Thoughts on 6ACV24 - Cold Warriors - SPOILERS!

[Reply #120 on:]

now it seems every other episode is about time travel and was a big flashback episode. 

That is definitely an exaggeration. We've had one time-travel and two flashbacky episodes in 6B, not six or seven like you seem to be suggesting. And it's not like the flashback thing was never used in the original run. Quite the contrary - a lot of really strong emotional episodes from the original run used flashbacks. We won't get even near "every episode has flashbacks". Pretty much every major character has had their own or a shared flashback episode now (Amy's still left, I guess) but they've been spread out.

[Reply #121 on:]

If the flashbacks are used well then I don't mind, in fact they often add depth to the characters history filling in little holes with juicy nuggets of info. In this ep they were good, so no complaints here...

As for time travel, done well in TLPJF, not so well in ATPH...

[Reply #122 on:]

I enjoy time travel eps, and I love ATPH, but the head idea seemed rushed and tacked on... Like, just an excuse to go back in time.

[Reply #123 on:]

7/10 meh

[Reply #124 on:]

ATPH was stoppid.  The only thing that saved it from being a total loss was the Neo London York scene.

And then they ruin it with that stupid half assed clone of Queenie from Blackadder, minus the comedy.

[Reply #125 on:]

ATPH definitely was not among the strongest 6B episodes. I liked the bit where they were actually traveling, but not really anything else.

Wrong thread, though. I agree that the flashbacks were used really well here. I thought everything was tied together really nicely.

[Reply #126 on:]

And the montage used one of my favorite songs ever as well.

Hey speaking of Manniquin, I would love Kim Cattral as a guest star in a future episode.  She's one of my favorite actresses, and has oodles of charm to boot.

[Reply #127 on:]

By the way: If you count the movies as one episode each rather than four, then that makes this the 100th episode of Futurama.

[Reply #128 on:]

Neat! Glad it was a good one. Also saw that you put it in your top 10, UnrealLegend. That's some really high praise there. I don't know that any of 6B could make my top 10, but Cold Warriors is definitely up there.

[Reply #129 on:]

Yep, definitely my favourite of 6B, and my second favourite of 6 as a whole.

[Reply #130 on:]

I think Cold Warriors might hit my top 20, but most of my top 20 episodes have a 10/10 rating.

[Reply #131 on:]

Yeah, same.

I love that everyone on PEEL has said that this ep was at least "good", and the vast majority of us rated it 8 or higher. Such positive consensus from a group of nerds about an episode of an animated comedy inexplicably makes me feel good about things in general.

[Reply #132 on:]

I posted this in the news thread, but I think it's bizzare enough to go here as well:

http://au.tv.ign.com/articles/119/1190891p1.html

IGN are stoopid.

[Reply #133 on:]

IGN must be under the influence of the Brain Spawn.

[Reply #134 on:]

They gave "The Late Phillip J. Fry" a low rating too (7.5 - which is actually an okay score, but considering it was the lowest score handed out in season 6A on their site, something is definitely not right).

I don't trust anywhere else for reviews but this site and CGEF. IGN's reviews are all over the place.

[Reply #135 on:]

A few nitpicks, Kif isn't at all concerned that he's about to kill his gf Amy, who would obviously be in that domed city.  Also the whole covering NNY is copied from the Simpsons Movie, though Futurama makes it more believable since it's the future and I liked the new twist with launching it into space.

Kif is hesitant to fire the missile.  That was good enough for me.

[Reply #136 on:]

I thought it was okay but it didn't particularly appeal to me so I only gave it a 7.

A couple of questions:

 1) What is the useless remedy created by a schoolteacher that Hermes mentions?

 2) Given that other people have already been revived from cryogenic stasis (c.f. Future Stock) how come this hasn't happened already?

[Reply #137 on:]

Because they all died of bone-its?

[Reply #138 on:]

I thought it was great.  The bit with the guinea pig splashig down in the bathtub and riding the centrifuge was adorable.  It wasn't all that funny, but it was a fun story and had some heart.  Plus it was a classic scifi idea nd I'm glad they decided to do it despite the comics having touched on it already

Also, I loved that they showed the geysers on Enceladus. 

[Reply #139 on:]

I'll take heart over humor any day.

However... if you have humor and heart I could take both off your hands for you maybe?  

[Reply #140 on:]

The guy who was selling selling ice pops in Möbius Dick is back alive, in this episode he was selling live bait, but he was killed by his "live bat".

Or maybe it was his twin.

There might be a whole family in the future with the same luck as the drummers in Spinal Tap.

I chuckled when Wernstrom said 'and this is a Verizon coverage map'.  The mentions of Twitter, Verizon and Facebook hardly bothered me.  Although, the mention of Twitter was in the opening captions.

