I liked them both. I’m a huge fan of Nixon’s head (“I’ll sell our children’s organs to zoos for meat, and I’ll go into people’s houses at night and wreck up the place!”) so I squealed like Fry when Walt said “nuclear wessels” as we saw that he’s still President of Earth. The second one was otherwise weaker, but even weak Futurama is better than 90% of other comedies.
I liked both, and thought they were pretty solid episodes, but liked the second episode better. However, I’d watch the Animated Adventures of Zap Brannigan and President Nixon every week if such a thing existed.
My plan is to hide in this barrel, like the wily fish!
The scenes of Zapp’s dreaming of being the hero of a thirties serial were great.
Could those of you who recorded the show check something. When Bender was swallowed by the cyclophage and then walked out of his mouth it looked like he had both of his eyes.
Another question. Billy West does the voice for Zapp Brannigan. Tom McGrath does the voice for the Skipper in the Madagascar movies. But it’s virtually the same voice. Are they imitating some other character?
I haven’t seen Madagascar, but Billy West says he’s partly imitating Phil Hartman, who was supposed to play Zapp. Along with some other announcers. If it sounds like any other character (other than guys played by Phil Hartman), it could be because Zapp is the ultimate example of a guy who loves to hear himself talk- he couldn’t sound any more pompous, smug, and self-satisfied.
Zapp Brannigan was written for Phil Hartman. When he was killed by his wife in a murder/suicide, Billy West took the role and played it like Hartman was going to. I don’t know about Tom McGrath’s portrayal of the Skipper. I think it might be more that it’s a loud, bombastic voice that works well.
Only human/robot relationships are taboo in the 31st century, robot/robot ones are fine. One of the new episodes is supposed to be about this. I liked that Fry & Leela are finally in a relationship and we get to see that play out.
Bender and Amy start dating and he get’s caught up in a movement to legalize robosexual marriage.
I liked the first episode but not so much the second.
SPOLER***
I found Lela and Zapp doing it at the end right in front of Frye to be a bit much. That’s just cruel and frankly was a little disturbing.
Is anybody else aroused and jealous and worried?
I think you may be right, but I didn’t back it up to double check.
The other episode had a definite error, though. All throughout they’d been showing regular Leela with her arm gadget and robo-Leela with a bandage, but for one brief shot of robo-Leela near the end, she had both a bandage on one arm, and the gadget thingy on her other arm. Then the following shot had her back to just the bandage.</comic book guy>
I also was a little disappointed that robo-Leela didn’t appear to have a square pupil, but I guess that was because they couldn’t give robo-Fry square pupils lest they ruin the reveal.
I think you need to move your closing “comic book guy” tag to the end of the final paragraph.
I agree. It was a stupid way to end the episode IMHO.
Has the show gotten a little more ‘edgy’ these past two episodes.
(paraphrasing)
Fry: Stem cells? Isn’t that a bit controversial?
Professor: Well, maybe a few years ago, but now - SHUT UP!
I was too busy laughing to hear what the Professor said after that.
I was underwhelmed. The first episode was mediocre compared to the original run, and the second was just BAD.
What I loved about the original run was that the humor was character-driven, not gag-driven, and they actually took real science-fiction ideas and played around with them in interesting ways. Now there seem to be a lot more gags and random “this is the future so anything wacky can happen” moments. And it’s a lot smuttier, for no apparent raisin.
Like a robotic recreation of a human(oid) discovering she’s a robot and trying to figure out how to live her life, and decide she’d be happier as a Terminator, while her human counterpart comes back to life and has to grapple with jealousy and the idea that someone replaced her? Maybe that’s been done to death in sci-fi and I don’t know it (my knowledge of the genre is limited) but I thought that was fascinating stuff. I could have watched a lot more than 22 minutes of it, considering they dealt with that in the middle of a comedy plot.
I was a bit disappointed how it ended. Continuing with the “Star Trek” references, I expected V-Giny would get into a dialogue with one of the characters like Nomad did with Kirk in the TOS episode that would end with V-Giny “censoring” itself out of existence after realizing how “morally inappropriate” it was. Instead, it just left after seeing the coupling of Leela and Zapp.
Yeah, that was why I rated the first episode as mediocre instead of bad. If they’d done more with that and less with the random wackiness then it would have been great.
But compare the “Zapp and Leela in Eden” episode to the “Leela and Al” episode from the original run. “Leela and Al” got much deeper into Leela’s conflicted attitude toward having to repopulate the world with someone she couldn’t stand, and Fry’s efforts to stop her were completely in character – romantic and clueless at the same time. In the new episode Leela’s loathing of Zapp gets thrown out the window too easily, and Fry seems totally fine with the two of them having sex at the end. There’s no character depth, just gags.
Maybe they thought that had been done. To me, though, the point about voyeurism would not have been made if the sphere destroyed itself. Maybe it’s just my interpretation but I think it improves the episode signifncantly.
I liked it a lot as it was, but an hour of that would have suited me just fine.
There are some obvious parallels there, but to be honest that was never one of my favorite episodes. I don’t think her feelings about Zapp got thrown out the window exactly. I think she decided to save the species, and later the planet [which, for some reason, she thought all humans were on - I thought they had space travel ;)]. But I admit she took it in stride and it was weird. Fry really didn’t, but he was calmer than you’d expect. I agree that was out of character. But the alternative is that the ending is rape at gunpoint, which is not very funny.
I don’t have much of substance to add, except that I was so disappointed in the first episode that I just went to bed (I might have even skipped the last couple of minutes of the episode). I might have smiled a time or two, but that was it. I found myself wishing it would hurry and finish.
This, from someone who has watched a Futurama episode every single day for the past 3 years.
I’m so sad; I wish everyone else was dead.
You guys are nuts, I thought the second episode was hilarious. The regeneration idea was kind of creepy and felt a little more Venture Brothers than Futurama.
He said something like, “Anyway, these are adult stem cells, from healthy adults whom I killed for their stem cells.”