Thoughts on Episode 8ACV06 – I Know What You Did Next Xmas (SPOILERS)

[on:]

Original Release: August 28th, 2023

Bender and Zoidberg travel through time to attack Robot Santa.

Discuss

[Reply #1 on:]

I'm just going to guess this episode is about Bender & Zoidberg going back in time to prevent Robot Santa from being too judgmental and the creation of Xmas but incidentally are the ones that made Santa evil in the first place. There might even be a short scene set in the future with a cameo of Fry & Leela's child(ren). Well, my prediction that Robot Santa was set to be evil by time travelers was true, but just the wrong crewmembers involved.

I'm gonna give this an 8/10. This is probably the second best Xmas episode, just below the first episode "Xmas Story". It gave us a little bit of everything. We finally got to see the seaport used! I'd like to see more of Bender and Zoidberg teaming up in the future. Bender's narcissism is a great foil to Zoidberg's pitiful existence. Coolio's farewell was perfect. RIP Kwanzaabot.

[Reply #2 on:]

So...why did no one check/ask if Robot Santa was still evil after Farnsworth went back in time? Or questioned why the world wasn’t drastically altered? That...really seems like something worth explaining.

The premise of Zoidberg/Bender drunk driving a time machine and having to hide a dead body is pretty great. I got a decent amount of laughs from their shenanigans. Not enough to keep me invested for an entire episode, but I was entertained for most of it.

The only part I really didn’t like was the last minute. Robot Santa was alive the whole time because dumb joke about Zoidberg/Bender being friends now how embarrassing the end ech.

The Turducken runner was odd. Its not a bad joke, maybe if the scenes were all played back to back instead of intercutting it with the Santa plot, but it just felt too dragged out how it was presented.

Scenes like the Christmas special at the start and showing Farnsworth going around the whole time loop felt like time filler. Again not bad, but they weren’t that interesting/funny either.

The Zoidberg/Bender stuff was fun. I smiled like I usually do at Christmas episodes just seeing all the characters celebrating together. I was getting tired of it by the end, the ending left a sour note, but overall this was fine.

7/10


Notes:

-Is this just a thing now, every other episode has to have a scene where multiple characters tear up? It happened here, in Lesser Bog, in Parasites. It just keeps reminding me of that scene from The Beast With a Billion Backs with everyone crying in slow motion, except not as funnily over the top.

-I’m surprised Fry mentioning never seeing his family again wasn’t played for a bigger joke. I wonder if that’ll be an episode in the future. I wonder if that scene with the giant Bender will also be a future episode.

-Coolio rap was cute. Its nice he got to be Kwanzaa Bot one more time before his death. RIP

[Reply #3 on:]

Great episode, although it kind of confirms the writers just... forgot about Emilia Clarke's character from "Stench and Stenchability".

And why the hell are they using pine trees?

Those minor issues aside, I very much enjoyed it. I always love seeing two unlikely characters pair with one another, and having it be in a time travel story is even better!

Nice seeing Leela's grandma return, also.

[Reply #4 on:]

Hey, another episode that contained virtually no embarrassing or cringeworthy jokes—the writers are on a roll!

For real, this episode was probably the funniest one of the lot so far, mostly for the Bender/Zoidberg stuff; their misadventures trying to dispose of Santa's body were pretty great (I especially got a chuckle out of the acid joke, and Zoidberg's honor at being immortalized in song). The turducken runner was, as Box Incorporated notes, kind of out of left field, but I was quite amused by the flamingo joke and the 3D printing thing (plus Fry eating his skis), and Leela's grandmother matter-of-factly noting how the turducken craves death was possibly the biggest laugh of the episode for me.

With that said, I agree with BI that the structural choice to keep cutting between the Bender/Zoidberg main plot and the various characters' happy Xmas side plots in the third act was...kind of weird. Fry randomly asking Leela where Zoidberg and Bender were spending Xmas was also quite the little plot contrivance. The twist ending—

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that Zoidberg and Bender traveled in the wrong direction, and that Farnsworth had actually been responsible for the original naughty-nice mix-up—was clever enough, and would seemingly leave the events of the prior two Xmas episodes intact, but I agree again with BI that the cryptic messages just being means of blackmail by Robot Santa was sort of a letdown. It was also weird to me that no one jumped up to ask questions or intervene when the time-traveling Zoidberg and Bender showed up; for everyone to keep a respectful, awed distance from these objectively bizarre events struck me as, again, a bit of a plot contrivance.

Ultimately, my main gripes with this episode are structural—I don't think the slightly longer runtime and expansion to a four-act format is doing the show any favors. With that said, considering how funny I found the episode overall, and how pleasantly surprised I was by the time travel element, I'm willing to overlook the plot ping-ponging and the fact that (as BI notes) the first act was largely expository filler. I think this one is on-par with last week's episode, if not actually a bit better in the humor department, so I guess I'm forced to give it a 9/10, too. It is indeed an Xmas miracle!

[Reply #5 on:]

Another perfectly decent episode - I think the ending tripped up slightly (

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the Santa blackmailing Bender bit, specifically

) but it didn't ruin anything. Having Farnsworth replay the time-travel segment from TLPJF might have seemed cheap and maybe a puny excuse to slip in an Enchanted reference, but, again, didn't ruin anything for me.

The different family traditions were fun, although the Turducken play didn't really land with me only because that's not nearly as traditional here in the UK (although looking it up has introduced me to the Yorkshire Christmas Pie, which, as I now live in Yorkshire, I might have to insist on having in the future...)

Where was I? Ah yes, the line about them craving death probably prompted my biggest laugh of the episodes but there were several, mostly involving Zoidberg.

So yeah, overall not perfect but still very good and, dare I say it, causing me to have growing optimism about the rest of the season to come? Weird having an Xmas episode at the end of August, but fair enough. That Coolio send-off was beautifully bittersweet...

