It doesn’t make sense that Susan was there for so long, but that we have never seen it before.
Well they tried to explain it by having Leela mention how she’s constantly lancing Susan, but it always grew back.
+1. and i don’t think iphone jokes will be timeless. beanie babies and baseball cards are still with us, but they are definitely dated. the iphone will become dated enough also.
The"Third World" segment was, IMHO, the best part and definitely felt like classic Futurama. I do agree that making a whole episode revolve around the iPhone felt off, however.
Here are five old episodes chosen at random:
Xmas Story
A story: Santa is revealed to be a robotic homicidal maniac.
B story: Fry tries to buy Leela an Xmas present.
The Cyber House Rules
A story: Leela changes her appearance at the urging of her new love.
B story: Bender adopts 12 orphans.
Teenage Mutant Leela’s Hurdles
A story: The gang de-age.
B story: Leela tries to live-out her lost childhood
Spanish Fry
A story: Fry’s human horn goes missing.
B story: In search of Bigfoot…
Bender Should Not Be Allowed On TV
A story: Bender becomes a TV star
B story: Fathers Against Rude Television take action
TheFifthYear is right. Topical humour is usually a throwaway gag at best. In the case of Beanie Babies, the gag was actually how fleeting the fad would be, and, in fact, it was dealt with in one line.
The first act of “Attack of the Killer App” was a huge relief, but it was downhill from there. I’d still rate it well-ahead of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela” but well behind most episodes in the original run.
Susan Boyle was 48 when she was on Britain’s Got Talent. I would hardly characterize that as being elderly. At 53, I hardly even characterize myself as elderly yet.
Does anyone know if that episode is available online? I have an iPhone fanatic friend that would enjoy it.
Appropriately enough, it’s available on iTunes.
I noted in the Thread about the two episode Comedy Central premiere that neither of the first two episodes really had much in the way of a “B story”. The second episode had a thin B Story with the gang trying to get Earth to repent, but that wasn’t much.
This episode’s B Story?
A Story: eyePhone Fad?
B Story: Fry and Bender’s competition?
or
A Story: Fry and Bender’s competition?
B Story: Leela and her boil?
No real B Story. Lack of a B Story in the first three episodes is the aspect that I feel is really keeping it from feeling like classic Futurama.
Pssh. Whatever, grandpa. 
I think Susan Boyle was/is less noted for her age than for her looks. I didn’t pay much attention, but the undercurrent of a lot of the coverage seemed to be, “This lady can sing, but boy is she ugly!” A Brit Doper could probably shed more light on how she was portrayed, though.
I thought it was the best of the three new episodes.
No, I think it was more like, “Yeah, she’s overweight and not pretty, but MAN, can she sing!” I don’t watch either of the Got Talent shows, but quite a few unattractive people try out for American Idol, and there have been some unattractive winners and runners-up. I think her age was just as much of a factor. GT doesn’t have an upward age limit like Idol does, but there is a general sense that most people by her age have given up if they’re not already successful. (Not saying it’s accurate, but people do think that.)
Anyway, the expectation of the judges and audience, and everyone watching the video for the first time, was one of two things. A) She wanted to sing for her poor dead mother, and she would croak her way through some glurge and if you didn’t tear up, you probably also kicked puppies or B) Thirty years earlier, she’d been an okay singer (and cute and thin), but no one in her life now had the heart to tell her that her talent-show ship had sailed. And in the face of all that tension, she didn’t just measure up, she blew the roof off. And that was the hook, really. She didn’t stand out as the most unattractive person ever to audition for a talent show (and who’d want to measure that?), but she did stand out as the only (AFAIK) person to win the audition on the first note, who happened to be unattractive.
The first one.
I think that’s much better than what I said. The notion that people her age generally have given up seems to be a big hook as well: everybody loves the underdog that perseveres and it makes for a pretty simple and powerful narrative.
To keep from further derailing the thread, did anyone catch the spelling of Leela’s boil’s last name? I want to know whether or not to groan at the wordplay. (Can I call it a pun when it uses a proper name?)
Ditto. Worst episode ever. It felt like a bad episode of Family Guy.
Watched this last night, and put me in the “this is the worst episode of Futurama that I think I’ve ever seen” category. Topical humor is NOT the strength of this show.
Did it even have a last name? I though part of the joke was that its name was Susan and it just so happened to be a boil.
I don’t understand you people who are shocked (shocked!) that Futurama is doing topical satire. It’s always done that. Remember Al Gore’s head? The global warming episode? The Kang/Kodos election? Slurms McKenzie? (OK, that was more dated than topical, but still satire.)
The Kang/Kodos election was The Simpsons, not Futurama.
But as long as we’re cataloguing topical humor from Futurama, let’s throw in everybody getting a $300 tax rebate, AOL being full of ads and perverted chatrooms and taking forever to connect to, and Al Gore’s needing $100 to buy “one gallon of gas”.
Oops. Yeah, brain fart. But the point still stands. As your further examples illustrate, topical humor has always been a part of Futurama.
“Single Female Lawyer” was a takeoff on Ally McBeal. That whole episode was topical, and already dated at the time it came out.
One of my favorite episodes was full of Beck jokes. I’ll bet a lot of the younger viewers today have no idea who he is, and certainly don’t get most of the jokes.
Futurama has always had topical episodes.
I thought this was a good episode. Better than the first two.