*sigh*

Yes, I’m opening another Futurama review by typing out the word “sigh”. That’s how I began this season, when reviewing the underwhelming season premiere that set my expectations low for the episodes ahead. Luckily, the rest of this season has mostly surpassed those expectations, and even delivered a couple gems that helped make this whole Hulurama revival feel worthwhile

But that streak has come to an end, because it’s once again time for a three-shorts anthology episode.

I used to love these things, really I did. The “Anthology of Interest” outings from back in the Fox Era were some of the show’s best episodes. And while they were more of a mixed bag in the Comedy Central Era, “Reincarnation” and “Naturama” both delivered the laughs. But ever since the Hulu revival, these anthology outings have become an annual chore.

Whatever spark they once had, it seems to have been a casualty of the show’s numerous cancellations. The anthology eps used to burn bright with the passion and creativity that comes from being told that anything goes. Now they represent the dark flipside of that: being told that anything goes, so you can just slapdash together a story and call it a day.

I will give this ep credit for trying something a little different. Rather than starting each anthology segment in a completely different reality, with characters loosely based on our main cast, it instead starts off in the regular reality of Futurama (“regular” and “reality” being rather loose terms in this context, of course). It then has the Planet Express crew transition into running a cruise ship, letting them do a Love Boat parody. And when that cruise ship floods the Earth, that transitions them into a Waterworld parody. And when those ocean-going ruffians find the last spot of dry land on Earth, boom! You’ve got a Gilligan’s Island parody.

(I wonder, for anyone too young to have watched Futurama when it debuted back in 1999, how many of those have you actually seen or even heard of before?)

An anthology episode with a running thread of continuity to it? That novelty at least elevates this one a little – it’s a damn sight better than “The Prince and the Product”, I have to give it that. But it also draws attention to this episode’s weakness.

Because these aren’t stories that necessarily needed to be told via out-of-continuity anthology shorts. Planet Express switching from a delivery company to a cruise service – the world flooding and causing a warlord society to flourish – everyone getting stranded on a desert island and struggling to survive/escape: any of those could easily have been the main plot of a regular thirty-minute episode. But because each of them is just one short segment, there’s a sense that they don’t need as much care put into them – that they don’t matter as much, so it’s okay to half-ass the story.

Granted, a certain amount of half-assedness has always been part of Futurama‘s storytelling, and even part of its charm. This episode’s opening, where the Professor gets bored with space and decides to explore the ocean instead, converting the Planet Express ship to a cruise ship by turning a single bolt? Really not that different from the opening to beloved classic “The Deep South”, where Nibbler’s pet license is accidentally replaced with a fishing license – “And it’s mandatory!” Just an excuse to get our characters out of their normal environs and onto the high seas, doesn’t matter how little sense it makes.

But here, that half-assed approach to storytelling infects everything. Who needs stories that pay off, or motivations that make sense, or jokes that build to a solid punchline? Each story’s gonna be over in a few minutes, and they’re just loose excuses for riffing on some old movies and TV shows, anyway, so who even cares?

Now, I have no insights into the Futurama writers’ room – I don’t know if there was actually less effort put into scripting this episode than usual. But I do know it feels like something thrown together lazily, using the anthology format as an excuse for not bringing their A-game. So if they actually were bringing their A-game, working just as hard on this script as any other, if not harder, and it still came out like this …

… well, that’d kinda be worse, wouldn’t it?