[Reply #6 on:]

Most of the jokes landed well for me this episode.

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But I didn't enjoy the time travel bits as much as I could've:
Farnsworth having set the naughty/nice sensor the wrong way in the first place, and Bender & Zoidberg travelling to the next Xmas instead of the last one, were exactly what I expected, so not much in the way of entertaining twists there. (Though I didn't expect the fact the room was actually very occupied and that Robot Santa was eating his own future naughty/nice sensor; that was entertaining.)
The professor going back to the previous universe seems odd given the time travel mechanics seen in "The Late Philip J. Fry".
And continuity weirdness: Didn't the professor build the Planet Express building in circa 2961? (As seen in 6ACV15)


The ending: So is Robot Santa still evil when having no naughty/nice sensor at all? Did reversing the sensor actually do anything?
And how was he able to send messages from the future? (Presumably obtained a time machine somewhere somewhen)

Things of not much consequence: Did you notice "turducken" is in order from outside inward, but "turdolphin" is from inside outward? Maybe that was intentional.
Edit: Another thing of not much consequence: The time machine shows only four digits as it goes through years with more than four digits; presumably just an animation error.

[Reply #7 on:]

I know this can be said possibly about a lot of stories today but haven´t this felt more like the Red Dwarf episode?

Anyway, there was not much to write home about the introduction that also felt  kinda nonsensical anyway. But it was still cute, so who cares. I actually cared about the episode more when it turned to Bender and Zoidberg and all the rest. It showed how much are the writers comfortable with this "string of the gags" format so I guess it was pretty much on the level of How the West Was 1010001. Really liked the twist at the end and also Kwanzabot´s rap/dedication to Coolio...   

[Reply #8 on:]

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The ending: So is Robot Santa still evil when having no naughty/nice sensor at all? Did reversing the sensor actually do anything?

Re: Robot Santa more generally, the writing on him in this episode seemed sort of...off, to me. While I found his single-minded obsession with cookies and cookie-shaped items amusing enough, it did seem inconsistent with his character. Like, he's prone to occasional moments of stupidity (I'm reminded of his need to add Bender's crimes against orphans to his "naughty" list in "Xmas Story," and how painstakingly he spells it out) but in this episode his main character trait seemed to be "doofus" rather than "evil killing machine."

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Then again, maybe his general oafishness was meant to be our initial tip off that he was already set to "nice" in 2801...but that doesn't explain why the (presumably) "naughty" Santa was similarly enamored of cookies when he reappeared in 3023. That might go to your larger question, vivivi, about whether the naughty/nice switch really had an appreciable impact on Robot Santa's behavior, or if the characters just prematurely assumed it would and chose to wholeheartedly lean into the Xmas spirit on that hunch alone.

[Reply #9 on:]

I think I speak for us all when I say we can all agree that this episode proves we're no longer on the original Futurama timeline.

Edit: Also, I like when you randomly see Bender and he looks mean/angry for no reason.

[Reply #10 on:]

BTW, I was not the one to notice that but there seems to be another continuity blunder as Morris (who might have spoken in only one scene) no longer seemed to have vertical mouth when talking.

[Reply #11 on:]

I liked this one. I liked it a lot. I can forgive the minor continuity errors since it was so solid overall. The drunken murder/hide the body premise was really fun, and I thought Bender and Zoidberg make for a surprisingly strong pairing.

Random thoughts:

• I find it interesting how many changes they're making clear are canon now. Not just more obvious things like Kif and Amy's kids and Nibblers worms, but also more obscure running gags like Leela's drinking habits.
• Bender throwing the time machine at Santa really made me LOL.
• Munda's mother didn't seem as nuts as she led us to believe.
• Leo's new voice was a bit better this time. The actor actually sounded like he was making an effort to emulate West's performance, unlike in his previous appearance.
• The ending with Santa was a bit weak. I feel like they threw it in just to have a "there's one thing I still don't understand" moment. That being said, I did really like the double-twist of
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  the Professor accidentally making him evil, and Bender and Zoidberg inadvertently defeating him.
• Marianne's disappearance is sorely felt. I didn't expect the character to return, given her voice actor, but I'm surprised there's been no explanation so far as to what happened to her. She proved to be quite a popular character too IIRC.

I might have to rewatch the episode a couple of times. There was a lot going on in this one.

[Reply #12 on:]

Decent episode. Bit of a let down to say this, "All the Way Down" and "Parasites Regained" were the only episodes that struck me as having potential to become all-time classics from this new batch -- and "Parasites Regained" certainly didn't manage it either. I guess it's all down to "All the Way Down" now. With time-travel, I was hoping for something akin to the show's stellar standard with time-travel episodes in general, but sadly, it's more in line with the likes of "Decision 3012".


Good:

• Fairly funny
• Coolio's final performance
• Nice to hear Chanukah Zombie speak for the first time -- and have Mark Hamill back in general
• A hell of a lot of good continuity Easter eggs:

- Nibbler's worms
- Fry being his own grandfather brought up again
- Professor seeing events from "The Day the Earth Stood Stupid", "Put Your Head on My Shoulders", "The Late Philip J. Fry", "Benderama"
- Zoidberg's species die when they mate
- Fry's dead dog

• Mrs. McGuillicutty's time-cat
• Another Disenchantment set in the Futurama universe Easter egg -- the first one on Futurama. I suspect not the last
  
