Ugh, not a great episode. And I thought episodes 1 and 2 were pretty mediocre. It’s certainly not terrible, but Futurama still hasn’t hit it’s old stride. I still have high hopes, the episodes are improving but it’s not back yet.
A couple of people have mentioned being annoyed by the “Susan Boil” joke. Count me among them. It’s just plain a lazy joke…a bad pun and a “Hey! Look at this pop culture reference! Hilarious!” That unfortunate bit came dangerously close to God-awful post-season-8Simpsons territory.
Problem the second: The satire is kind of weak. If this episode had run in 2007 it would have felt topical and sharp. In 2010…ehhh.
The Apple Satire - this was the probably the strongest bit. Some fun riffing on the Apple cult. Probably the only laugh-out-loud moment I had was Fry interrupting with “shut up and take my money!” They need to get their old comic timing like this back with more consistency.
The Social Networking - eh, weak. “Twits”. Hilarious. My thought while watching was “this was written by a middle-aged writer who is a bit LTTP on the whole social networking thing”. A quick Wikipedia check puts the writer’s age in his 50s. Bingo.
My personal hope is that they just stay far, far away from topicality. It’s not Futurama’s strong suit. Leave that to South Park, the Simpsons and Family Guy. My favorite bit among these first three episodes was in Ep 2 with the fantastic Brannigan “serials” opening each act. Stick with that, Futurama. That’s what you’re good at!
Edit: And a fucking “The Sims” joke? In 2010? AAARRRGHHHHH again you guys are like 10 years lttp! Skip trying to be topical!
The Susan Boyle stuff and the repeated jokes about goat vomit and diarrhea were more Family Guy than Futurama. They just weren’t funny and they seem like a low point for the show. And it seemed like Leela and Fry were back to being friends here. Is it a bad thing that the iPhone stuff and Twitter parts were topical? I don’t see how it’s a negative. They were funny, and they’re about technology, which I thought made them a good topic for the show. It’s too bad they haven’t had the chance to do a lot of Apple material in the past.
I agree. Very cool to see Craig Ferguson on Futurama, but I wish they’d used him better.
Erm, she is a cartoon. But aside from that I agree with you - she’s always been an irredeemably horrible greedy evil overlord. “Dumb bastards” isn’t the funniest thing she’s ever said but I thought these were good Mom/twit scenes. Although in hindsight her plans was kind of pointless. The customers were pretty close to zombies anyway.
Guys, when I said that about Mom, all I meant was that her writing felt a bit rote and mechanical, like a “Mom dialogue generator” wrote her parts. It’s the difference between writing for the character in a natural way versus deliberately and self-consciously aping that style.
Yeah well, Futurama has always been behind the curve on pop culture. see the aforementioned Slurms McKenzie parody (only about 20 years late with that one) or the untimely Ally McBeal show parody, or the dated Friends references in the earlier run.
Didn’t really detract from the show then and it doesn’t now.
Well, bear in mind, that Lrrr and Ndndnd had only just received the TV signals from those Ancient Earth programs, due to the distances those signals had to travel…
I guess it’s kind of like the Thermians receiving the “Historical Documents” of the Protector and Capt. Taggart from Galaxy Quest…
I thought that the eyePhone commercial at the beginning was great “you can even send a text while being hit by a train…”
Overall, I’d say it was better than the 2nd new episode but not as good as the first. There were some good laughers, but the series still isn’t quite up to snuff.
Obsoletely Fabulous, 300 Big Boys, Roswell that Ends Well, we need to get back there…
I liked “download porno on a crowded bus.” If you DVRed the episode, look at the faces of the other passengers on the bus. That might’be been my favorite joke in this episode. By the way it turns out that a killer app is a real-life term, and Mom used it accurately if literally.
Would that have anything to do with reruns being shown earlier than the normal run? Because for me, the new ones comes at 11 at night, the word bastard wouldn’t be censored at that time on almost any channel.
They didn’t censor the word bastard. The article was in reference to Comedy Central supposedly removing the reference to the “all new EyePhone 2.0” at the end of the episode.
However, I caught the rerun just before the new episode tonight and it wasn’t removed. The people marched to the EyePhone store, Mom’s voice came over the loudspeaker, “Introducing the new EyePhone 2,0,” then cut to Mom saying “Dumb bastards.” It was all intact from the first airing, so apparently the article was in error.
