Thoughts on 1ACV02 - The Series Has Landed

[on:]

I personally love this episode, but feel free to disagree with my obviously-correct opinion if you so desire.

[Reply #1 on:]

Points off for "Whalers on the Moon".  But fun, otherwise.

[Reply #2 on:]

Amy's free-styling with the PE ship was impressive...

[Reply #3 on:]

this gets a 9/10 from me because of one of my favorite lines.

"Borrow? Look here city girl, Oxygen doesn't grow on trees!"

Gets me every time!

[Reply #4 on:]

I too love this episode. Has a lot of great lines and great humor. Plus, it served as a great introduction to some of the main characters. It also had the role of being the episode where Fry is supposed to be introduced to the future, and that was done almost perfectly.

It also has one of my favorite moments of the entire series, Fry and Leela together in the moon lander.

So, yeah, 9/10.

[Reply #5 on:]

Positive: The outlook with 20th century eyes on the 30th century as a great plot.
Also, the crazy ideas were great (theme park on the moon, 30th "knowledge" of human history, etc....")
Negative: Leela.

As I stated before:
Leela was one character that had an extremely bad start in the series, and TSHL is the "Leela was just not ready designed by the time the series started" episode for me.

(A critical review of her design errors will follow. I will make valid points instead of some random "I do not like Leela because she is a bitch" ranting, but if you happen to be a Leela fan: Maybe you should do yourself a favor and skip the rest anyway....you will most certainly not like it )

- TSHL should establish Leela as a "natural leader", and -imhO- she was not recognisable as one.
The writers mission was:
- Grant Leela leader attributes, not
- Grant Fry and Bender so many non-leader attributes, until Leela is the only one left.
Leela is one of the three protagonists, and must have her own personality. Not Fry and Bender's incompetence granting her that planned "leader attribute".

To give a graphic example:
Leela was meant to be a looker, despite of her one eye. Now if some initial design showed Leela as the most ugly female in the series, what are the artists supposed to do:
- Will they get back to the drawing board, and redesign every other female, until most of them are uglier than Leela?
- Or will they redraw Leela alone?

If you need other characters to cheer her up, her character was just not ready designed imhO. It also showed in BBA, which put Leela command "authority" in the center.
How did the writers do so? Did Leela act as captain? No, it was rather:
"Okay, we usually have two comparison dorks to cheer Leela up. But now, we REALLY want to show her as a leader, so we need something special. Hey, guess what: We're gonna use a THIRD comparison dork in that episode"

But it will not make her any more a leader, when that attribute is not only written on her by Fry and Bender's incompetence, but this time also by Zapp Brannigan's incompetence.

[Reply #6 on:]

I think you're being too rigid here, Hein, when it comes to defining who Leela is as a character. Who's to say that the writers wanted her to fit so snugly into that one box, that Natural Leader mold? What makes a character truly interesting are those occasional deviations from the normal behavior you might expect from their "type." And these contradictions that exist in Leela are established not through comparisons to Fry and Bender (at least not entirely), but through her own actions in the episode. (And, hey, you could just as easily say that Fry and Bender are only defined as non-leaders because Leela has already exhibited the behaviors associated with the Natural Leader.)

Part of Leela's appeal in "The Series Has Landed" (to me, at least) is that she wants to be an authoritative person, and she certainly has some attributes associated with a heartless and logical captain--but, ultimately, she also has a conscience and these dueling senses of both professional and friendly obligation to the rest of the PE crew. She grants them permission to ride the bumper cars; she takes Fry on that tour to indulge his curiosity about the moon; and she ultimately sees, during that (really wonderful) lunar lander scene, that Fry is not just some buffoon, but a guy with real thoughts and feelings and a sort-of-difficult life, a guy she can relate to and learn from.

I really like what's done with Leela's character in the first few episodes of the series, how the writers establish her as kind of hypocritical but also thoroughly human. I can see where you're coming from, Hein, but I disagree with your assertion that Leela is ultimately a bland character defined only by who she's not. It's true that the writers will occasionally take liberties with her character for story purposes (I think they've done this with other characters in the past as well--most notably Fry in "The Beast With a Billion Backs"), but I think her true personality and character traits are as well-defined as the other characters'.

[Reply #7 on:]

I missed the Futurama Debut.

However I found Futurama the next week.

Good work...Very good work.

[Reply #8 on:]

Compared to the rest of this season, TSHL is merely "good" in my opinion.
Although I do like the slow pace and less emphasis on action. I wish more episodes had that formula.
7/10

[Reply #9 on:]

We're whalers on the moon, we carry a harpoon.
But there ain't no whales, so we'll sing tall tales,
And sing our whaling tune!

I love this episode, IMO the best strings of episodes are the first 4 of season 1 and the last four of season 4 (with the Devils Hands, Farnsworth parabox etc).

Also, one scene in this episode made me laugh more than any other scene in Futurama.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-oStcPtFl0

[Reply #10 on:]

A great episode.  

"Oh... Bender.  You didn't touch the Crushinator did you?"
"Of course not!  With a lady that fine you gotta romance her first!"

I also loved the ending.   It was pretty awesome seeing Amy save the day with her newfound skills in crane games.   I guess at this point in time, Amy was the overall "sweet" character, whilst Fry was more normal, and as time went on, Amy became more catty/bitchy whilst Fry became the "nicest" character.

[Reply #11 on:]

This one always gets an automatic 10 for introducing much of the cast we didn't get too see in the pilot. But I'm a sentimental old fool.