Twitter is for Twits!

I wonder how URL managed to broadcast his own voice through a megaphone and a loudspeaker.

Smitty seems to be "back".

The only thing that bugs me is that pale little *unt didn't get any sort of karmic retribution for stealing Fry's idea out of nothing more thAn spite.

And obscurity. (I was expecting that character to have some famous name.) And Fry has outlived him by about 1000 years.

The Morbo/Linda LA thing is something else I hadn't thought of, but I guess it could be justified because in the future it only takes mere seconds to travel from one side of the country to the other given it that it takes seconds to travel to the moon. Maybe they like to report from location...

Maybe they're related to those idiot weathermen who go outside to report, say, a hurricane.

I find myself confused, as to whether to grade this episode with 8/10 or 9/10.

I think there are too many choices in the poll.

Final thoughts: Cold Warriors is a really cool episode, with a touching story, and typical Futurama humor, it's a few notches above Jurassic Bark--which I'm bias because I didn't like Seymour all that much--

Kill the dog hater!

By the way: If you count the movies as one episode each rather than four

"You know we don't!" --- Bender

*******

That seven-leaf clover didn't give Fry good luck with science experiments ...

[Reply #141 on:]

what is this poll about?

[Reply #142 on:]

what is this poll about?

How good you think the episode was out of 10.

[Reply #143 on:]

I posted this in the news thread, but I think it's bizzare enough to go here as well:

http://au.tv.ign.com/articles/119/1190891p1.html

IGN are stoopid.

Nah I'd pretty much agree with that, it was consistently funny but nothing really hilarious. Nowhere near as good as JB or LotF. 8/10

[Reply #144 on:]

A few nitpicks, Kif isn't at all concerned that he's about to kill his gf Amy

Kif is hesitant to fire the missile.  That was good enough for me.

Well, actually, Kif knew the missile was going to free them (and that Zapp was being stupid about that). So, not wanting to fire the missile = wanting to leave them trapped to their flaming deaths.
I just had a post in the "Everything is worse now" thread about how Zapp and Kif in this episode just never met the Planet Express crew. Futurama is set within a flexible reality now.

http://au.tv.ign.com/articles/119/1190891p1.html

IGN are stoopid.

Nah I'd pretty much agree with that

While I don't agree with the ratings (it was a very good episode to me), I do agree with the IGN guy when he says that, from Fry's perspective, Fry's father's declaration of love came BEFORE the science contest. So it's not like Fry didn't know about his father actually loving him at that point. Then again, the flashbacks never showed Fry being sad about his father. Also, and that's important to me to point out, Fry's father was never shown to be angry at him. I was always getting something of a resigned benevolence feeling towards him. It's just that he knew his son wasn't the most brilliant of the bunch (and he was actually right, Fry himself knows that), so he chosed to keep his expectations low, if in a harsh, militarist way. Yet, he's taking Fry out with him in that fish trip, not his brother. That has to mean something, right?

[Reply #145 on:]

That seven-leaf clover didn't give Fry good luck with science experiments ...

Cause he probably left it at home...

[Reply #146 on:]

A few nitpicks, Kif isn't at all concerned that he's about to kill his gf Amy

Kif is hesitant to fire the missile.  That was good enough for me.

Well, actually, Kif knew the missile was going to free them (and that Zapp was being stupid about that). So, not wanting to fire the missile = wanting to leave them trapped to their flaming deaths.
I just had a post in the "Everything is worse now" thread about how Zapp and Kif in this episode just never met the Planet Express crew. Futurama is set within a flexible reality now.

I find that to be the wrong conclusion.  True, Kif might be worried about them getting out, but there could be more to it than that.  Alternatively; they didn't notice it was the PE ship, after all, it was inside the quarantine thingie.  And it would not be the first time Zapp was reluctant to shoot down the PE ship without hesitation, without further inspection because it was just a ship.

"I don't pretend to understand Brannigan's Law, I merely enforce it."

Zapp's character might be simple in that regard, but when he is tasked with an assignment, he does not waiver.

[Reply #147 on:]

I see that Cold Warrios has gone down to 91% on CGEF now, perhaps this is why...

#56 by Hurleybird
Balancing out too many 5 star ratings. A pretty average episode on the whole, not very funny, and the emotional aspects were obtuse and bordering on recycled.
Hurleybird gave 1 point

#65 by Dale Frink
This one stank, it was all a ripoff, Vebber cannot write!!
Dale Frink gave 1 point

#67 by C'zar Dale Frink
I agree this one was so bad it gave me cancer after watching.
C'zar Dale Frink gave 1 point

These are worse than that stupid IGN review ...

