Thoughts on Episode 8ACV07 - Rage Against the Vaccine - (SPOILERS)

[on:]

OG Release: Sep 4th 2023.

A pandemic ravages future Earth.

Discuss

[Reply #1 on:]

So far the best episode this season shockingly. 8 out of 10! Kinda liked it better that the episodes South Park did. 

[Reply #2 on:]

God damn was that Hermes story boring. Hermes talking about eating Gumbo and Zombie-ism isn’t funny. None of the locations or characters he meets were funny, then it turns out to all be pointless anyway cause LaBarbara knew all along (what a twist?), and something clever about Voodoo being old science.

As for the Covid stuff, like the Amazon episode, the jokes weren’t bad (except Gloom, that got an audible groan out of me), its just I’ve heard almost all of them before, just from simply existing for the last three years.

There were parts I liked. I liked Wernstrom and Farnsworth fighting over whose vaccine is worse. I liked Jrrr spreading disinformation so the Omicronians can take over. Yes its for the obvious Omicron joke, but at least its something beyond reenacting a Zoom call and misinformation podcasts. The virus itself causing anger I haven’t really seen before. Also liked when Fry went into the angry done and made out with Leela.

This was another “I laughed a few times but I was bored out of my mind by act three” episode. That extra 2 minutes of runtime Hulu gave the show is part of it, but I really do believe this and the last episode would’ve been a lot better by just cutting a few minutes of unnecessary fat off.

Not as bad as it could’ve been, though that Hermes story is a contender for the most boring plot I have seen on this show.

4/10


Notes:

-Alot of unexpected character returns in this episode. Jrrr, Dr. Banjo, the Merman colonel, the fortune teller robot.

-Fuck LaBarbara. I don’t know why her kissing Barbados bothered me a lot more here than her previous appearances, but seeing her outright making out with him while Hermes stared blankly didn't sit right with me.

[Reply #3 on:]

Out of the jokes in this episode, most didn't make me feel much emotion beyond "yep I get the joke". The joke of advanced voodoo being indistinguishable from science lasted longer than it had to, I felt.
Not to say I didn't enjoy any of it; there were jokes I enjoyed, particularly the sequence of Farnsworth & Wernstrom confirming every rumour about their vaccines.

The Gloom call sequence I feel could have been visually arranged better; as it is, most of the screen consists of characters having little to no reaction. Maybe if it showed only one or two webcam-views at a time like some videoconferencing applications do.

[Reply #4 on:]

To be honest, I didn't really enjoy this one. I loved the jokes in this episode, they didn't completely overdo the whole covid or vaccine thing too much, and it was really awesome to see The Angry Dome again as well as The Gypsy Lady (Idk if she had a name I forgot), Lrrr and his son, Wernstrom, and Dr Banjo from Season 6. That was an unexpected surprise. I thought alot of the things in this episode were kinda dumb like the bone stuff at the second act, but I honestly think the pandemic jokes were really good as obvious as they may be. I can see why some may not like this episode, but I found it enjoyable. I didn't think the hermes subplot was all that bad at all, I enjoyed it but if the plot were to play out under different circumstances (like without Barbados Slim for example) I probably wouldn't have enjoyed hermes' subplot much. It was fun seeing another omicronian invasion, too no matter how short. All in all I think I'll rate this a 6.5/10, or otherwise a 7/10. Loved the way the ending panned out. Even if it was kinda cliche. I have a feeling over time this episode will grow with me, or it might be the opposite. Only time will tell, I suppose.

[Reply #5 on:]

Not too bad.

I agree with Box Incorporated about the Hermes plot being very weak. Aside from that, I thought it was a solid episode.

Stuff I liked:

-The reveal that Kif and Zapp were shooting at each other instead of the Omicronians
-Linda attacking Morbo
-Dr. Banjo immediately admitting the 5G rumours were made up by him
-Petunia drinking the hand sanitiser
-The "gloom" call
-The fact the everybody in Planet Express was wearing their mask in different, yet equally useless ways.

So... is Barbados Slim still voiced by John DiMaggio? He sounded very similar, so I'm not sure.

[Reply #6 on:]

My initial reaction is that that’s the weakest episode of the season so far.