• "Let's stop pretending we do anything around here" followed by a rare show of charity from The Professor
• Really went all in on showing us the entire extended cast. It was nice to see everyone's families. The only obvious missing link was Nibbler
• The gag where Bender smashes the time machine over Robot Santa plus them presumably establishing that it's gone and can't be used again in future episodes
• The wild turducken and that they crave death
• I love the show's continued approach of unusual pairings with Bender and Zoidberg
• I enjoyed the visual gag of Cubert missing hair after the scene change
• I'm a big fan of them establishing new rooms we've never seen before in the Planet Express building
• Cara Delevigne's continued baffling role as "female screams" on this season. I'm assuming she was the woman screaming alongside the kid played by Phil LaMarr during the TV special when it cut away and we saw Amy, etc, watching it. I might be wrong but I couldn't match her up to a single other voice in the episode. If it's not that, then she pretty much has to be one of the backing singers in Coolio's song at the end
• 13 years later, TNUK is finally proven completely wrong in their blatantly wrong assertions about how time travel works in "The Late Philip J. Fry"
  
  Bad:
  
• I'm a bit disappointed with the backstory of the Planet Express building. For some reason, I'd always assumed it was custom-built by The Professor given how much other crap he builds
• Feels like it cheapens time travel in this universe to an extent. If The Professor can just build a backwards time machine then who cares about anything? This is exactly why they avoided doing time-travel until season 3 and then wrote that it required something insane like a star going supernova in order to pull it off
• The "Cookie!" running gag was lame as hell
• I'm like 70% sure that the reference I've marked down as "Benderama" is actually supposed to be a scene from "Anthology of Interest I", which makes no sense given that it's non-canon
• The way everyone remembers the past after The Professor changes it instead of being changed by it. Obviously, this is because it turns out that The Professor didn't actually change anything. My issue is that The Professor should have been immediately aware that it didn't make sense and something was wrong
• Where was Marianne? Either she hasn't left Zoidberg and she was visiting her family or (more likely) she left him. Regardless, how hard would one line of dialogue have been? Or even just a photo of her in his dumpster.
• Where was Nibbler? His worms had a stocking but he was nowhere to be seen. Presumably he's gone to visit his family on his homeworld but a line of dialogue or something would be nice
• Bender getting drunk from drinking alcohol instead of not drinking it
  
• Reestablishing the notion that Zoidberg's species dies after having sex directly clashes with at least two instances that seemingly contradicted it and retconned it from the show:

- When Fry (in Zoidberg's body) has sex with Leela (in The Professor's body) in "The Prisoner of Benda", I suppose we're now to assume they didn't go all the way
- When Zoidberg tells everyone he and Marianne were up all night making love in "Stench and Stenchibility", I suppose we're now to assume he just meant hand stuff or something. Claw stuff. Really this is an issue with those other two episodes more than this one

• The way that Santa leaving those "I know what you did" messages makes no logistical sense. Like... what? His future self went back in time and wrote a Christmas card and left it in Bender's stocking? His future self went back in time and sneakily wrote a message on the window and then ran away before anyone saw him? Unbelievably stupid. Weak writing. Not to mention that no one would say "next Xmas" when they mean "Xmas coming up in less than a week".
• I'm not a fan of Kevin Michael Richardson as URL. It's a solid sound-alike but it was lacking something DiMaggio brought to it. I don't really feel like it was a necessary recast like Leo Wong arguably was, either. I'm still on board with the Feodor Chin recast though. I guess this means Barbados Slim will also be played by Kevin Michael Richardson from now on.
• While I like that they tried it, the unusual pairing of Bender and Zoidberg didn't really click for me the same way, say, Nibbler and Amy did in "That Darn Katz!"
• The notion that The Professor is the one who made Robot Santa evil isn't as good as the original idea that he simply judges everyone too harshly due to bad programming. It's also seriously stupid because it would be so easy to make him nice again. All they have to do is sneak up behind him while he's eating cookies, apparently 
• The episode ends with Robot Santa "dead", even though he'll inevitably return next time they feel like it with no explanation. Especially annoying given how obvious it was for them to just have him blackmail Bender into putting his body back together
• Yet another huge, clunky exposition dump nobody needed because the writers seemingly think this show is being watched by brand new viewers who haven't seen past episodes
• We're probably now going to get another novella on why TNUK understands what the show's writers mean better than they do

7/10

[Reply #13 on:]

So...why did no one check/ask if Robot Santa was still evil after Farnsworth went back in time? Or questioned why the world wasn’t drastically altered? That...really seems like something worth explaining.

I can buy that they were all dumb enough to just believe it except for The Professor who really ought to have questioned why everybody remembered that he even went back in time as opposed to being like "What? You were gone? Santa's always been nice. What are you talking about?"

I wonder if that scene with the giant Bender will also be a future episode.

I'm fairly sure it was supposed to be "Anthology of Interest I", which makes absolutely no sense given that those events were non-canon, so my head-canon is that it's a scene from "Benderama".

[Reply #14 on:]

Reestablishing the notion that Zoidberg's species dies after having sex directly clashes with at least two instances that seemingly contradicted it and retconned it from the show:
- When Fry (in Zoidberg's body) has sex with Leela (in The Professor's body) in "The Prisoner of Benda", I suppose we're now to assume they didn't go all the way
- When Zoidberg tells everyone he and Marianne were up all night making love in "Stench and Stenchibility", I suppose we're now to assume he just meant hand stuff or something. Claw stuff. Really this is an issue with those other two episodes more than this one

So I don't remember the precise verbiage Zoidberg used in this episode, but I think Decapodians die when they mate, with the implication being that interspecies sex between Decapodians and humans (or mutants, as the case may be) does not cause death because it is not procreative. Presumably the, uh, male jelly is produced (and expelled) for mating purposes, but Decapodians can still have sex provided none of that jelly is exchanged.

Which is to say: Male Decapodians die when they ejaculate, not when they climax, and for their species these are presumably two different acts—the first being procreative, the latter being purely recreational. So I think we can still reasonably assume that Fry-as-Zoidberg had some variety of penetrative sex with Leela, and Zoidberg-as-Zoidberg did the same with Marianne. Whether that penetration occurred genitally or digitally is, I suppose, up for interpretation, but I don't think it constitutes a retcon of the two previous episodes you named. (And if Zoidberg said "have sex" instead of "mate" in this episode, perhaps we can chalk that up to him being drunk.)

