Thoughts on Episode 8ACV05 – Related to Items You’ve Viewed (SPOILERS)

[on:]

Original Release: August 21st 2023


Bender uncovers the mysteries of the vast Momazon corporation.


Discuss

[Reply #1 on:]

I'm giving it a 7/10. I gave it an extra point for all the Fry/Leela smut.

The concept was interesting and pretty funny. Hopefully they'll keep Fry and Leela living together. I do wonder where Nibbler is. Is Leela's old apartment just for him now? That would be funny, but I'd prefer if he were to move in too and get his own kitty condo complete with turret.

[Reply #2 on:]

Okay. I was almost into the last act. The warehouse growing to contain the entire universe was a cool idea (where did the initial area with the robots/packages end up?) and I got a few laughs from the Professor.

First two acts didn’t do much for me. The Amazon jokes weren’t terrible, but there was nothing I hadn’t heard before either. The stories just kinda meandered and never caught my attention until the ending. I wanted to see more of the trio trying to live together, or the idea of the AI knowing what people want to buy before they say it. At least they did keep Leela living with Fry/Bender at the end, so maybe we’ll see more about their living situation in the future.

It was better than the last two episodes. It never lost me like those two did, but I was still left mostly bored through it all.

Also they got the Crushinator’s voice wrong.

5/10

[Reply #3 on:]

I thought it was pretty good! The infinitely expanding Momazon warehouse was a sweet concept and there were a number of great jokes. My favourites were the single-use pointing stick, and Mom using a slap-print instead of a palm print.

Did anyone else feel like Bender's attitude to Leela moving in was... unearned? Presumably he agreed to it beforehand but he was annoyed with it from the very beginning of the episode. It would have been nice to see the development of that opinion, even if it was something incredibly minor and stupid that set him off.

[Reply #4 on:]

Fry and Leela move in together, after only 24 years of teasing us.

I like that they brought back Momazon from the first mobile game. (Not Worlds of Tomorrow, the bad Candy Crush knockoff before that.) The ending was great. Giving this one a 4/5, very enjoyable.

[Reply #5 on:]

I found the experience of watching this episode—which, to get that part out of the way, I think was the best of the season thus far—sort of strange. It had the form of a classic Futurama episode, which is to say it was pretty well-structured and the social commentary was interesting enough, but there was just something...deflated about it. I'm convinced it's a combination of the performances—everyone sounded so goddamn tired—and the soundtrack: more than in episodes past, I was very aware of the lack of music (or even sound effects) for much of the runtime. A lot happened in this episode, but the energy level itself was strangely subdued.

That gripe aside, I really enjoyed this one. It was weird and jarring to open the episode with the plainspoken announcement that Leela was moving in, but once I got past that I thought the story progressed in an interesting way. Bender's jealousy, though over-the-top (give me just one fucking episode this season where the characters don't plaintively wail to convey that, yes, They Are Upset About Something), made total sense, as did his kneejerk decision to work for Momazon. (Leela's relative indifference to Bender did seem sort of off to me, though that ending of Bender embracing being the third-wheel and force-hugging Fry and Leela did genuinely make me smile 'cause it was cute.)

The Momazon-Amazon stuff wasn't earth-shatteringly hilarious or trenchant, but I did appreciate how various characters kept shrugging off the company's ever-increasing (universal) influence because it's convenient or whatever. The overall sense of resignation about Momazon's stranglehold on everyone's lives—that initial attempt to protest, but ultimate ambivalent embrace of the company—seemed about right to me. The episode wasn't expressing anything about Amazon that hasn't already been said, but the somewhat tepid satire still worked for me because, like, what is there really to say or do about Amazon? It's here, most of us are compromising our principles by using it, but short of an actual socialist revolution that fucker Bezos ain't going nowhere (I watched this episode on my Alexa TV, for Christ's sake). If nothing else, I thought the scene of Mom refusing to shut off Invasa because she's still making crap-tons of money off it was pretty funny and on-point.

