Review: "The Problem With Popplers" (Season 2, Episode 15)

"I brought my own mic!"

Airdate: May 7th, 2000

Synopsis: The trio wind up on a planet, in search of a food break (welcome to my world). There's no fast food, but tons of another edible life form that looks like fried shrimp. Quickly addicted to it, they call the food "popplers", take them back, and make loads of money off the venture. However, the plan enters a tailspin when it turns out that the Popplers are really the larval stage of Omnicronian development. Yeah... Lrrr is not really pleased with this development.

Review (SPOILERS): In my opinion, there are two types of great Futurama episodes. The first type is the type that stretches the show beyond it's comic exterior to provide a more introspective, dramatic take on it's characters. The second type, a nonstop barrel of laughs, interspersed with well-done character interactions and comedy. This is the latter, and makes this a contender of the best episode of the second season.

This makes sense, given that this episode's inspiration, TOS's "The Trouble With Tribbles", is easily considered the funniest episode in Trek history. Short summary of the tribbles - the Enterprise crew takes the aforementioned aliens aboard the Enterprise as pets, they breed, and eventually, wind up in Kirk's chicken sandwich and coffee.

"The Problem with Popplers" takes the comedy found in "Tribbles", tones it to Futurama's dystopian view of the future, and even adds some social commentary.

Yes, social commentary.

(Before we continue, I'm not a vegetarian. Not a carnivore, however.)

"The Problem With Popplers" addresses protests and big business in general - more specifically, vegetarian activism. On one hand, you have your standard issue big businessman, Fishy Joe. A ruthless capitalist, Fishy Joe is in it for the money, appears to only critique cannibalism because humans taste horrible, and almost hilariously dismissive of the idea that eating meat is murder. While this character is old hat, he is funny, and his inclusion is aided by the opposition.

For Free Waterfall is not a blameless protagonist - far from it. He is not only about as far-left as Comrade Greeting Card from the previous episode ("You can't own property, man"), he ignores any attempts rebut his worldview (even if said rebuttal was from Fishy Joe), is almost militant in his vegetarianism (even if he was saving an orangutan, he'd rather it live in lieu of Leela), and pays no attention to the needs of the animals he tries to save. His obnoxiousness is increased by the fact that he really doesn't do anything useful in the episode. And I absolutely think the inclusion of his character is perfect.

In a way, he's more relevant than ever before, what with the (apparent, at least) increasing amount of "SJWs", especially of the "limousine liberal" kind. While Waterfall isn't necessarily full of SJW archetypes, he does contain the militant behavior, the closed-solid mentality, and the obnoxiousness he emanates.

So, yeah, the two sides are pretty extreme.

The society seen here, though, is pretty quick to condone eating, well, anything. I know it's a bit of a cliche sentence, but since Futurama is a look at the flaws of modern society from a sci-fi lens, hat does that say about us? Or, what does that say about the standards of the food we eat?

As far as the "trio" goes, this episode focuses more on Leela. A lot of her character in this episode lines on the irony her decisions hold - the woman to first find the popplers, she also becomes one of the larger spokespeople after she discovers their sentience, and is the one damned to be eaten by Lrrr and Ndnd. She's just as fallible as the rest of the crew, quick to try and dive out of any sort of responsibility, as seen with her response to Jrrr's admission that the young Omnicronians eat their mothers. Whoops.

Fry and Bender, meanwhile, are just there to provide the laughs. Eh... can't add too much to that. Honestly, the relative lack of character development for the trio wasn't necessarily a bad thing - they make for a pretty good comic troupe in this episode, whether on their own or together.

Zapp Brannigan reappears here, and is as hysterical as ever. Calculating a plan to have men "scoring round the clock", so to speak, to match the amount of Omnicronians that Earthicans ate is just one of the many, many eccentricities on display here. Surprisingly, he managed to negotiate the amount of doomed humans down to one, and managed to almost luck out with swapping Leela with the Orangutan. This is probably Zapp Brannigan at his brightest... and he's still quite an idiot.

Really, though, this episode is made all the more epic with the large amounts of laughs I had. I swear, not a half-minute went by when I didn't at least chuckle. To list the funniest lines would require a second post, so I'll just leave it with this...

...watch this episode. One of the best so far.

Tidbits:

• Love how the Zapper's schedule is on an Etch-a-Sketch.
• Kudos to the "Poppler Jingle", which contains one of my favorite lyrics in the show. "If you promise not to sue us, you can shove one up your nose!"
• This episode does launch the thread of the Waterfall Family. They are all voiced by Phil Hendrie.
• And what better way to end the episode than with the crew eating a dolphin? Warped? Yes. Hilarious? Yes.

Favorite Scene: Ah, I can't choose - probably the "fight" at Madison Cube Garden. Better than "Raging Bender", that's for sure. Also, love how the consumption of a human is televised and sponsored, even!

Least Favorite Scene: None. Not a wrong line anywhere.

Memorable Quote: "We will begin with the firemen, then the math teachers, and so on in that fashion until everyone is eaten." - Lrrr, describing the order in which the Omnicronians are going to devour humanity. It's not the most memorable quote, but it's certainly one of the more overlooked quotes. Can't say the man's not organized.

Score: 9.