I can't believe I just made this post. Am I wasting my life?

[Reply #15 on:]

Great episode, although it kind of confirms the writers just... forgot about Emilia Clarke's character from "Stench and Stenchability".

The most frustrating thing about this is how well they could have set up a future episode or even series arc.

Have Zoidberg say "I've been so lonely ever since Marianne left me for that XYZ" -- easy place to add a joke.

Have a shot of him looking over at her photo, dejected, while he's in his dumpster.

Boom, you've just set the table for us to be extremely excited when they pull out the "Zoidberg tries to win Marianne's heart back" episode with big guest star Emilia Clarke in season 9 or 10 or something. Or, like I say, let's make Zoidberg and Marianne the new Fry and Leela seeing as those two are just firmly together now.

[Reply #16 on:]

Didn't the professor build the Planet Express building in circa 2961? (As seen in 6ACV15)[

So that's why this bothered me so much! I knew it just felt off for some reason.

[Reply #17 on:]

I think I speak for us all when I say we can all agree that this episode proves we're no longer on the original Futurama timeline.

The show now takes place in a universe where Adolf Hitler was assassinated before he could do any real damage in WWII.

[Reply #18 on:]

• Marianne's disappearance is sorely felt. I didn't expect the character to return, given her voice actor, but I'm surprised there's been no explanation so far as to what happened to her.
  

I think it has less to do with Emilia Clarke and more to do with how her existence fundamentally changes what Zoidberg is and his value to the show at large. They wrote themselves into a corner and seemingly don't want to address it yet.

That said, I fully expect that we will see Marianne again at some point -- even if it's only after the writers check online reactions to these episodes and see that fans want more of her. They can easily recast Emilia Clarke if they can't get her back (see Robot Santa, Morgan Procter, Robot Devil that one time, etc).

In fact, how's this for a full-on conspiracy? Cara Delevigne has made two appearances in this season so far as generic screaming noises. It's baffling given her stature and star power and the most-likely explanation is that she's making a proper guest-appearance this season and just recorded some extra lines for other episodes while they had her in the studio (like Pamela Anderson voicing Dixie). Given that doing a decent Marianne approximation seems beyond Tress MacNeille et al's abilities, what if they've hired in a different British woman? What if Cara Delevigne is the new voice of Marianne and will be appearing in "The Prince and the Product" or "All the Way Down" given that we know nothing about those two episodes beyond their titles?

The only other explanations I can think of are she's friends with someone who works on the show or she's a huge fan who specifically reached out, asking to be in the show, and they -- for some reason -- didn't want to give her a proper part.

[Reply #19 on:]

I'm not a fan of Kevin Michael Richardson as URL.

What? They recast URL? First of all, I didn't even notice, unlike Leo, so I guess that means the new actor did a fine imitation.

Second of all... why? I guess URL has a vaguely "black" voice, but uh, he's a robot. This has the same energy as when Disney intentionally only cast black actors to voice the lions in the Lion King remake (and only the lions, as if those are somehow more African than other African animals).

[Reply #20 on:]

To be fair, URL is absolutely coded as black in a way that the lions in The Lion King weren't in the original film.

The voice and character has historically played into a lot of black stereotypes, including some very iffy ones in "The Bots and the Bees".

But no, I'm with you. I mean Phil LaMarr voiced white characters in this very episode so the arguments about it being a matter of representation don't really fly here.

[Reply #21 on:]

So I didn’t notice the recasting of URL, either, but I will say that a Black actor voicing white characters does not quite raise the same issues of representation (or, more specifically, stereotyping) that come into play when a white actor voices a racially/ethnically marginalized character. Like, it’s not racially insensitive for a non-white person to “play” white because doing so doesn’t re-entrench white supremacy (or at least perpetuate racist tropes) in the way that a white dude vocally cosplaying as a Black dude does.

Do I think these cast changes are primarily driven by a fear of being called out—and a particular (well-meaning but rather misguided) liberal notion that representation is all that matters and as long as you have actors voicing characters who match their specific identity then you have Solved the Problem of Racism? Yes I do. But I’m not bothered by them, really, and I’m sure we’ll see more of them throughout this new run (I mean, there’s no way John DiMaggio could still be voicing Barbados Slim or Curly Joe, for example). It seems like both an over-correction and an example of mega corporations making meaningless gestures toward diversity, equity, and inclusion rather than doing the much harder work of fully addressing systemic racism and other social inequities, but that’s an argument for another day.

On the subject of this episode: that bit with URL and Smitty was pretty funny! I liked their musing on the fact that toxic waste has to go somewhere…

[Reply #22 on:]

For me this was about par for the current season. 6/10.

Some bits were good - the fact that Santa didn't sink when Bender moved weights around was good - reminded me about some discussion recently on how the melting of Antarctic sea-ice won't raise the sea level, since its mass is already accounted for in the current sea level.

But the joke immediately after, where they bizarrely thought that adding zeros would help, was more of the very-cartoony humour.

The Bender-Zoidberg pairing was good. Maybe more could have been made of it, but it was interesting.

Disregarding the key plot device of The Late Philip J Fry with a single line of throwaway dialog was annoying, but at least this time the change was fundamental for the plot, unlike the shrinking ray in the Parasites Regained.

I wish backwards time travel was used only very sparingly, and its use here didn't make me want to see more of it.

The xmas sock for the Professor really should have said 'Hubert'; he's called that by some characters (Zoidberg, for instance).

Fry inexplicably behaving like a child was inexplicable, though I suppose it's been used as a gag in other episodes from time to time.

Overall I got a feeling that only the most superficial qualities of the characters were being used, though Bender and Zoidberg had more depth.