Speaking of funny: short of a few dumb non-jokes (Igner wondering if Mom was referring to him, the "doomed" run), I actually found this one quite amusing and not remotely embarrassing, which is more than can be said for a lot of other new-run episodes. The few self-aware jokes (the mayor(?) of the moon wondering how the Crushinator got into the building, Zoidberg wondering why Morbo and Linda just let themselves drown) really tickled me, some of the digs at Amazon were rather satisfying, and most of the characters popped off with a few good one-liners throughout. I could've done without the cabbage fight, but I'm just writing off the first couple minutes of the episode as weird in general.

So, yeah, this one was perhaps the first episode of the season so far that I would consider legitimately good—in terms of writing and story, if not energy/performance. If I had to compare it to the original run (which I've been trying my damnedest not to do), I'd say it's about on-par with "The Cryonic Woman" or "I Dated a Robot." It'd probably be a 6/10 in the old run, but since I'm curving the hell out of these Hulu episodes I'll give it an 8.5/10, which I'll round up to 9/10 for the poll because why not?

[Reply #6 on:]

Definitely, the best episode this season.

Well structured, well written, funny, but still the climax was kinda underwhelming, not like Parasites Regained, yet still. I think the crew and Mom should do actively something while the water level is rising and then Earth frozing.

Also, I don't see a reason why Hedonismbot worked in Momzon. He's supposed to be rich.

Nice to see status quo changing. Maybe next week they will finally kill Robot Santa, or make him so powerful he will be unstoppable and wrecking havoc not only on Earth (and on Christmas) : P

10-/10. Despite some flaws, I enjoyed it a lot.

[Reply #7 on:]

Great episode. Found it very funny. It was sold to us as an Amazon satire but I think the real selling point is it's the Leela moves in with Fry episode. I wasn't expecting to get such an epic, sci-fi story in the Amazon episode either. It's surprising it's taken the show this long to get to an AI-goes-rogue plotline -- unless you count "Love and Rocket". And I suppose "Overclockwise" has some elements of the idea in there.

Some positives:

• Phil Lamarr's delivery of "Yes, yes, the company cares deeply about your insert problem here" was brilliant and turned a fairly basic joke into something very funny
• "We know you have cheaper, faster, better options."
• Packaging cans with wine and beer in them was so stupid it made me laugh
• The slap palm gag
• "Who's a smart speaker?" "Is it me?"
• "They're for my egg-shaped friends"
• Surprisingly sweet. "This is just the standard moving in together fight", "Well, I'm glad I get to fight it with you"
• "Let's just go to bed. We have 7 to choose from"
• "The amazing mechano man? In trouble?!"
• "What jig is that? Everyone knows I'm evil"
• The slap-reader
• "Does this feel like my regular slap" followed by slapping everyone
• "We also have some very confused werewolves"
• "It's weird how they just sat there and let it happen"
• "Mathematically, at least 10 of them must be Bender!"
• "What's happening? Why are you counting like me?"
• "I go next: doooooomed!"
• More positive shake-ups to the show's status quo

Neutral:

• Lauren Tom voiced Lulubelle 7 here even though the Infoshere says it was Tress MacNeille in the past. Lauren Tom seems to be doing a lot more non-Amy voice work than usual so far in this season. In the entire original / CC runs, I can only think of her playing Inez, Jrrr, some orphans, one of the kids in Bender's Game, the woman who hits on Captain Yesterday, one of Bender's floozy robots and one of Slurms' party girls. So far, this season, we've had Newt, Mandy, that bartender robot and now Lulubelle.
• "Sweet vampire Moses!" is, I guess, a strange callback to "Sweet zombie Jesus!"
• Figured out what the ending was going to be as soon as the warehouse started absorbing Earth but that didn't stop it being satisfying. Very similar to how "The Late Philip J. Fry" and even "That Darn Katz!" play out... I guess the Futurama staff just like the idea of things going so far one way that they come out the other side.

