Oh, man. The bones of this episode are rock solid. As gimmicky as “Leela’s parents adopt Dr. Zoidberg” sounds, it’s maybe the best premise for an episode the show’s had in a while.
Sure, it’s not a fancy, mind-bending, high-concept, sci-fi thing like going to Numberland or navigating simulations inside simulations inside simulations. But as a plain old sitcom premise, an excuse for characters to bounce off each other in hilarious ways, it’s genius. Taking characters who don’t normally interact and pairing them up for an episode is a well Futurama has gone to many times before, often coming across like they’re desperate for ideas, but Zoidberg and the Turangas is an inspired choice.
Zoidberg’s main schtick (outside of being a doctor whose patient survival rate is lower than most morticians’) is being the guy the universe shits on – disliked by everyone, eats garbage, lives in a dumpster, generally regarded as the grossest and most foul-smelling creature around – yet is always desperate for and blindly optimistic about receiving affection. Ah, but the sewer mutants also have the schtick of being hated, poor, and disgusting – and Leela’s parents have the added schtick of being ridiculously kind and accepting.
The Turangas would be the folks who are not only not disgusted by Zoidberg, but actively welcome and embrace the good doctor. And of course Zoidberg would throw themself head on into becoming a part of someone else’s family at the first opportunity. There’s even precedent for this: see Johnny Z. trying to be a father to Cubert, or aggressively wheedling their way into the Wong family. So as random as it might sound on paper, it totally makes sense.
And once it happens, that is a goldmine for getting comedy out of Leela. Most anyone would be annoyed upon being told “this co-worker you don’t like is your brother now … and I think is your parents’ favorite”. Add in Leela’s tried-and-true exasperation at a world gone mad, instinctual loathing of Zoidberg, and complex feelings surrounding being abandoned by, then reconnecting with, then getting kinda tired of their parents … well, it seems like a can’t miss combination!
Yet this episode does miss the mark. Or, if not miss it entirely, certainly doesn’t give it more than a flesh wound. “Crab Splatter” isn’t a bad episode, it’s decently entertaining throughout, but never brings out the potential that premise gave it to work with. And I think the problem is time.
The episode devotes a sizable chunk of its runtime to setting up and explaining the all the impact event and Decapod evolution stuff – a long and complex explanation for really quite minimal payoff. That leaves far less time to dig into the main story of the episode, so we skip over a lot of the fun that could be had with Zoidberg trying to become a Turanga and Leela trying to shut that down. It also requires that Leela start off firmly in finds-any-excuse-to-avoid-their-annoying-parents mode – which I don’t object to in principle, if the episode had explored how the initial ecstasy of finding their parents has eroded over the years due to, y’know, actually having to hang out with them. But the episode makes no time for that, and so dashes one of the more interesting aspects of the episode in favor of stock “God, who would want to spend time with their parents?” characterization.
I’ll admit, if you lose the Decapod stuff, you also lose the episode highlight of the Professor crushing on that Decapodian scientist. But if it gives more time to dig into the premise’s untapped potential, I think that would have been the right call.