Almost every single joke (or, indeed, plot point) was just a one-to-one replacement of real world events with no particular spin on it. Facebag, Gloom, Explovid, etc, etc.

I laughed a couple of times — Zapp and Kif trying to kill each other was a highlight for me. I also liked Bender’s “What virus?” moment.

It felt less like a big, ensemble story and more like a disparate mess hung on a Hermes story which, as already mentioned, had some major issues.

I enjoyed New New Orleans though — visually a great place to explore. I also was surprisingly fine with Kevin Michael Richardson as Barbados Slim to say I really didn’t like him as URL. He did a great job. It’s amazing that they’re fine with Tress MacNeille voicing the old gypsy robot still, though, given all these recasts. It’s probably a cultural difference between the US and the UK, but Romani people are seen as as much of a maligned, minority group as most, racially speaking, here.

I need to rewatch to formalise my opinion but my knee jerk reaction is that it’s kinda weak — but, not nearly as terrible as weak would have been in past seasons. I think we’re leaking at a 6.5/10 from me. Possibly just better than “The Impossible Stream”, but also possibly worse.

Also, Feodore Chin in the credits but Leo didn’t appear. Interesting. It felt like some stuff might have been cut, watching it, so I wonder if that’s the case or if he’s just the voice of someone grunting or something. 

Remember that clip we saw of someone literally exploding at Planet Express? We all assumed that was what explovid did but I guess it must actually be a clip from one of the three remaining episodes?

[Reply #7 on:]

So... is Barbados Slim still voiced by John DiMaggio? He sounded very similar, so I'm not sure.

It was definitely Kevin Michael Richardson.

[Reply #8 on:]

Spot-on impression, in that case. Bravo, new guy. Bravo.

[Reply #9 on:]

Yeah, this was definitely the weakest (or possibly second-weakest, after "Children of a Lesser Bog") of the season for me so far. It wasn't offensively bad or anything, but as everyone else has noted the jokes were tired and whatever potential for originality there was—with the voodoo thing, or the fact that the virus began with the already-marginalized mutant population—was either poorly executed or completely dropped.

With that said, I actually thought the Hermes plot was the best part of the episode. The Hermes/LaBarbara/Barbados Slim triangle is well-trod territory, but I found it mostly amusing; it was also fun to see the fortune teller robot again, and to get a glimpse of Mardi Gras (which I guess is different from Space Mardi Gras).

Mainly what bugged me about this episode was its lack of internal continuity or consistency. Amy is spewing conspiracy theories in one scene, then denigrating them the next? LaBarbara is anti-voodoo, but turns out to be the voodoo master? On the subject of inconsistency, though, I did get a kick out of everyone wearing their masks differently (but presumably equally ineffectively) on their faces; that was a good, relatively subtle COVID-inspired joke.

Overall, while nothing about this episode infuriated me, it was ultimately a pretty forgettable (if not downright regrettable) story. I don't want to attribute everything to issues of pacing, but while this episode did keep the subplots to a relative minimum, it wasted time on certain elements (Hermes's ride to New Orleans, for example) and rushed others (the Omicronian thing was, like, a D-plot at best). I think it would have benefited from cutting the Fry/Leela and Omicronian plots, and focusing on the back-and-forth between Farnsworth trying to solve the pandemic with science and Hermes trying to solve it with voodoo (I did like that line at the end about the two being indistinguishable from each other).

In any event, my main impression of this one is "meh," which I suppose translates to a 5/10. That's a lower grade than I gave to "Children of a Lesser Bog," which I do think is actually a less enjoyable episode insofar as it had a lot of potential and went nowhere with it. This episode began with a pretty lousy premise and did about as well as could be expected—so, while it offended my sensibilities far less than CoaLB, on its own merits it's probably a worse episode.

[Reply #10 on:]

Also, Feodore Chin in the credits but Leo didn’t appear. Interesting. It felt like some stuff might have been cut, watching it, so I wonder if that’s the case or if he’s just the voice of someone grunting or something. 

He voiced Scoop Chang.