The negatives:

• The farmer sounded old and tired. Katey Segal sounded a bit subdued as Leela. Everyone else sounded great, though
• Robot mind-control being used for one scene and then immediately dropped as a concept. It undermines the entire story. Why even hire robots if you can just do that? Why not keep it engaged so as to prevent Bender from sending notes home?
• The warehouse doesn't absorb the farm when it expands but then absorbs everything else in the universe

Second best of the season so far for me.

8/10

[Reply #8 on:]

Did anyone else feel like Bender's attitude to Leela moving in was... unearned? Presumably he agreed to it beforehand but he was annoyed with it from the very beginning of the episode. It would have been nice to see the development of that opinion, even if it was something incredibly minor and stupid that set him off.

I feel like that's incredibly in-character for Bender, actually. It didn't bother me at all.

[Reply #9 on:]

Also, I don't see a reason why Hedonismbot worked in Momzon. He's supposed to be rich.

I had this thought but then realised how easily they could have done an entire episode about Hedonismbot losing all his money and having to get a job at Momazon after hitting hard times and figured screw it, who cares. Or, you know... blame the mind control that's clearly being used on him like it was on Bender.

[Reply #10 on:]

Robot mind-control being used for one scene and then immediately dropped as a concept. It undermines the entire story. Why even hire robots if you can just do that? Why not keep it engaged so as to prevent Bender from sending notes home?

Yeah, that was kind of weird. I think the mind-control was probably a policy enforced by Mom, but once Invasa took over—and because her concern was not profit, but universal conquest—robot productivity no longer mattered as long as the Momazon warehouse could continue physically expanding and subsuming everything in its path.

[Reply #11 on:]

Erm, I don't know quite what to think about this one. Nothing particularly wrong with it at all; in many respects far less bothersome than any of the other episodes so far, but it didn't excite me as much; I didn't enjoy it as much as some of the previous ones. It was well structured, competently written and paced, more so than others; the Amazon jokes weren't a turn off, but the corner of my mouth only really moved one or two times. It was... fine...

I guess.

[Reply #12 on:]

You've hit the nail on the head, Gorks. Your review is good and you should feel good.

Is this the first time Mom has been in the PE ship?

[Reply #13 on:]

I'll drop another simple review here, since you guys have once again covered the details.

Every bit of Hermes content in this episode was excellent. His jokes and sight gags were superb. It was great to see Fry and Leela doing and saying Couple Things™! Fry's 'yes, dear' got a chuckle out of me when they were firing rockets at the warehouse. Fry and Leela actually staying together in the end? Also excellent. And Bender? Being jealous of Leela moving in? 200% something he'd do. Think about how miserable he was when Fry moved out for a while! This is just like that situation, except now he thinks he's being ignored and shunted aside for Leela. Oh yeah, and we got a nice Al Gore head cameo. Sweet!

I agree with Gorky in that this episode hit basically all of the beats a classic episode would, perhaps with a few little niggling bits aside. I also agree that there was something about it that was missing. Perhaps it was the lack of more music, perhaps the voice actors being older, I dunno. But it was something.

Still, enjoyable. As much as last week's if not a smidge more for me.

8.5/10

[Reply #14 on:]

Much more optimistic after this episode. MUCH better than the last 2-3. Laughed a lot and the resolution to the Momazon takeover was so Futurama. Bender embracing being a third wheel at the end was kinda adorable. I hope they can keep up this level at least. If so I’ll be happy enough.

[Reply #15 on:]

If I could rename this account, it'd be "The Amazing Mechano-Man". Then "Sweet Vampire Moses"? This episode is really funny.

