential for drama (he’d be stuck behind a desk instead of, you know, flying through space and all that) but I like to think that this was the writers taking an opportunity to make something of those early ideas, which is kind of cool.

We’re then treated to a cameo by Dr. Cahill, the head-in-a-jar specialist we met in Bender’s Big Score. She even mistakenly refers to Fry as “Lars” when he enters. Huh… science references and nods to previous continuity? Maybe this episode will turn out all right after all. I guess I was just worried about nothi…

…Oh wait, then this happens. Fry throws a party for the heads of the US Presidents, to which he invites only his PlanEx coworkers for some reason, and Zoidberg drinks the fluid out of Lyndon Johnson’s jar. And this makes him travel back in time.

Yeah.

OK, nitpicky things first. For one, we’ve seen people drink out of head jars before, if nowhere else then at least in season three’s “A Leela of Her Own” (“Wade Boggs… goes down smooth!”). For another, this totally ruins the writers’ rule that time travel is supposed to be extremely difficult. The first time it happened at all was in season three’s “Roswell That Ends Well”, and that took a supernova interacting with a microwave that Fry had put metal in. In Bender’s Big Score, it wasn’t quite as complex, but it still took a complicated time code that came into being and was then erased as part of a stable, self-contained time loop. But seriously, head jars just up and send you back in time? If we’re supposed to buy this, what explanation do you offer that no one had noticed this before? I mean, for God’s sake, surely someone would have ingested some by accident at some point.

But mainly, my criticism is this: how fucking half-assed is this idea? The official explanation is that the jar juice contains powder from a rare opal that has “unusual temporal properties” and creates a “time stasis bubble” around the heads that sends people through time. BULLSHIT! Not only is this explanation lazy, stupid, and implausible to the highest degree, it is nearly the same. exact. idea. as the explanation for Fry’s resurrection in “The Sting” that was fully meant to ring hollow with the audience – touch magic stuff, magic stuff regenerates everything about you. Needless to say, that’s not science. The entire premise of this episode undercuts the respect for science that used to lie at the show’s very core. Honestly, there’s no point even finishing this episode. It’s already ruined, and nothing is going to salvage it.

But I’ve made a commitment, goddammit.

George Washington tells the Professor that his colonial ancestor, David Farnsworth, was one of the worst traitors of the Revolution, and nearly brought down America by counterfeiting money. Unable to let this stand, the Professor decides to travel back to the 18^th Century and alter history. Because that usually works out so well. He dumps the entire world’s supply of the opal into Washington’s jar (thereby dooming everyone, as it has been established that it’s the only thing keeping the heads alive) and uses it to send everyone back in time. He tells everyone that, by his calculations, the effect will only last for twenty-four hours.

Wait, what fucking calculations? You just said that no one had ever done this before, ergo there is no data from which to do calculations. The only previous observations were the two brief trips taken just moments ago, both caused by unknown amounts of opal, and you just dumped the entire test tube into Washington’s jar without measuring it. And even if you did know the numbers, there’s still no evidence that the amount of opal even makes any goddamn difference! Zoidberg drank from the jar, meaning he surely ingested more opal than Fry, who merely licked Herbert Hoover’s head, and yet their trips lasted approximately the same amount of time. How is it even conceivable that you could calculate anything about this situation??

The gang visits the founding fathers at the Continental Congress, who tell them that the counterfeited bills have to be from Ben Franklin’s printing press. Actually, that sounds like a pretty obvious place to check; maybe they should have started there. With Franklin’s help, they track David Farnsworth down to Paul Revere’s smithy. So they’ve gone from New York to Philadelphia, and then to Boston. It might have helped to have asked Washington where to look before they embarked on this little endeavor. Just sayin’.

They finally encounter Farnsworth and kick his ass. A bit anticlimactic, but I’m well past caring. To complete their mission, they decide to burn all of the counterfeit money, but Fry makes the mistake of taking a lantern out of the North Church to light the fire, ruining the signal for Revere and causing him to spread the word that the British were coming by land. Funny thing about that, it’s actually a total myth that Revere was entirely responsible for alerting the colonists about the British. There were actually several men involved, and the entire reason Revere gets all the credit – and I’m not making this up – is that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow liked how well his name rhymed with the line “Listen my children and you shall hear” and failed to mention everyone else in that silly poem. In fact, the poem even got it backwards – Revere set up the signal in the North Church for others to see. Revere and a handful of others then set out to spread the word to their key allies in Lexington, before being caught and arrested on the road to Concord. My point being, taking a lantern out of the church would actually not have changed all that much, contrary to popular belief. But here I am nitpicking about historical accuracy in a show that wants me to believe that certain rocks can send you back in time and nobody noticed until now.

So because of this mix-up, when the crew returns to their own time, they find that it is still under British rule, and they all have Cockney accents because that’s how all British people talk, right?

Right, Mr. Higgins?

Unable to return to the past now that they don’t have any more opal, the crew resigns themselves to their new life as Brits. Actually, to be honest, things don’t seem that bad aside from the fact that fashion apparently stopped evolving when the revolution failed and they all have to wear powdered wigs and puffed out dresses all the time. The Farnsworths have lived in privilege since the 18^th Century, David being considered a hero for murdering George Washington in the confusion following Revere’s ride (seriously guys, what’s with all the murder jokes this season?), and so the Professor has riches and estate, and is the official consort of the queen. As contrivance would have it, the queen happens to be in possession of an entire, intact opal. Seeing his chance, the Professor grabs it and runs back to the Head Museum. Using David Farnsworth’s head to travel back once again, the crew somehow sets everything right… offscreen. Well, that was a hell of a climax.

You know what really pisses me off about this episode? Some of the actual jokes were pretty solid. The premise was insultingly stupid and the pacing as clunky as a rock in a clothes dryer, but parts of the episode were well done, from the absurdity of the “Franklinator” (consisting of a badger tied to a stick) to the clever nod of Zoidberg imitating the Minister of Silly Walks. At the end there’s even a joke where John Tyler says that no one’s spoken to him in 1200 years, a joke that fully relies on the audience knowing that John Tyler was the single most despised President in US history… even before he made Texas a state (Zing!) That’s a good joke, and it’s a joke that makes you feel good when you get it, because it’s not dumbed down. If the rest of the episode had been written with that kind of attitude, it would have been amazing. But no, this lazy, hackish, slapped-together nonsense is what we’ve got. If only I had some of that Super MacGuffin Crystal I could go back and save us all from watching it, but alas, I live in a world with much better writing than that.

On the plus side, the next episode has literary references! If they don’t fuck that up as bad as they did the historical references in this episode, we might be in for a treat!

That’s a whale of an “if”, though.

Until then, I’m Karl, and I honestly can’t believe I worked a reference to My Fair Lady into this review.