[Reply #11 on:]

I'm very late to review compared to how I have been for the entire season so far. I wasn't looking forward to the episode, but of course I'm a big enough nerd and ended up streaming it within five minutes after midnight/release on my phone in bed. My tempered expectations were pretty much in-line with what we got. It's tied for the weakest episode of the season with "The Impossible Stream", but the season is overall pretty great. I'm giving it a 6/10.

The new voice actors were pretty much inconspicuous compared to the original voices. I had no idea Kevin Michael Richardson was Barbados Slim and Feodore Chin does a much better job as Scoop Chang than he did with Leo Wong. While I don't feel it was ever necessary to recast in the first place, I'm overall satisfied with their performances; the only thing that really matters is how accurate they can impersonate the voice. Kinda sucks that I and many others judge the new voice actors based off of accuracy instead of performance, but they'll likely get to originate characters in the future.

The story was a lump of mud. It didn't have any discernable direction outside of Hermes's plot. I wouldn't call it an ensemble episode because there was really only one story and everything else was just background to it.

A lot of the jokes were so tiresome. Stick a cotton swab up your nose, the vaccine has microchips in it, nobody wears the mask properly, etc. The only joke I did like was Dwight showing up in the background of Hermes's video call.

While I do applaud Futurama for not picking a side on such a contentious topic, I also do feel Futurama should have clearly been on the side of science like they are with climate change. If I was tasked with writing this episode, there are a few statements I would want to share.

• 1Professionals and authority feign confidence in something that is not well understood as to keep the population from accusing them of incompetence. They don't know for absolute certain the degree of effectiveness of masks and social distancing, but they do know it's not a terrible inconvenience to request such precautions.
• Skepticism is justified and should generally be encouraged. We have reason to not trust these authorities. However,
• we really should trust the medical field more. If we trust engineers to build infrastructure, why aren't we listening to the medical professionals who understand the science far more than everybody else?

[Reply #12 on:]

^Yeah, I do agree that this episode’s both-sidesism was somewhat egregious/disappointing. They could’ve definitively come down on the side of science without being preachy or condescending about it, but instead they kind of pandered to both sides of the issue and wound up saying nothing of consequence or interest about either.

In fact, the reason I liked the voodoo/science joke at the end was it seemed to acknowledge that for laypeople medicine may seem like magic, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work or shouldn’t be trusted (with the irony being that Hermes is saying these things about the efficacy of voodoo to a scientist). If the satire in the episode had been more along those lines throughout, it might’ve been more effective.

[Reply #13 on:]

Mixed like never. I hated some scenes, I laughed at some and was pretty indifferent about others. So I would round it around 6/10. 

[Reply #14 on:]

Genuinely a dire episode. One of the worst of the series up to now. I really do not mind "topical" stuff, that goes back to the beginning of the show, more than a lot of people want to acknowledge. But there has to be an actual spin on the material. The whole point of doing topical humor set 1,000 years from now is that there should be some actual twist on the material. What does this episode have? "Gloom" instead of Zoom? Zoom meetings are chaotic? Vaccine cards are easily lost? There's misinformation on social media? Yeah, guys, we know. We all lived this stuff when it happened 2-3 years ago. And more importantly we saw all the same hacky late night bits about these things, which these bits are not really any better than, and have the disadvantage of coming far too late for them to even have the modicum of freshness that the worst SNL sketch does. Little to none of these jokes feel like something only Futurama could do with the material. They feel like something Colbert and Kimmel could do, because they already %$#&ing did, and have since moved on.

Then the Hermes plot line just had no juice at all. Nothing funny or interesting happens. The skeleton makes embarrassing bone puns I guess. You could have had something by actually exploring Hermes' relationship to his obviously unfaithful wife, and having to work with the guy she's constantly cheating on, but it just didn't go anywhere. There wasn't much apparent interest in the characters beyond reiterating things that have already been done.

The show feels like it's circling the drain recently. Maybe after so much time off they just needed to get all this stuff out of their system but I'm less and less hopeful as the episodes go on. There has yet to be a truly really great sci-fi plot (time travel show last week had way too many basic logistical problems) and every episode feels either like something any other animated show could do (Simpsons, Family Guy, etc) with basically the exact same jokes despite the futuristic setting, or just overly derivative of episodes past, if not both. I hope they can right the ship, there are really smart and funny people working on this show still, but it just feels like it should maybe have actually stayed dead this time.