Episodes with a package delivery: 1/6*


*"Let's stop pretending we do something around here." Too true.

[Reply #23 on:]

I liked it a lot, even if the ending was absolutely terrible. The jokes were neat, the callbacks were also neat, the visual gags were funny, even if several of them broke continuity. Seeing everyone go home to their families was super nice.

But seriously, what was the ending? And all the scary notes left along the way? Those things were dumb and the writers should feel dumb. If anything, Santa should've blackmailed Bender into rebuilding him.

9/10 anyways.

[Reply #24 on:]

So I didn’t notice the recasting of URL, either, but I will say that a Black actor voicing white characters does not quite raise the same issues of representation (or, more specifically, stereotyping) that come into play when a white actor voices a racially/ethnically marginalized character. Like, it’s not racially insensitive for a non-white person to “play” white because doing so doesn’t re-entrench white supremacy (or at least perpetuate racist tropes) in the way that a white dude vocally cosplaying as a Black dude does.

I totally get it and I'm with you. I wasn't suggesting that two wrongs make a right so much as surely they've earned a couple of free cards given how good the show's representation is on the whole, inclusive of it never shying away from giving its black and Asian cast members white characters to play.

[Reply #25 on:]

7/10 - best of the season! I hope the season stays on par with these last two.

Weird to think this was truly the last recorded performance of Coolio - it was a lovely tribute.

I found the turducken jokes funny, and I'm a pescatarian! *insert emaciated lion cough here*

I concur with all positive points voiced so far, so I'll just reiterate what took 3 points off my score:

- Basic canonical errors (Planet Express Building origin especially)
- Xmas tree not being a palm (although, one could imagine this is a deliberate 20th century inclusion for Fry's benefit)
- Marianne completely forgotten

I do hope the time machine remains destroyed - I think we've had the 2 best uses out of it, and any more would become beyond tiresome/lazy. And I liked how it was so flippantly smashed up lol

[Reply #26 on:]

I think TNUK's theories on time travel in Futurama were interesting, unique, and novel to say the least.  I'll write my thesis on the necessary and expected assertions regarding TNUK's dissertation on the reasonable conclusions concerning mechanics within the quantum timestream as it pertains to the established and demonstrated physics of the Futurama universe.

[Reply #27 on:]

Another really good one! I loved pretty much all of it. It'd be cool if Santa remains "dead" in-universe. It's great that Amy and Kiff's kids have stuck around, too. It wasn't as funny as past episodes this season, but everything else was just about spot-on. The twist definitely surprised me. I think this was my favorite of the season so far.

My only real complaint is that the TLPJF references came across as a bit heavy - specifically the Professor tive travel scene - but hey, it's a great sequence so I wasn't against seeing it reenacted. I actually kinda enjoy the sequel episodes they've been doing, doesn't feel very forced to me besides select moments.

Also, Bender's eyes are the wrong color for a few frames. Absolute Madness

[Reply #28 on:]

Another solid episode, feel this season is really hitting its stride now.

It does seem to contradict TLPJF though. With the TLFJP the trio left that universe and killed their counterparts in the 3rd universe so it seemed logical to assume the trio in universe 2 would have also travelled forward 2 universes and killed their counterparts in universe 4.
So when Hubert travelled back to the previous universe, Fry and Bander should have been missing.

I can completely understand them just wanting to ignore this as probably more than half their audience would have forgotten about the specifics of that episode which aired more than a decade ago. And I guess you could also claim that Hitler was killed in this universe so maybe that could explain why Hubert, Fry and Bender didn't travel forward in time in this timeline. So now they are back to the 2nd iteration of the universe which is different to both the timelines in the original run (1st) and the cc run (3rd) and Hubert is the only character who is still truly the same person as the original run.

[Reply #29 on:]

Yeah, the notion that universe 2 would have done the same thing to universe 4 and that universe 5 would have done the same thing to universe 7 and so on is pure conjecture on our parts. There's nothing in the episode to suggest that's actually the case and there are plenty of reasons to believe perhaps we were just watching one universe that's a total anomaly.

BUT

There is a major issue caused here.

If Professor of Universe 1 (P1) now lives in Universe 3 (U3) and travelled back in time there and accidentally made Robot Santa 3 evil, that tracks for U3.

P3 then goes to U2. Presumably P2 did the same thing to make Robot Santa 2 evil as well. Still no issues.

However...

U1 has been left with no Professor since the events of The Late Philip J. Fry meaning that no one in that universe could have gone back in time to make Robot Santa evil, meaning that "Xmas Story", "A Tale of Two Santas" etc create a major continuity goof.



Except...

In those original episodes, Leela very clearly states that Robot Santa's standards were set too high and he invariably judges everyone to be naughty. In this episode, we find that Robot Santa simply has a naughty/nice switch that's flipped the wrong way round.

So presumably, it's yet another instance of Futurama's world largely following a deterministic model whereby things will arrive at more or less the same destination despite changes to the timeline, which is consistent with most previous time-travel episodes.

While I have zero doubt that I'm thinking about this in more detail than the writers did, it's a nice headcanon that makes the show make more sense without invalidating anything.

[Reply #30 on:]

That explanation works very well, you've used what was likely one writer oversight to explain away what was another writer oversight, nice one.

There is still one more slight issue that if we assume P2 would have done the same thing as P3 then P2 should have ended up back in U1 in 3023, yet there was no mention of his return by Leela/Hermes in TLPJF. I guess its possible he returned and saw how different it was and just left again without bumping into anyone.

Its still conjecture but it looks like instead of half of all the Frys, Benders and Professors being crushed to death by their -2n universe counterparts and half of all Leela's having a lonely life like we originally assumed, it looks like only 25% of them would have met that fate so a slightly more upbeat fate for the 4 characters % wise.

