Huzzah! A good episode!
I gotta tell you folks, I’m relieved. After this season’s first two eps were so middling, I was worried that’s what the whole season was gonna be – worried both as a viewer who wants to watch quality television, and as a reviewer who knows there’s nothing less interesting to read or to write than a lukewarm review. So for me, seeing the show improve itself this week was a double delight.
Now, don’t get me wrong – “The Temp” is nothing special. I doubt it’ll make anyone’s list of great Futurama episodes. But it’s got a solid story and good-to-decent jokes throughout. I’d put it on par with eps like “Mars University” or “Bender Should Not Be Allowed on Television”. If “The Temp” had aired back during the Fox years, I’d rank it as a lower-mid-tier episode – but the lower-mid-tier of classic Futurama is still pretty good!
I suppose what buoyed this episode up was how focused it was. Looking at my last two reviews, my main complaint was that each episode had multiple storylines going on that felt like they should be complementing each other to make a richer experience, but failed to do so. “The Temp” succeeds by not bothering with B-plots, and instead sticks to the story of how some random guy stole Fry’s life.
Okay, technically there is a second plot, where Lrrr and Ndnd renew their wedding vows, but that’s clearly a Simpsons style random-first-act-adventure. It’s not meant to have anything to do with the main plot – it’s just there to kick the episode off with a funny bit of a business.
And it is a funny bit of business! Well, some of the time. That sequence is what I think of as Airplane! comedy: establish a setting – show some people there doing something funny – move on to some different people doing some other funny thing – repeat. Some of the jokes are groaners (“Is that crab rangoon?”/”No, he’s Dr. Zoidberg”), but that almost doesn’t matter, since we move on to the next joke so quickly. And plenty of those jokes are laugh-out-louders, whether through some inspired absurdity (“Here, under the watchful eye of Jvvv, God of the Omicronians” “Hey there”) or just by being such a groan-worthy pun, you can’t help but laugh (“Molotov!”)
So we get our fun there, then it’s off to the main story. If I were to play script doctor again this week, I’d say you could easily cut the temp’s origin story down to half the length, and use that time to play up the mystery of who this identity thief is and how they’re fitting into Fry’s life. Or, alternatively, start the episode with the temp’s origins, tell the whole episode from their point of view, so it’s even more sad/hilariously cruel when the Planet Express crew abandons them, and we understand why they’re so desperate to steal Fry’s life, of all people’s.
But I’m not gonna go at length about that like I did last week. “The Temp” may not hit the heights we know Futurama can achieve, but it’s still a fun outing with quite a few great bits (“The ship is abandoning us!” / “Keep away from us, you dirty hippy! There are no ‘grooves’ here!” / “That’s not a plan! You’re just improvising!”)
Plus, I love how it emphasizes the casual cruelty of Futurama‘s world.
As my predecessor Drunk Napoleon would point out, Futurama‘s outlook on life is firmly rooted in apathy. The characters see that the world around them is a horrible place, but are mostly content with its level of horribleness. Dangerous working conditions, alien death rays, the daily jerkasseries committed by Bender: all are met with a shrug. That’s the attitude both the characters and the audience must adopt for the show to be funny rather than horrifying.
And that’s something the temp can’t quite manage. Most of our main characters work unsafe, underpaid, and unfulfilling jobs, but they usually just roll with it and more-or-less enjoy their lives. The temp, by contrast, has clearly been beaten down by the daily grind of temp work, the very timbre of their voice an expression of misery. And when the temp is given the slightest reason to feel joy, they go full in the other direction, becoming a beacon of positivity and friendliness … which everyone else hates. Apathy lets the Futurama crew find pleasure in their awful, awful lives, but it also makes genuine love of life feel irritatingly alien.
Perhaps the temp’s refusal to embrace apathy is why apathy, in turn, makes the temp its whipping boy. Whether the temp’s the friendliest guy in the universe or an unhinged villain who tries to kill everyone, it doesn’t make a difference – no one’s gonna care enough to remember ’em. That the Planet Express crew abandons the temp a second time, not because of the awful stuff the temp did, but because they instantly forget about the guy once they’re out of view – it’s such a hilariously bleak note to end on.
But, hey, don’t give up hope, buddy! Maybe 23 years from now, when the show’s on its seventh revival, they’ll do another episode with you!
Stray Observations:
- Given they included an appearance by obscure Star Trek character the Horta, it’s amazing they got through the entire temp story without doing any explicit reference to Wrath of Khan.
- They remembered people can travel by tube! That doesn’t happen very often. Between that and showing Harold Zoid movies, owls as pests, the aftermath of “the Snu-snu incident”, and “I’m already in my pajamas”, this ep was big on the callbacks.
- One thing I didn’t care for was the whole reading-and-libraries-are-dead jokes. While I can only speak anecdotally, I know my local library is quite the busy place. And it’s weird to imply TikTok is responsible for declining interest in books, given BookTok is a whole big thing.
- That said, the way Amy repeatedly puts so much disgust into the word “book” did get to be amusing. (“Eww! I got book on me!”)
- Okay, I’m gonna play script doctor a tiny bit. I mentioned the “Is that crab rangoon?” joke was a groaner, but it might have been funnier if, instead of Hermes responding, you have Zoidberg jump in with, “No, but for you I’d convert!” Still a lame pun, but it’d have a little more to it.