Review: "The Cyber House Rules" (Season 3, Episode 9)

 

"You're better than normal. You're abnormal! If you ask me, you shouldn't care about what other people think!" "You're right. I'll start by not caring what you think!" - Fry and Leela, defying the Star Trek dynamic of "captain going to first officer for advice."

Airdate: April 1st, 2001

Written By: Lewis Morton

Plot: The Orphanarium is having a reunion of a class of it's former... orphans. Leela, having had a less than pleasant experience there, but goes - Fry encourages her to rub her success in. It doesn't work too well. There, however, she encounters Dr. Adlai Atkins, a plastic surgeon who offers to give her a prosthetic eye. Despite Fry's objections, Leela agrees to the surgery, and strikes up a romance with the doctor.

Meanwhile, Bender finds out from the operator of the Orphanarium that the government offers $100 a month for every orphan adopted. Bender decides to clear house to make a solid $1200 a month. Unfortunately, he has to actually raise the children, which is a fairly costly measure.

Review: 

You ever go into something thinking that it is going to be a bunch of subpar, mediocre, or downright bad, then you watch it, and it's actually pretty good? Well, that's pretty much my thought process when I began to review "The Cyber House Rules". It's not an episode I watch that often, so I was focusing on the "Be Yourself" trope - a trope that is "tried and true", to put it kindly. What I instead got was a pretty hilarious take on that message, and also an episode that focused on everybody's favorite starship captain...

...Leela.

(Sorry, Zapper.)

Review: "That's Lobstertainment" (Season 3, Episode 8)

"I've only been here a day, and already, I'm a Hollywood phony!" - Zoidberg. Ah, the power of Los Angeles

Airdate: February 25th, 2001

Written By: Patric M. Verrone.

Plot: Booed off of the stage at a comedy club, Zoidberg is depressed. Apparently, his uncle used to be a comic legend back in the days of "silent holofilms". He writes to one Harold Zoid to get some tips for the trade. Unfortunately, Harold Zoid is destitute, a has-been. He promises to help Zoidberg become a centerpiece of drama if Zoidberg can fund his drama project, The Magnificent Three. With that, Bender goes over to Calculon, and in exchange for a small investment, guarantees him an Oscar for his performance.

It goes poorly.

Review:

Well, shortly after watching one of Futurama's best episodes, we get a look at what many consider one of the original run's weakest episodes. Netting a 61% on GotFuturama.com, the only "original" episodes cited as worse are "The Cryonic Woman" (which I've already mentioned I dislike) and "A Leela Of Her Own" (which I'll get to later.) The question here is, does "That Lobstertainment" deserve it's bad reputation? Or is it a diamond in the rough?

Morbotron Debuts, and Suddenly, You Have Time To Waste!

Source is this post's topic of discussion.

"Good news, everyone! Several years ago, I tried to log onto AOL, and it just went through! Yippee!" - Farnsworth, "A Bicyclops Built For Two".

Who knew when Futurama premiered that there would be a website dedicated entirely to Futurama framegrabs?

Well, now, there is one.

From the makers of Simpsons framegrab repository frinkiac.com comes morbotron.com. Available? All seven seasons, including the movies. From the worst of Futurama to the best of Futurama, they have it all. You can even .gif and meme the show, damn it!

(Unfortunately, there's something about the Blogger interface that makes .gifs come off a bit, well, unfinished.)

And for those interested, here are the technical details about it's sister site.

Enjoy, fellow Meatbags!

(Oh, and on an unrelated note, my "That's Lobstertainment" review should be up within the next week or so.)

Review: "The Day The Earth Stood Stupid" (Season 3, Episode 7)

Thank you, Dewey Decimal System. You destroyed the universe.

"Brain! Brain make people dumb!" "No, Leela. Brain make people smart." - Leela and Fry. No, I did not mix up that order.

Airdate: February 18th, 2001.