[Reply #15 on:]

I know that there isn't anyone who doesn't have comprehensive firsthand knowledge of the pandemic just through existing these past few years, but I genuinely feel that if you didn't then huge chunks of this episode would be incomprehensible.

Worst episode of this run so far.

[Reply #16 on:]

5/10 Hot garbage, tempered only by the return of the Angry Dome, the return of Umbriel and her father, and another return of the Omicronian warships.

But those three moments I enjoyed weren't enough for me to enjoy this episode overall. It might not be the worst episode, but it's kinda sad that Futurama can suck this much without it being the worst episode.

[Reply #17 on:]

Put me in the angry dome. 2/10 I felt embarrassed to be watching it. I'm quite firmly in the camp of wishing the show stayed dead now.

Also, is Fry being beaten black and blue by his live-in girlfriend meant to be cute? "But it's
 the virus" whatever, Jesus fucking Christ

[Reply #18 on:]

Sort of got bored of this one halfway through. Felt more like a low tier Family Guy or Rick and Morty, y'know? So topical, so on-the-nose, I didn't think it was very funny either. Maybe when I give it a better re-watch I'll have more to say, but right off the bat... bad. I'm pretty sure I missed some of the explanation but isn't this supposed to take place in the future? Plus, they already have done a pretty spot-on pandemic episode that applied fine to the Covid disaster. Just felt lifeless all around.

Edit: gave it a rewatch, I guess I just don't get this one. Why does it make them angry, was that some symptom I missed? Also, the whole ensemble, endless character cameos thing is quickly making the futurama universe feel very, very small.

[Reply #19 on:]

After 2 very good episodes this was a return to the mediocre.

Pretty much agree with all Box's good and bad points.

Hermes unfortunately is just a pretty boring character, if you were to get the average rating of every character centric episode his would come out the worst I think. His main characteristic now just seems to smoking weed and getting cheated on by his wife.

I never really found the  Hermes/LaBarbera/Slim triangle funny. Apart from the throwaway line by LaBarbera "If I'd wanted a human Adonis for a husband, I'd have stayed married to Barbados Slim" which was funny but I didn't like how they progressed to full on cheating in BBS. It made LaBarbera unlikable as a character and makes Hermes look like a sap for putting up with it. Maybe I'm taking the jokes too seriously but it just seemed they ruined her character and Hermes to a lesser extent for a few cheap laughs which weren't really that funny anyways.

I'll be generous and give it a 6. I'm rating it based on the average TV show, it was about as good as the average thing rated a 6 on imdb but by Futurama standards it was on the weak side.

[Reply #20 on:]

Hermes unfortunately is just a pretty boring character, if you were to get the average rating of every character centric episode his would come out the worst I think. His main characteristic now just seems to smoking weed and getting cheated on by his wife.

Don't forget making occasionally unbearable puns and reveling in bureaucracy!

For serious, though, I would also rank Hermes as my least favorite PE crew member. The only Hermes-centric episodes I really enjoy are "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back" and "Lethal Inspection," the first of which relegates him to the B-plot and the second of which gives him Bender to bounce off of.

With that said, I stand by my belief that the Hermes story was actually the strongest part of this episode—which, you know, may not be saying much considering how godawful the rest of the episode was, but whatever. I really got a kick out of LaBarbara, too, if I'm being honest; the beignet thing amused me, as did her flirtations with Barbados Slim. It seems pretty obvious to me that she loves Hermes deeply but is more sexually attracted to Barbados Slim, and while we can litigate that on ethical terms I don't think it's an inconsistency in her character: she has Hermes for the love and support and Barbados Slim for the kinky sex stuff, and more power to her for that. I also just find Dawnn Lewis's performance of the character really amusing; some of her line readings have me guffawing they're so good, and she infuses the character with such energy that it makes her really compelling to me.

[Reply #21 on:]

I actually kind of like the terrible puns, one thing I like about the character. Well his irrational hatred of Zoidberg too but that's something most of the crew share.

