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 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!”
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