Written By: Jeff Westbrook and David X. Cohen

Plot: Leela is disenchanted at how stupid Nibbler appears, not doing anything but cause trouble at a pet competition. However, when brains attack the Earth, Leela catches Nibbler as he boards a mini space shuttle, back to his home planet of Eternium. There, the Nibblonians introduce themselves as an intellectual (if cute) species determined to tackle the Brainspawn. The Brainspawn feed off of the Delta Brainwave, making everybody in their path stupid, and leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. The one person that can save them? Fry, who happens to lack a Delta Brainwave.

Review:

Season 3 is, again, often cited as the season which started Futurama's rise from merely being a great show to being a sublime show. If "Parasites Lost" launched the central romantic relationship in the franchise, and "Luck of the Fryrish" give emotional levity to it's central plot, than "The Day The Earth Stood Stupid" stands out as one of the most inventive science fiction elements in the history of the show - all while being drop. Dead. Funny.

Review: "Bendless Love" (Season 3, Episode 6)

"Oh.... my love... my darling..."

"Ten times normal wage? I'll give those jerks what for!" - Bender, crossing the picket line... before taking the job. Ah, Bender - walks the walk, doesn't talk the talk.

Airdate: February 11th, 2001

Written By: Eric Horsted

Plot: The Planet Express Ship crashes on takeoff. Leela's crash report deduces that the L-Unit was bent. That, plus several other "bent" objects leads suspicion to fall on Bender - which is confirmed by a videotape showing him "sleep-bending". Fired because of his addiction, Bender winds up taking a job bending at a company facing a strike. There, he meets Flexo - his yin body double - and Angleyne, a voluptuous Fembot who Bender takes a shine to, and who might be reciprocating his feelings. Thing is.... Angleyne and Flexo are caught out at dinner together. Bender, therefore, decides to impersonate Flexo, believing that she's truly in love with the bearded bot.

Review:

Bender is well known to the casual viewer (and pretty much everybody else) for his flamboyant lifestyle. He's an egoist, a thief, and a drunkard. It makes perfect sense for him to pick up women on a daily basis - which was seen in "Hell is Other Robots" as the act of rebellion against his religion. Here, though, Bender gets a taste of genuine love - or at least a crush. It's a cute little episode, albeit not close to the show's best.

Review: "The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz" (Season 3, Episode 5)

Airdate: March 4th, 2001

Plot: Leela, opposed to the path the Planet Express Ship has to take while towing an oil tanker (by a penguin preserve on Pluto), resigns her command to protest with environmentalists - led by Free Waterfall Sr. Y'know, the guy who's son got eaten by Lrrr. Bender is appointed Captain, much to Fry's displeasure. The two fight, and Bender gets so deperssed, he refuses to drink. Thus, he becomes loopy, and crashes the oil tanker on the preserve. Bender is sentenced to community service, and becomes one with the penguins... who begin reproducing at a rapid pace.

Review: 

When I was younger, I was quite the environmentalist nut. I though Al Gore was a god, I was wondering why there weren't more Prii on the road, and I always used wind power when playing SimCity 4. (TURBINES FOR LIFE!) Thing is, I wasn't one for nature walking, or cleanup efforts... in short, I was more Leonardo DiCaprio than anything else in my environmentalism.

This episode is Futurama's first to tackle the environmentalist topic, and in this case, does a pretty good job in skewering both sides of the topic.

Review: "The Luck of the Fryrish" (Season 3, Episode 4)

Airdate: March 11th, 2001.

Plot: Fry has been on a streak of what seems to be bad, bad luck. He loses at the racetracks, loses every dollar at said racetrack, gets electrocuted to try and retrieve his last dollar. This makes him think back to a simpler time... 1980s New York.

It was a quirky time to be a New Yorker. The Yankees were awful. Ed Koch was asking how he was doin' as New York's mayor. And one Philip J. Fry had a tense relationship with his family, most notably, with his older brother Yancy. In a city park, Fry manages to track down a seven-leafed clover, and luck winds up on his side. After Yancy tries to steal it, Fry hides it in a record vault.

A thousand and change years later, Fry decides to retrieve the clover from the record vault. Unfortunately, it's missing, and Fry immediately suspects Yancy. Making matters worse is the fact that, after his little cryogenic incident, somebody by the name of Philip J. Fry became handsomely famous. Fry comes to the conclusion that Yancy committed identity theft.