With that said, I stand by my belief that the Hermes story was actually the strongest part of this episode—which, you know, may not be saying much considering how godawful the rest of the episode was, but whatever. I really got a kick out of LaBarbara, too, if I'm being honest; the beignet thing amused me, as did her flirtations with Barbados Slim.

Maybe I need to rewatch it, may not have been in the right mood and just kind of tuned out during the Hermes bits so may have been quick to judge but that was my initial impression.

As for LaBarbara, I like Dawnn Lewis too. I just think the writers jumped the shark with her character in BBS. IMO it was funnier when it was just an attraction to Slim which she didn't act on. They took the initial funny line from the congo sprint (forgot the episode, "Bend Her" maybe?) and thought that got a laugh, lets expand on it but sometimes less is more, they overdid it for me.

It seems pretty obvious to me that she loves Hermes deeply but is more sexually attracted to Barbados Slim, and while we can litigate that on ethical terms I don't think it's an inconsistency in her character: she has Hermes for the love and support and Barbados Slim for the kinky sex stuff, and more power to her for that. I also just find Dawnn Lewis's performance of the character really amusing; some of her line readings have me guffawing they're so good, and she infuses the character with such energy that it makes her really compelling to me.

I agree that's what the writers are going for, trying to show she really loves Hermes in the end of BBS but it doesn't really work for me as her actions during that episode don't reflect that. I just feel it makes Hermes look a bit pathetic to put up with being cuckolded constantly and at the risk of sounding like a Maude Flanders makes LaBarbera look like a pretty shitty person to do that to someone she is married to and has a child with. But I get this is just a cartoon and I probably shouldn't take it so seriously.

[Reply #22 on:]

Put me in the angry dome. 2/10 I felt embarrassed to be watching it. I'm quite firmly in the camp of wishing the show stayed dead now.

Also, is Fry being beaten black and blue by his live-in girlfriend meant to be cute? "But it's
 the virus" whatever, Jesus fucking Christ

To be fair, Leela came out of that fight looking pretty rough herself.

I'm- really not sure how I should feel about this one. There were some clever sight gags in this one. New New Orleans is the home of 'Jazzabetes', Grand Cylindrical Station, and the Gumbo Tron. Bill Nye's cameo was pretty enjoyable. Some nice call-backs with characters: Umbriel and the fortune teller bot.

That said, most of this episode rubbed me the wrong way. For every clever little thing given to us, there were tons more in-your-face obvious jokes that, as you guys have said, we bloody lived through time and again these last three years. I think they could've taken an 'angry virus' somewhere else and had it more genuinely riveting and comedic. It is also funny how non-committal to either side of the debate it ended up being. Especially in light of how pro-science Futurama has historically been. I guess they didn't want to put space wasps into anyone's bonnets?

I think... for me, this episode was too fresh a topic to tread on. People still have intense feelings about Covid. That, and everything was just way too on the nose. No spin like you guys said.

5.5/10 I suppose?

[Reply #23 on:]

As other people have said, we got two episodes in a row that were significant improvements over the rest of the season...then right back to mediocrity.

What really struck me about this episode, was how cluttered it was.

Like, covid has been defeated (even though they beat the common cold), but now there's another pandemic!  It came from the mutants, and it makes people angry!  And Hermes is having trouble with Labarbara, whose family apparently practiced voodoo (even though it's apparently a mainstream religion in the 31st Century, why is it controversial), and she has Creole Lousiana family, and then there's a pneumatic tube journey to New Orleans that is treated like a flight even though they can get to the moon in ten seconds, and Mardi Gras, and there's a robot made of bones, and Labarbara and Barbados Slim make a vaccine, and then this happened, and then that happened, and then there's an Omicronian invasion but that stops became of the pandemic and then, and then....like what was the point of having it be caused by mutants if all that was going to come from it was two throwaway lines?   What was the point of the bone robot?   Was it set during Mardi Gras because....New Olreans and that's it?   There was no attempt to streamline the plot, or since there were so many individual elements fighting amongst themselves for space, things that could have been meaningful or carry the plot were relegated to throwaway lines that ended up not contributing anything.  The virus originating in the sewers, and Leela being the carrier, and the repercussions of that should have been the focus, though maybe the similarities between mutants being blamed might have been too similar to the wave of anti-asian sentiment that came after covid originating in China, and it might not have sat right in a light hearted show.