[Reply #31 on:]

Okay I think this is easily the best of the season for me. It had great pacing, a fun plot, and great jokes. What else could you ask for? This episode felt the most Futurama to me since the reboot tbh, although I found the xmas theme surrounding the episode to be kinda mediocre. Like, it was going for genuinely heartwarming but sorta fell flat on it's face. I liked the callbacks, as well as how it gives you a bit to think about when thinking about the technicalities of the time-travel aspect of the episode. Also I loved that coolio bit at the end. I'm giving it a clear cut 8/10.

It wasn't the best thing the show has ever done, but it was alot of fun and had great execution much like "MotPE". I think the episode's biggest goof is the whole flashback scene, like it had xmas decorations up during callbacks to previous episodes where it wasn't there? Oh and yeah, as others have mentioned there's also the TLPJF thing, but at the same time it's also worth considering Farnsworth traveled to the previous universe where the trio are essentially gone when resetting him, therefore it makes sense that this current universe' Santa was unaffected since the next universe after this current one won't have Farnsworth there to reset him in this current universe. I.... think that's right at least lol.

*Edit: Dang it, I forgot he did the reset first then went back to the previous universe. Yeah that's a clear goof unless the universe itself was already repeating before the events of TLPFJ. Then it's plausible that in TLPJF the universe after Universe 1 (The one the professor zoomed past by mistake) involves a previous version of the trio making it back just like this universe did while the next universe to come involves the trio being gone for good and rise repeat. This sure is confusing but I think makes somewhat sense. 2 out of 3 universes has them returning basically.

[Reply #32 on:]

BUT

But nothing. The Cyclical Universe model is demonstrated to be incorrect. The only thing that's changed is that the Prifessor's machine can now cross the discontinuity where the circle joins up.

Which it appears to do by occupying space/time whilst travelling backwards through rather than around it.

The Cyclical Time model, on the other hand, is still logically sound and strong.

Time is a circle. There's only one iteration of the universe, and it has a self-governing inertia-like force that keeps events more-or-less on track despite the occasional timeclip being thrown in there as a self-correcting loop and in perfect accordance with the doom-field driven rule of demise for temporally duplicated organisms.

The Professor goes backwards, takes "the scenic route" for the fuck of it, and flips the switch.

Santa is now evil, and has been the whole time, *because* the Professor was always going to go back and do this.

Bender and Dr. Z go forwards. They kidnap Santa, and bring him back. His death is facilitated (unknown to them) by the doom field that was discovered by analyzing the time travel code in BBS.

Then, Santa shows up and is kidnapped right on cue.

Hitting the big bang and sliding through to the gnab gib didn't change the universe that Farnsworth was in. Just his position on that circular timeline. And he didn't do anything he hadn't already been going to do, thanks to temporal inertia holding the sequence of events to at least a similar course (notice in the long timeclip through ATPH, NNYC and even the PX building didn't change by that much. The more things are changed, the more they stay the same).

Time in the Futuramaverse is Cyclical, Disenchantment is the future of the Futuramaverse, and when everything eventually ends, it will all begin again.

Just like the song that plays over the Mars Vegas intro to ITWGY says.

BTW, posting from the bath, so forgive any unfortunate typos, please.

[Reply #33 on:]

But everything.

If time is a loop then Bender, The Professor and Fry should have seen numerous versions of themselves going round the loop at once. In fact, they should most likely crash into their other selves.

They should end up with numerous versions of the time machine.

The Professor should have been content with the fact that he had already assassinated Adolf Hitler and therefore not have to try again only to hit Eleanor Roosevelt.

Plus the NUMEROUS indications the writers gave us in TLPJF that these were new universes, ranging from universe 3 being approximately 10 feet lower than universe 1 through to the Professor flat-out calling it a new universe.

[Reply #34 on:]

If time is a loop then Bender, The Professor and Fry should have seen numerous versions of themselves going round the loop at once. In fact, they should most likely crash into their other selves.

They should end up with numerous versions of the time machine.

They're not static within time though. They're moving outside of time, forwards. At differing rates and in slightly differing positions, during which they are quite clearly out of the spacetime continuum itself and merely observers - this alone would be generally sufficient to keep them from experiencing a collision with themselves making another instance of the same trip.

More specifically, their past selves don't exist within the continuum that they are observing from the perspective of whichever their "present selves" are, unless their past selves are "parked" within that continuum at an observable point. The timeship's existence outside of the continuum is what allows it to pass beyond the end of the universe and be present at the birth of that same universe, but reset to the start point, when time runs out and begins again.

Imagine a record playing. You stop it with your finger at a certain point and cause it to stick on the needle, playing the same second or so over and over again for a few moments.

Once the record reaches the end and begins again, you'll need to repeat the trick with the finger to get the same effect at the same point. From the perspective of the record, your finger does not exist whilst it is not interacting with it, and does not exist in the same place on the record unless you are extraordinarily precise in placing it the second time around (the record reaches the end and goes back to the beginning, starting again. For the purposes of this post, the record player automatically replaces the needle at the beginning of the record again).

I suspect that the main (real) reason from the show writing point of view that we haven't actually seen people running across their own timeline when the show does this sort of episode is that from the little we had in BBS, it got too complex for a whole bunch of folks to follow.

And the writers couldn't be expected to keep track of much more than was explained on screen either. Which all culminates in the final tangled ball of yarn that is Bender's trail through history with multiple selves all queued up to emerge from the caves under the PX building at the "appropriate" point.

Added to this, we don't see the time machine cross its own path definitively (by which I mean having two of them materialise in the same approximate spatio-temporal vicinity) until they reach the end of their trip and squash their other selves. Who they promptly replace.

The Professor should have been content with the fact that he had already assassinated Adolf Hitler and therefore not have to try again only to hit Eleanor Roosevelt.

