Futurama: "All the Presidents' Heads"

Season 6, Episode 20

Finely, an episode with a decent sense of plotting

Okay, so I feel I have to be upfront about this: there was a very little chance that I wouldn't like this episode. Being a history major, I tend to have a soft spot for shows that dabble in – and mock – history. (The flipside of this is that I am overly testy when it comes to historical inaccuracies.) So in regard to the episode’s premise, “All the Presidents’ Heads” is aces in my book.

But what about the story? Well, for what feels like the first time this summer, the episode actually plotted along quite nicely, with a clear beginning, middle, and end. The first act gave us a party with the presidents, led to the discovery of the jar juice’s time traveling properties, and dropped our characters in 1775. The second act follows their time in 1775 restoring the Farnsworth family name, and show how this screwed up history as we know. And the last act had us spend some time in this alternate future before everything was fixed. By easily breaking down the acts in such a manner, the episode was able to clip along at a nice place

If there was a weak link here, it was probably act three, as it felt like a string of British stereotypes – most of them not that funny – without any real plot to speak of. While I appreciate the show not trying to cram too much plot in where it wouldn’t have fit, it was a bit weird to see them go back in time and then suddenly reappear in the “proper” future without any explanation of what took place between those two time jumps. I realize that this is probably then actual way one would experience changes a timeline, but still.

The other weak element was the absolute randomness of the jar juice’s time travel properties, but I’m willing to overlook this silly little bit of plotting because it gave us some background on how the jars work. (I know this sound nerdy, but it’s always bugged me as to how those things worked, and I’m just happy to get an answer.) All in all, this may not have been the best episode Futurama’s ever done, but it’s at least a sizeable step up from the poorly plotted episodes that we’ve seen, and at this point I’m so worn down that that in and of itself makes me happy.

Quotes, Etc:

This Week in Opening Ccaptions: Apply Viewing Oil Now

“Inventor of television, and as an added bonus, childhood obesity.”

“Lay off my trademark mole!”

“Hi Lars!” (Get it?)

“…or it will be your ass in a jar!” “I want to go to that museum.”

“You’re mean, Rutherford B. Hayes!”

“You’re lying!” “He’s George Washington; he tends not to do that.”

“Hi, I’m Jerry. I like movies.”

“This is the 60s. I did a report on it for my drug class.”

“Jefferson, did you sell me some bad rope?”

“Professor, no! You can’t tongue the father of our country!”

“The yays have it. Our nation’s official joke state will be New Jersey.”

“That’s how we write our s’es, you ftupid fhitheads.”

“I’m sure nobody’s ever said this before, but I need to get to Philadelphia as soon as possible.”

“Are you man or machine?” “Mostly machine. There might be a couple of dead cats in there.”

“But Boston’s 300 miles away, and Bender kicked our horse to death.”

Bender is 40% scrap metal.

“What are you looking at, you British bastards!”

“Fry you dope! You really screwed the granny this time!”

“I’ll dial up the Beeb. They’ve always got a nice docy-walky on.”

“How is it we got socialized medicine, but my teeth still look like this?”

“Stop him! He crowned me in the knickers and kicked me crown!”

“Freeze, or we will be forced to continue chasing you, as we don’t carry guns.” “Indubitably.”

“I killed George Washington, and now I’m married to the Spice Girls. I don’t rightly know which one.”