I’m convinced the makers of Futurama are reading my reviews.
Last week, I complained about the way “Late Bloomers” made use of continuity callbacks and sincere attempts at emotion, and cited “The Why of Fry” as an example of how those can be handled well. So watching this week’s episode, I could only conclude that the Futurama staff read my review, took my criticisms to heart, and proceeded to write, voice, and animate an entire episode in the fourteen hours between my review going up and this episode being released on Hulu. There’s no other explanation!
I dunno, maybe I’m showing blatant character favoritism here. Is Leela’s bond with Nibbler, and Nibbler’s pull between duty and personal connection, inherently more worthy of callbacks and serious emotions than Zoidberg’s love life or Hermes’s relationship with their dad/coffee plant?
Maybe, maybe not … but screw it, the bits of serious storytelling here worked for me in ways that last week’s didn’t.
Of course, it helps that it’s only bits of serious storytelling. “Lord Nibbler in the Nothingverse” may occasionally get heartfelt, but a good 95% of its runtime is devoted simply to being funny. Also helping matters is, the 95% of the episode that’s just trying to be funny? It’s really, really funny.
This thing is packed to the brim with great jokes, with even greater jokes hanging over the brim, and even a few good-but-not-quite-great jokes clinging onto the sides. I’m struggling to think of any other Hulu Era episode that had anywhere close to this many laughs-per-minute (maybe “Beauty and the Bug” … maybe). There’s such a plethora of laughs, I’m tempted to fall into the comedy review trap of just listing all the funniest bits, but I will try to resist.
Helping all these jokes land is that Nibbler and the Nibblonians are a relatively untapped well. Their dire doomsaying/cutesy schmootzy dichotomy is always a blast – and pet mode Nibbler being an amoral eating machine is good for some cheap laughs, too – but Futurama has shown admirable restraint with them over the years, only bringing them to the foreground a handful of times. Compared to Fry being an idiot, Bender being a jerk, or Zapp being an idiot and a jerk, the Nibbolians’ comedic schtick still has a lot of freshness to it.
Combine that with a lightning fast pace as the story deftly moves from one comedic setpiece to the next (Nibbler goes through the events of Homeward Bound, Lady and the Tramp, and “Jurassic Bark” in a single thirty-second montage), with plenty of doesn’t-need-to-be-here-but-when-it’s-this-funny-I-won’t-complain material stuffed in whenever possible … well, it’s just an uproarious half-hour of television.
Then garnish that with the 5% of the episode that’s genuinely heartfelt, and you have what I’d consider the hands down best episode of this whole Hulu revival. Heck, even if pitted against the classic episodes from back in the Fox Era … well, okay, it’s not gonna stack up to the best of them. But placing it among, say, the top 30%? Yeah, I might go that far.
(Of course, for anyone who reads this review before watching the episode themself, I’ve now just disastrously overhyped it, haven’t I? … Curses.)
Stray Observations:
- One of Futurama‘s go-to jokes is robot versions of human things, and Robuki Theater elevates it with so many extra layers of absurdity. Reenacting Apollo 13, with humanoid robots playing all the inanimate objects, which they do by wearing flowing robes and spouting faux-poetic dialogue … it’s just a delight.
- This week’s Science Fact is quantum uncertainty, with callbacks to the famous Schrodinger’s Cat thought experiment. Manage to get both a few decent jokes and some philosophical musings out of this one. Not bad, though still doesn’t top one of my all-time favorite jokes from back in “Luck of the Fryrish”:
“And the winner is … Number 3, in a quantum finish.”
“No fair! You changed the outcome by measuring it!” - They finally do a callback to Leela being “The Other” … though now with the caveat that “There is another ‘The Other’.”
- It’s hard for me to pick my biggest laugh of the episode, but if I had to … “Is it dangerous? And if not, why did we all just gasp?”