No, he'd have to assassinate Adolf Hitler every time. He wasn't making changes to a play-through of the timeline that he'd previously occupied. He was making changes to a brand new iteration of the same timeline.

Imagine a record playing (I swear I've said this before). You stop it with your finger at a certain point and cause it to stick on the needle, playing the same second or so over and over again for a few moments (it's as though time is repeating itself).

Once the record reaches the end and begins again, you'll need to repeat the trick with the finger to get the same effect at the same point.

So once time restarts, Farnsworth needs to kill Hitler again, otherwise the record plays normally (meaning Hitler is born, lives, and is killed by the one man who is famous today for killing Hitler; Hitler).

So to cause the effect of Hitler's assassination consistently, Farnsworth has to do it every time the record plays. If he gets to the end of the play-through, everything is reset from the beginning again. And there's nobody killing Hitler because this is only a quasi-deterministic universe and Farnsworth is acting as a force outside of spacetime except when interacting with objects within spacetime directly. Same for Bender and the Fish Squish maneouver.

Plus the NUMEROUS indications the writers gave us in TLPJF that these were new universes, ranging from universe 3 being approximately 10 feet lower than universe 1 through to the Professor flat-out calling it a new universe.

This is the weakest possible argument. Farnsworth, before he has anything figured out says that it "appears to be a new universe, exactly the same as the old one", which is functionally equivalent to "it's exactly the same universe" save for the issue of semantics thanks to vernacular communication and its separation from idealised language.

And the only other of your "numerous" examples you care to mention could easily be due to the exclusion principle, or because the writers didn't really care about specificity when it came to getting to the point where the time capsule drops on the new iterations of the protagonists before they can start their adventure all over again. They just wanted that sweet, sweet, dark joke.

I'm willing to forgive them for giving you this flimsy argument in doing so as well, since it's one of the moments that really helps give the story some weight, as well as being funny.

As for what the Professor says in general, he (much like myself in instances other than this one) is frequently either incorrect, unreliable, or communicating a complex idea in a vernacular that the audience is more easily able to assimilate than that diagram demonstrating quasi-determinism and therefore the inviability of a linear parade of new universes.

This one:



Furthermore, we can demonstrate the nonsensicality of the Cyclic Universe model by noting that the time machine is collapsed into the pre- Big Bang singularity, showing that the atoms constituting the time machine were originally part of the singularity spawning that iteration of the universe.

In TLPJF, the original time machine in this iteration was crushed and (presumably) scrapped. This is the iteration of the time machine that was first used to set off on the crew's jaunt around the timeline. And yet, it must be made of constituent matter from this iteration of the universe to have been a part of the singularity (and if it had not been part of it, would logically not have become a part of it again whilst travelling in reverse). Had it been made of matter originally spawned in a distinct and separate universe, the time machine would have continued to exist in spacetime as an object, even as spacetime related to the other set of matter collapsed.

This is due to spacetime being an emergent property of mass; mass attached to matter from a different singularity would necessarily project spacetime as an independent property of itself rather than being dependent upon the expansion of spacetime due to the spontaneous emergence of matter existing thanks to a discrete, separate, entity. And there's maths that demonstrates that, but honestly I don't feel like retyping 60% of somebody's doctoral thesis in quantum mechanics for the sake of something that can be understood in words.

The upshot of this is that whatever the mechanism whereby the Professor survived the implosion of the universe and emerged at the end of time, it would have been unable to occur in a linear, deterministic, universal sequence of cosmoses (cosmii? cosmosia? cosmeese? That's going to bother me more than people saying time in the Futuramaverse is linear if I don't look it up).

[Reply #35 on:]

Okay, this is worth the double post.

I looked it up. The plural of cosmos may be cosmoses or cosmoi, depending on the preference of the person pluralising cosmos. However, in common practice, cosmoses would technically be more correct in standard British English, as an anglicized word with an original root in something Grecian if not precisely ancient Greek.

[Reply #36 on:]

Okay, I'd like to add my own two chimes into this.

Show spoiler

I spent the meticulous effort of making a chart of a sort of the Futurama Universes. Dunno if someone has made one similar to this but I think it gets the job done.



Now what I'd like to suggest is that the universe has been endlessly repeating & it's because of that alot of time travel-related issues from this episode are resolved. (Not all of them) Notice how because of TLPJF there's 1 universe out of the 3 where Farnsworth never theoretically should return to Planet Express after changing Santa due to being missing in TLPJF universe? The only possible fix for this would be for him to reverse himself into the previous universe where he doesn't have his TLPJF version there to go back to it.

The way I see it is that the reason they handled time travel the way they did in this episode was essentially because it was the most harmless effect of using time travel without messing with the continuity too badly, since Universe 2 (the one the professor left behind in this episode) will still have a Farnsworth return to them who did the deed & the series in that universe should essentially be unchanged by these effects. As in the characters in that universe are experiencing the same exact things the characters in this universe are experiencing. (Aside from the fact that version of Farnsworth will have witnessed Leela's entrepreneurship with leading Planet Express in the aforementioned timeline)

So all in all, what I'm trying to say is that the events of TLPJF do help make alot of sense of this. It also complicates it to complete heck. In one of the universes Farnsworth will have to have had went back twice and it's all a matter of possibility what will transpire from there. Now that's an episode I'd like to see, Farnsworth in awe of Leela's professional take-over of Planet Express. A huge time paradox this raises however is that if he wasn't there to turn Robot Santa evil in those universes, wouldn't the universe from the entire first six seasons just cease to exist once he did this? (Or more precisely the universe they are missing in -3, 0, & 3?) Since Robot Santa will supposedly be nice in those universes had he not been there to interfere? Maybe him turning evil was bound to happen either way, kinda like the BBS time travel effect, who knows. And now this universe gives them leadway to change his origins up a bit if they decided to. Just thinking out loud. (Admittedly, this would mean Universe 1, 2, -1 & -2 are the ones that can alter Robot Santa's backstory. Proving my point that the characters we see in Universe 2 are experiencing everything this universe's characters are save from the Farnsworth who returns in that universe)

Tldr; I think cyber t is right on his assessment that the series is now in Universe 1 (the one they zoomed past in TLPJF). If the universe in Futurama never had a definitive start & always just repeated itself over & over then it stands to reason Farnsworth ending up in the same position with no changes as the timeline left makes complete sense.

