Season 7, Episode 3
“Wow, it really doesn’t matter who you vote for.”
Last week, I note my distaste for Futurama episodes that transplants
topical tumor from our time to the show’s fictional future, and ended with some
skepticism about how tonight’s episode would play out. That was based of the
one clip that Comedy Central was using to promo the episode, which made it
appear that “Decision 3012” was going to tackle the 99%/1% divide. It turns out
that the episode would be based on another singular topical issue, but that
wasn’t even the episode’s main problem.
However, if the specific jokes didn’t work,
“Decision” was able to perfectly nail what they represented, the fractured and
insane nature of the political climate. The more general jokes, like those of
the public’s hatred of taxes, the general conservative platform as conveyed by
Richard Nixon, and the superficial hoops that we make candidates jump through
worked because these are issues that (unfortunately) have a longer shelf life.
Because these are issues that we have seen time and time again, repeated throughout
elections, it becomes easier to buy that these would still be problems 1000
years from. Good comedy may be about specificity, but it also relies heavily on
context, and taking specific references out of their context doesn’t work
nearly as well as making a general joke conform to a specific set of
circumstances.
Unfortunately, the episode couldn’t really keep
the brilliant political satire going, as it became too distracted by a variety
of ideas to just pick one idea and execute it well. The episode bounces around
from idea of Leela being a political activist, before turning into a campaign
manager, which somehow leads to Bender digging up dirt on new presidential
candidate Travers for Nixon, before finally settling on the birther issue. Futurama has always been a show that
packs a lot of plot into 20 minutes, so part of this is just the show being the
show that it is. But there’s also a line, a limit to exactly how much plot it
can stuff into an episode and still feel fleet-footed, and they certainly
crossed it tonight. This wasn’t an episode so much as it was a series of
sketches.
Since all of these plot developments listed above
all had to do with politics, I don’t think I would have noticed how stuffed
this episode was if it wasn’t for the final twist: the fact that Travers was a
time traveler from the future. This development in and of itself is actually
quite brilliant, because having Travers come from the future is a fairly
creative way that the show can have it’s sci-fi cake and still deal with the
issue in a meaningful way that satirizes what we will and won’t accept when it
comes to elections. (It also allowed for a nice call back to Bender’s Big Score with Travers using
the binary time travel code.) It also illustrated the show’s knack for time-travel
logic (what with Travers negating himself from history), and allowed for the
kicker of “it doesn’t matter who you vote for”.
However, time travel is such a disparate piece of
plot from politics, at least genre-wise, that it sort of stretched the logic of
the episode. While there certainly were some reasons for this to be included,
as outlined above, I can’t shake the feeling that there would have been another
way to make the same points, one that would have been more consistent with the
overall tone of the episode. Add to that all of the episode-stuffing discussed
above, and we ended up with an episode that overcame its biggest obstacle only
to trip over a more easily cleared hurdle.
Next Week: Bender
becomes a paparazzi, in perhaps the best piece of vocational alignment ever.
Quotes and
Other Thoughts:
This week in Subtitles: “Made from 100% Recycled
Pixels”.
“I proud to announce I’m running for reelection of
President of Earth, the greatest planet in the world!”
“But Nixon is the worst president in history – and
alternate history.”
“This year I’m going to get involved in the
political process and have my voice heard.” “WHAT?”
“Question two. The environment, yes or no?”
“You haven’t heard the last of mm– ”
“The runner-up, who will take over for the winner
gets caught with a dead woman, a live boy, or any kind of sexy ghost…”
“Hey, did you just put your tongue in my ear?”
“Certainly not. I don’t have a tongue.” “Good, because I don’t have an ear.”
“Is he a draft dodger? A sex trafficker?? A sex
dodger???”
“You Ruth Bader believe it!”
“With out cheap alien labor for things like
harvesting crops, teaching math, and developing medicine…”
“So I become leader of Earth?” “Indeed.” “Yes! In
your face, high school guidance counselor!”
“Linda, I’m down here at the pelvis, and folks
around here can’t remember the last time a time-traveling senator attended his
own birth.”
“Awww, he has his own eyes.”
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