I gotta say, overall I totally enjoyed this one. It felt just as exciting and fun as any memorable Futurama episode. I was pretty wary of the modern day relevance going in, but it wasn't out of place or forced any more than a parody should be - actually, they hit the Amazon topic on the head, I loved the every jab. I particularly liked the ending; I always love when Futurama gets into a bit of spaceship action. There were some great shots when the ship is trying to escape the orb. I hope the omnipresent Momazon stays a consistent part of the show's universe. Bender, Fry and Leela's friendship really worked, and its nice to see that once again being focused on as I've always seen them as the real heart of the show.

Also, Tress did a great job here. She does a perfect "A.I." impression, and Mom felt even meaner than the last times we've seen her. Somewhat unrelated, but I'm still surprised there's been nothing to come of Farnsworth being Igner's father.

[Reply #16 on:]

I didn't dislike the episode, but I didn't quite like it either.

I think my most immediate problem is that it was too /cartoony/. The piece of plate glass inside the fridge; the warehouse being 1/4 the size of the moon as the approached, but only 10x the size of the moon-farm when they landed; the apparently infinite money supply Fry & Leela had to buy stuff.

I think the bit that stuck out the most was the dramatic pause that Mom had before pressing the button, while she gave a little expository speech. The whole thing - the setup, the stage, the dialog, the acting - felt like a saturday morning cartoon.

The fact that Mom wasn't a evil overlord this time and that she accepted defeat for simple money seemed wrong, too. Money as a means to an end, sure, but usually the motive was control. The Mother's Day episode was the epitome of the classic character, I think, with this choice bit of dialog:
"Mommy, why are you making civilization collapse?"
"Oh, I don't know."

Hedonismbot, too, was underused; shouldn't he be on the demand side of consumption, not the supply side?

I did like the ending; it raised more questions than it answered, but it was interesting.

"At least 10 of them must be Bender" was a good line.

Nice to see Al Gore, as well. The 'climate crisis' line made me laugh.

Some nitpicky things:
- they wouldn't freeze to death within minutes if the sun went out, that sort of thing happens basically every day, at least in the popular latitudes
- the whole flooding thing was bunk, as far as I can tell; the warehouse-sphere would have gotten its matter from the moon, so the total mass of the earth-moon system wouldn't change, and the tides shouldn't have changed much if at all
- not unique to this episode, but I've never liked the single-door openings for domes on planets that ships pass through, like the one in the moon-farm. A airlock really should be used. Oh, well.

Episodes with a package delivery: 1/5!

[Reply #17 on:]

It wasn't good, but I liked it in spite of that, so I'm giving it a 6.

It did make me laugh a fair bit, I loved seeing Mom again, and I liked the advancement of the Fry-Leela relationship.

I absolutely hate that revolting Luna Park mascot in hindsight. Too bad Nibbler didn't eat him.

Something about him just looks wrong.

I think I can credit most of my "enjoyment" to the rapid lowering of my personal bar for these episodes, TBH.

Futurama's corpse continues to shamble, I guess. We'll see if it has any fragments of its soul left as we go on.

[Reply #18 on:]

Okay I'm not going to lie, this episode took me by surprise. This was probably the first episode based around pop-culture references (amazon's alexa, echo) that actually wasn't terrible...! For once it took it's own original spin on the subject! Basing a pop-culture subject like that around the show's own original idea is rare for current Futurama. I honestly really enjoyed this episode. I did find some aspects of the first act kind of weak, as with some parts of the second act, but I liked that it was very narrative-driven. Nothing really felt rushed because of that. I found the fry & leela moments really cheap, ngl, but I found Bender being jealousy totally in-character. I get why some might find it out-of-character, but it just makes sense considering it's a change Bender didn't necessarily ask for nor really want. I also found the 3D animations in this episode kinda worse in some parts than the CC run when it comes to the Planet Express animated shots, while other areas looked better than ever.