[Reply #148 on:]

Well, it's down to 90% here too.

[Reply #149 on:]

YANCY! 10/10 ish.

[Reply #150 on:]

from Fry's perspective, Fry's father's declaration of love came BEFORE the science contest. So it's not like Fry didn't know about his father actually loving him at that point. Then again, the flashbacks never showed Fry being sad about his father. Also, and that's important to me to point out, Fry's father was never shown to be angry at him.

I agree that it's kind of weird for the episode to open with a flashback to Fry going ice fishing with his father, then show us this sequence of events that occurs after that fishing trip, then wrap things up by going back to the same day where the story began. You could argue that the writers did this simply because it would give the ending a greater emotional punch, logic be damned, but I don't think that's the best explanation.

Like you say, Fry wasn't bothered by his father's attitude towards him throughout the episode--and this makes sense precisely because, when he was trying to win the science fair, he already knew that his father loved him (and, to a certain extent, maybe Fry wanted to prove Yancy Sr. wrong and make him proud as a way of validating the love that his father expressed to him on the ice fishing trip).

Also, I'd imagine that Fry shared this whole story with Leela (and possibly the entire PE crew), and Leela simply concluded that Fry's father thought of him as a failure based on his reaction to Fry losing the science fair. Thinking that was the case, of course Leela would console Fry at the end of the episode and essentially tell him that, regardless of what his father thought of him, Fry is far from being a failure. So the ending is really just Fry knowingly smiling at the recollection of that day he went ice fishing with his dad and had this sweet sort of bonding moment with him, and in that respect the ending is not strained or forced. After all, Fry wasn't thinking about all this science fair stuff because he conscoiusly missed his dad or in some way felt that he had an unfulfilling relationship with the man--he was remembering it because he had prior experience with colds, and it just so happened that this story also tied into ice fishing and this outing he once took with his father.

I don't know if I'm making any sense. The point I'm making is that Fry's memories of the science fair are superficially about the common cold and his past experiences with it--and it's only as the episode progresses that this other story about Fry's relationship with his father emerges. It's subtly done, and maybe Fry himself doesn't realize until the end of the episode that the real reason he was thinking of all this stuff, and went ice fishing in the first place, is because he misses his dad.

[Reply #151 on:]

Gorky defines sense.

[Reply #152 on:]

And if that's the way Svip feels, then he defines nonsense.

[Reply #153 on:]

then*

Seriously, Gorky.  One is a preposition, one is an adverb!

Did you get 03 in English (I only know Danish grades, so bare with me)?!

[Reply #154 on:]

Then again, the flashbacks never showed Fry being sad about his father. Also, and that's important to me to point out, Fry's father was never shown to be angry at him. I was always getting something of a resigned benevolence feeling towards him. It's just that he knew his son wasn't the most brilliant of the bunch (and he was actually right, Fry himself knows that), so he chosed to keep his expectations low, if in a harsh, militarist way. Yet, he's taking Fry out with him in that fish trip, not his brother. That has to mean something, right?

This is really well worded and I totally agree. Throughout the whole science fair story, I never got the impression that Yancy Sr didn't love Fry. He just has a very realistic, militaristic way of going about things and he didn't want Fry to raise his hopes too much. But it's not like he tried to stop Fry. He took him to the science fair, after all, and when Fry lost he wasn't all "I told you so, loser".

I think Fry internally was just focused on some negative experiences he had with his father that made him feel worthless, but after the events of the episode finish up and Leela says that to him, he remembers that his dad loved him too. I don't think the chronology of it really matters. It's not like Yancy would completely change his behavior after having that conversation with Fry. He's always generally going to be a stick-to-the-facts, unemotional kind of guy.

I don't think the conversation suffers from being before the science fair. There's nothing in the science fair scenes that contradict the conversation. Also, like Gorky said, maybe that expression Fry has after Yancy Sr leaves to get the car is mostly because he feels like he failed to make his father proud again.

[Reply #155 on:]

then*

Seriously, Gorky.  One is a preposition, one is an adverb!

Did you get 03 in English (I only know Danish grades, so bare with me)?!

I'm an English major, damn it! I was just posting two quickly! Their a problem with that?

[Reply #156 on:]

Their a problem with that?

I hope that was a joke...

[Reply #157 on:]

Their a problem with that?

I hope that was a joke...

Given the context, I am pretty damn sure it was.

[Danny]Do I really have to explain jokes to you?[/Danny]

[Reply #158 on:]

Their a problem with that?

I hope that was a joke...

You took issue with that, but not with the use of "two" instead of "too"? For shame!

[Reply #159 on:]

I haven't heard or read "For shame!" in ages.    That made my morning.