[Reply #37 on:]

Ah right, it now becomes a sequence of 3 universes before it repeats instead of 4 as the characters in the 2nd universe don't jump 2 universes ahead.
It also means this Fry and Bender never experienced the events of the TLPJF as we are now following the middle universe effectively where Hitler was shot.

It would be an interesting if tedious task to try put Futurama together in chronological order.
It would basically be the the series up to the TLPJF and just before they overshoot their own time in U2. Then we'd switch to the point of the last episode where Hubert stops at U2 and watch the rest of the Hulu run from this point on (assuming there are no more universe jumps) and after the Hulu run is finished we should return to the point in TLPJF where they overshot U2 and continue watching the cc run from that point up until halfway through this episode in the Hulu run. Of course there is all the other time travel episodes you'd have to take into account too which I'm ignoring.

[Reply #38 on:]

I think the internal logic for time travel in Futurama is fucked at this point, so trying to rationalise it is futile. That being said, I have a theory. And I'll admit that I've only skimmed through tnuc and cyber_turnip's discussion, so pardon me if what I'm about to say has already been said.

In TLPJF, the crew abandon their universe and settle down in an identical one (after accidentally "skipping" a different one). Given how we see various events of the show take place through the eyes of the time machine, it stands to reason that everything up to that point happens exactly the same, so presumably the Farnsworth from the skipped universe will also use the forward time machine, and accidentally skip the universe that our protagonists currently occupy. This creates a pattern where chronologically, each universe is paired in groups of two where the time travellers met the same fate.

Here's a shitty diagram I made in Paint:

(Blue arrows represent time travelling trips, and black arrows represent the good ol' natural passage of time)


So what does this have to do with "I Know What You Did Next Xmas"? I believe that when Farnsworth travelled back in time, he did so from the second of one of the green universes from my diagram. Otherwise, when he travelled back into the previous universe, he would have arrived in one of the red universes in which he had been missing for 13 years, and Leela was currently turning Planet Express into a successful business.

This obviously doesn't explain Santa being evil in the red universes, since there was no Professor to go back in time, but I honestly think that's just a plot hole.

This is an episode I'll have to force myself to not think too hard about because it's genuinely great besides the continuity goofs.

[Reply #39 on:]

a brand new iteration of the same timeline.

This sounds awfully similar to a new universe to me.

So once time restarts, Farnsworth needs to kill Hitler again, otherwise the record plays normally (meaning Hitler is born, lives, and is killed by the one man who is famous today for killing Hitler; Hitler).

I'll give you a better analogy for what you're describing than the record player one... or at least a niche analogy that appeals more to me. Sonic the Hedgehog, like many classic video games, used to load up "gameplay footage" clips if you left the game on the title screen for a while. This was largely (I think) to promote the game in shops where they'd have a console on to demonstrate the thing to customers. Thing was, this wasn't some pre-recorded footage of the game. It was actually just gameplay being rendered in real-time. The game was loading up the first level and playing it with pre-set button inputs. As a result of this, you could actually hold down "A" and it would prevent Sonic from being able to jump, completely altering the outcome of these "clips" you'd watch. Of course, wait a few minutes and they'd loop back round and play again as they were "predetermined" to.

So to cause the effect of Hitler's assassination consistently, Farnsworth has to do it every time the record plays. If he gets to the end of the play-through, everything is reset from the beginning again. And there's nobody killing Hitler because this is only a quasi-deterministic universe and Farnsworth is acting as a force outside of spacetime except when interacting with objects within spacetime directly. Same for Bender and the Fish Squish maneouver.

Nah this still doesn't work. It's not that the effects should last, but rather that, if this is the same universe, The Professor should exist doing his own actions from past goes round.

So to take assassinating Hitler as our example. It's not that Professor should boot up a new reset of the universe and find Hitler assassinated in it. It's that, if this is the same universe, his previous self should be going round it concurrently with his current self and his previous self should shoot Hitler like he did last time independently of anything the current Professor does short of stopping his past self from taking that action.

I'm going to help you out with a theory though, because I think it's an interesting idea. What if the time machine doesn't operate outside of space and time so much as it operates on its own, independent time? This would mean that, like how the Planet Express ship engine moves space around it rather than moving itself through space, the Professor's time machine could also have its own internal chronology and move the universe's timeline around it, relative to its own timeline. This would explain why The Professor's past self doesn't assassinate Hitler again and again. Because from the time machine's perspective, this is the third time they've reset the universe and started a new playthrough, even though it's the same universe. From the universe's perspective, those previous time machine interactions simply cease to exist. Of course, this brings us dangerously close to what the show clearly intended -- that these are just brand new universes operating one after the other -- because from the time machine's perspective, that's essentially what they are.

Plus the NUMEROUS indications the writers gave us in TLPJF that these were new universes, ranging from universe 3 being approximately 10 feet lower than universe 1 through to the Professor flat-out calling it a new universe.

This is the weakest possible argument.

I think the obvious intention of the people making something is the strongest argument, personally -- but I suppose you must adhere to Roland Barthes' Death of the Author theory.

And the only other of your "numerous" examples you care to mention

Because we had this discussion ten years ago and it was just as stupid back then. I figured I'd try to trim this new iteration of it down a bit -- but I suppose you probably think this is literally the same conversation we had ten years ago looping round again as opposed to us having a brand new iteration of the same one.