Season 6, Episode 19
A balancing act goes wrong
Admit it, you saw that twist coming. Upon Leela’s second return from her “quiet place” it became very obvious that she was getting inspiration for her stories from some sort of alien species. Now, this end and of itself isn’t enough to wreck the entire episode – Futurama has gotten away with far more obvious reveal in the past – but considering that Leela’s attempt to write the show seemed to be the main drive of the episode, the by-the-numbers of this is plot did seem to drag the episode down a bit.
Luckily, there were other bits of plot going on around this, but unfortunately, it didn’t congeal into a big enough whole to counteract the tired nature of the A-plot. First, the good: the shows various takedowns of the children’s entertainment industry were spot-on, and delivered the biggest laughs of the night. (Likewise, I equally enjoyed the digs at basic cable.) Yet I never felt like any of this took of beyond a string of jokes, which is a bit disheartening. Usually the best Futurama episodes can take a topic and give us a fully fledged plot line out of it. Maybe the show was doing that here, and trying to make some sort of case for how all kid’s television’s show are rip-off of something else, but if that was the case, then I would have liked for that to come across a bit more strongly.
I also liked that the show once again put Leela, the closest thing the show has to a moral center, in a moral conundrum, as that has yielded great results in the past. It could have worked here, if it weren’t for that fact that the show didn’t a lot quite enough time for her to squirm. Given that her back wasn’t up against the wall until the third act, it felt as if Leela went through all the usually permeations of her guilt at a much quicker pace, and therefore we lost a lot of the ability to laugh at her pain.
The episode ended strongly enough, as it avoided a clean ending in favor of having Leela face the full horror of what she’s done, in how she screwed over both the aliens that gave her the inspiration and the orphans that caused her to want to write in the first place. But considering the most solid bit came at the very end, I feel like the show would have been better off by excising one of these plot points, even if I can’t for sure say which one. This feels like the third episode in a row that the writers should have spent a little more time on, and that just makes me worry about how the rest of the season will go.
Next Week: Partyin’ with the presidents. (Now that sounds like it's right up my alley.)
Quotes, Etc:
This week in Opening Captions: Penetrates Even the Thickest Foil Hat
“Sometimes you got to choose between eatin’ and readin’. So they ate the books!”
"Miss Leela, I have a question?" "Yes?" “That story was bad.” “That’s not really a question.” “That’s not really a story.”
“Mr. Funny Bunny will gage your reaction by bombarding you with snuggle rays.”
“He’s so hot. I wish he wasn’t my brother.”
“Hurry Captain, a skinny kid needs our help!”
“Thanks for the brain scans, kids. Don’t have any kids for the next few days.”
“Everybody loves him because nobody can understand him.”
“Will you come back and tell us more stories, and also adopt us?”
“Sign here on….uh….this SuperCuts coupon.”
“Welcome to the glamorous world of basic cable TV!...I’m gonna need that pen back.”
“…and non-union action!”
“I don’t understand. When I like something, I lick it, like this raccoon.”
“Well, that’s all for today, but before we go, let’s do what we just learned two more times.”
The Oscars = Old People’s Choice Awards
“You ever made out with a tugboat?”
“Non-creative? I’ll have you know I bedazzle my own underpants.”
“It’s like catching an evangelist in a whore house. That was the best Christmas ever.”
“I just want to show those orphans they can succeed in life.” “Ugh, you are the worst kind of rich person.”
“The kids haven’t been this excited since Food Day!”
“Stealing is a form of creativity!”
“I’m as sad as an upside down smile!” “You mean a frown?” “We didn’t have a word for it until now…”
“Albert, pick up that pastrami and put it back on the craft services table.” “You’re the boss, daddy.”
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