Futurama - "Free Will Hunting"

Season 7, Episode 9

One of the things that I love about Futurama is that, especially in its original run on FOX, the show wasn’t afraid to tackle big issues or scientific principles and to build whole episodes around them. The show knew that there was a smart audience who would be willing to watch a comedy about high-minded ideas, and the audience in kind seemed to be thankful that there existed a show willing to do such storytelling in the first place. There’s hasn’t been as much of this time of story-telling since the show’s comeback, and it’s something that I missed. But after “Free Will Hunting”, I’m not sure the show should return to intellectual territory ever again.

The episode started off well enough. The idea of free will in a complex one, something that would make for great mileage for an episode, and seeing as how this particular episode was written by David X. Cohen, showrunner and Harvard alum, everything seemed in place for a great episode.

The problem is that the episode never really seemed to connect with the issue with which it was supposedly engaged. While making Bender the character to struggle with idea of free will works because it helps to really ground the concept in concrete terms, it also creates logistical programs. We’re told that Bender is acting according to his own programming, which would seem to indicate that all of the “bad” choices that Bender does are actually just controlled by one and zeroes. But how are we to reconcile this with what we’ve seen of Bender of the past, who’s capable of doing things out of friendship, or developing a (albeit god-like) compassionate side, or even the Bender who was happy to be a father? Was he just acting out programming then?

Inconsistent characterization aside, the episode bounces around from plot point to plot point, never really stopping and even giving itself time to attempt to answer the question of free will. In the space of twenty minutes, Bender goes to the Bot planet, meets a regular robot citizen, then the Elders, then a monastic set of bots, before jet-setting back to Earth to steal a free will unit from Mom, before finally taking it from the professor. That’s a lot of different people for Bender to interact with in order to find the answer to his free-will question, and that doesn’t even account for the show’s usual throw-away of a first act that sees Bender going to college, getting into a gang, and going to court.

That all of this was topped off with a fairly pat ending doesn’t help matters much. It’s not just that Bender end back up in court and was found guilty and had a ironically happy ending – that part I actually kind of like, even if it just sort of did away with Bender’s quest for free will far to easily. No, the real disappointment here was the Professor Farnsworth was once again the brains behind a particular robot problem that Bender had. I realize that it makes sense and uphold the show’s internal logic, but the show has gone to this well so many times that at this point it just feels lazy that they couldn’t come up with something else other than a Mom/Professor backstory.

Really, it’s hard to hate an episode that tries to tackle a difficult subject, but it turns out that it’s completely possible to be disappointed by one.

Quotes and Other Thoughts:

This week in Opening Captions: “Warning: Do Not Show to Horses”. HA! Take that, Luck.

“Yes, I’d like to enroll in college.” “You’re still talking to me.” “Oops.”

“Over there.” “Huh?” “Sorry, I forgot where I was. Over here.”

“We have a rival gang? I HATE THEM!”

“Simply vomit on me, ever so gently, while I humiliate a pheasant.”

“Life is about choices. Make the wrong ones, and you’ll end up in a pool of your own blood and vomit.” “Still, do have your own pool…”

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news. Also…GOOD NEWS, EVERYONE!”

“How does a robot join this monk outfit?” “Just put on this monk outfit.”

“Dammit! I should have paid more attention in kindergarten!”