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Such as when the Mom Sphere started covering the Earth and we had that shot of them going back to Planet Express. To me it looked like a Fox Era rendition of the building, but that could easily be contributed to the lighting and the such

Happy we had a solid B plot to the episode, which was a nice change since the only other episode to have a good B plot was episode 2 of the new season. It felt utterly underutilized since they didn't do much with

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Bender being under the Sphere AI's control by the end of the episode. In fact they kinda just left that thing be, which felt cheap.

The jokes didn't really land that well, either. During the last act they hit good, but otherwise they didn't slap that well in this episode. I liked that we got to see a more tamer version of Mom for the most part, but they didn't do much with the other B-plot. Which made the whole plot's pay-off feel especially weak.

I think I'm fine ranking this a solid 7.5/10, or otherwise a 8/10. I want to say it's the best of the season, but I think the episode before this one as well as the second episode did certain things alot better. But this is definitely up there for me as the top 3.

[Reply #19 on:]

The strongest of the season so far for me. Pretty much all the jokes hit and nothing felt forced, and it maintained the cool sci-fi twist on current day issues Futurama is great at. I like how the running theme of problems resolving themselves by going so far one way it goes full circle and we are back to normal like on that Darn Catz episode and a bunch of others.

I loved Bender's OTT reaction, being a total drama queen and everyone just ignoring him, it was totally in character for him. Bender walking into the closet saying he better not hear any noise, then proceeding to cry loudly cracked me up.

Fry's voice seems back to normal to me, not sure if its because Billy has shaken off the rust and got the hang of the old voice or possibly it's just me gradually adjusting to the change but either way it didn't stand out for me. If anything it was Leela's voice this time which sounded a little tired. That's a very minor quibble though, they are both around 70 so are entitled to get a little tired and have a little nap if they need it.

I'd give it an 8/10, I don't think this episode would have been out of place in the original run. It wouldn't have been a classic but it wouldn't stand out as far below the par either.

Interesting side note, the writer of this episode wrote "Where No Fan Has Gone Before" which was his only other episode. Hope they bring him back for more episodes.

[Reply #20 on:]

To quote Gordon Ramsay - finally, some good f$&ing food

This felt truly like where we left off - a twinge of modernity, silly fun yet clever, new dynamics altering the continuity, all while being true to the characters.

It just hit the beats for me as light entertainment, and the Freela shipper in me is gagging for more sweet relationship realism. And Bender being brat is never not funny.

Cautiously optimistic for the remainder of the season - 7/10

[Reply #21 on:]

I don't know whether it's that I've been rewatching the Comedy Central seasons and its reset my barometer for what I consider an adequate episode, but this one was alright.

Had some interesting ideas.

The biggest complaint for me was how end of the episode kind of, sort of read like: "it doesn't really matter if huge companies push for infinite growth, even if they do literally encompass everything there will be no actual negative consequences to this" I'm just going to assume that that's not the intended reading, give them the benefit of the doubt on this one.

[Reply #22 on:]

^I actually think that is the conclusion the characters draw from the events of the episode, but I don’t think it’s the message we as viewers are supposed to take. That’s sort of what I dig about the episode, and its ending in particular: much like “A Big Piece of Garbage,” which ends with the (obviously ethically suspect, if also technically correct) observation that the eventual consequences of launching a garbage ball into space are none of the characters’ concern, this episode shrugs off the obvious (practical and existential) threat of mega-corporations like Amazon.

In other words, the joke is in how wrong the characters are for accepting their fate and/or washing their hands of any moral responsibility. It’s coincidental ironic!

[Reply #23 on:]

Agreed, it was consistent with classic Futurama in that regard.

[Reply #24 on:]

Phineas and Ferb did the universe dome better.

[Reply #25 on:]

Wasn't that from the Stephen King movie of the Simpsons?

[Reply #26 on:]

In other words, the joke is in how wrong the characters are for accepting their fate and/or washing their hands of any moral responsibility. It’s coincidental ironic!

yep.

I thought this was a good episode. Probably the second best of the new batch.