Review: My review of "Parasites Lost" seemed to concur with the idea that Season 3 showed Futurama leap from a merely funny sci-fi show to a great character dramedy. However, you would think that those dramatic episodes would be further apart than a whopping two episodes. "Luck of the Fryrish" is another gut-wrenching episode, focusing on Fry's relationship with his family. The end result is a very, very bittersweet half-hour of television.

Review: "A Tale Of Two Santas" (Season 3, Episode 3)

Merry Christmas, Everybody!

Airdate: December 16th, 2001. Yes, you read that correctly.

Plot: It's Xmas time again. Time to set the shutters, arm yourselves around the fire's glow, and pray to god that Robot Santa doesn't blow you off the face of the planet. For our favorite trio, they get the worst possible mission - delivering letters to Santa. On Neptune, attempts to finally destroy Santa are futile, but they do trap him in some ice. Bender, being the only robot there, takes up the mantle of Robot Santa. However, old fears die hard... and by that, I mean that Bender gets locked up.

Review: 

Back in September (of all months), I reviewed "XMas Story" - the introduction of Xmas which showed it as one of the most dystopic holidays possible. The bringer of joy to us is now a robotic bringer of destruction and hell. "A Tale of Two Santas" really drives home just how ingrained the terror of XMas has become to the populace of New New York, where even a benevolent Santa (bizarrely enough, Bender) can't change it.

Review: "Parasites Lost" (Season 3, Episode 2)

Airdate: January 21st, 2001

Synopsis: Fry grabs an old sandwich at a truck stop. After an unrelated work-related accident, Fry's body repairs itself. A colonoscopy reveals that Fry has worms lodged in his intestines. The crew shrink down to miniature size to try and remove the worms from power. Since the worms are linked to Fry's mind, however, they would defend themselves if Fry knew what was happening. Therefore, Leela must "distract" Fry from the mission.

While out on the town, Fry proves himself to be more articulate and verbose than ever before. A newly enamored Leela halts the mission, in order to continue living this fantastic experience with Fry. The experience reaches it's peak when Fry manages to play the Holophonor - an instrument infamous for it's challenge. Yet, who's actually performing these actions - Fry, or the Worms?

Review: While Futurama is plenty well known as a sci-fi parody, what really seems to sell fans on the show is that underneath the sitcom-esque clothes lies one of the best episodic sci-fi shows out there, full with drama and character development. We didn't see too much of that drama in Season 2, however. Therefore, one must present the question - at what point did Futurama go from "sci-fi comedy" to "complex dramedy"?

For most people, the line is crossed in "Parasites Lost".

And in the eyes of some people, it is Futurama's zenith.

Does the same hold true in my eyes?

(Warning: some Star Trek spoilers later in the review.)

Review: "Amazon Women In The Mood" (Season 3, Episode 1)

Airdate: February 4th, 2001.

Synopsis: Kif is unable to ask Amy out on a date, due to his eternal shyness. Zapp takes advantage of this, and manages to wind up on a "double half-date" with Leela, Kif, and Amy at Le Palm D'Orbit, an orbiting restaurant. There, Zapp tries to get Kif to use his boorish pick-up lines, and when Kif finally tries to show his true colors in a song, Zapp blocks it by "singing" his own tune. The restaurant abandoned by all except the four, the captain's attempts to pilot it back home end with them crashed on Amazonia, a matriarchal planet that has effectively eliminated all men.

Fry and Bender attempt to rescue them, and it ends with the crew arrested. After a tour of the planet, they are brought to the Fem-puter, the leader of the planet. There, Fem-Puter is infuriated by the fact that there are men that trespassed on the planet, and sentences them to die.

Review (SPOILERS): As far as I can recall, Season 3 is going to focus quite a bit more on continuity and the development of plot elements introduced in Seasons 1 and 2. Indeed, the season premiere, "Amazon Women In The Mood", fleshes out Kif and Amy, all while serving as a parody of sci-fi pulp, mocking both genders, and analyzing hypocrisy in radical politics. For the most part, the end result is good - although is the episode overrated?