It felt like they crammed in a ton of individual elements that didn't really come together, or were just there for the sake of it.   There were times when I felt like I was watching a bunch of deleted scenes from different episodes stitched together. 

The trailer made me hope they were making Labarbara an actual character again, instead of the unfunny cheating joke punchline machine that have pretty much eclipsed her entire character.   Like others have said, it was much funnier when Labarbara had an attraction to Barbados Slim that she wasn't going to act on, rather then banging him every second when her husband's back was turned.  I was hoping we would get some backstory on her and Hermes' relationship and Labarbara herself, but nope, cheating jokes. 

Also one thing that really bugs me is how Simpsons and Futurama "parody" something by changing the original by one or two letters or adding one, and then go for the laziest jokes they can think of regarding the original subject.   Mapple! Mypods! Twitcher! Gloom!  If they hadn't already done Malibu Stacey, we would probably have Lisa playing with Narbie or Marbie dolls. 

One thing I don't really get is if they want to do another pandemic episode, why don't they have the virius be a computer virus and have it infect robots instead?  That would feel a lot more Futuramy then.....whatever this was supposed to be.

[Reply #24 on:]

One thing I don't really get is if they want to do another pandemic episode, why don't they have the virius be a computer virus and have it infect robots instead?  That would feel a lot more Futuramy then.....whatever this was supposed to be.

This is what I was thinking as well; I can totally see Bender being a virus denier.

Also, you're spot-on about your assessment regarding Labarbara. She's an awful character. I mean, I don't really think she had any personality traits in the Fox era besides "wife of Hermes" but since then they've gone out of their way to make her as insufferable as possible.

[Reply #25 on:]

Well, she wasn't exactly a particularly fleshed out character, and her most notable trait was being the sassy black woman archetype, but she did have some pretty enjoyable one liners (and Dawn Lewis was great at delivering them), and the dynamic she had with Hermes was funny and sweet, I liked hearing the two of them bouncing off each other.  She was clearly the live wire in the family, compared to her mild mannered husband and son.  Either way, even if she wasn't exactly everyone's favourite supporting character in the original run, she was a lot more likeable, funny and interesting then the insufferable shameless cheat they turned her into, post BBM.   

And yeah, I could see Bender either being a virus denier, or seeing him turn opportunist during the pandemic, and selling quack remedies and phony protections to his fellow robots or hoarding resources and selling them back at an inflated price... maybe that is too on the nose regarding Covid parodies and a topic done to death at this point, but it would at least feel in character for him to do something like that, and then have the drama come when he actually contracts the virus himself.   Might have been interesting to have Bender wear a futuristic plague doctor outfit, and have the robot pandemic also be a futuristic version of the Black Death, as well as Covid in general.

 

[Reply #26 on:]

The Labarbara stuff was just unfunny, I never have really laughed at this whole "cheating funny" gag you see on TV. Not cause it's immoral, or any of that, it just isn't particularly funny. Gets old. I didn't mind it in BBS because it moved the plot forward, and felt maybe even a tiny bit more believable - he was Barbados Slim, and Hermes was Jamaican Fat, lest we forget. Plus, at least it was a bit funny because of the insane situational comedy. In this episode, it just felt like... well, we have these characters we haven't used yet, so here they are. They do their schtick. Checkbox marked.

[Reply #27 on:]

I think I strangely look at it the same way as I do How the West was [etc] - I enjoyed it far more than, if I stop for a merest second to think about it, the episode had any right to be enjoyed.

I can't really explain it; I watched most of it with a gentle grin. There's been episodes in the past that I've generally or genuinely unenjoyed and this wasn't one of them, so it has got that going for it. I found it largely inoffensive, I laughed at Bender spinning the news...pad? I found following Hermes fairly fun, as it happened - for the most part - and I liked the Fry & Leela storyline.

I too liked many of the call backs and really enjoyed the visuals of Hermes' little adventure.

So as I say, inoffensive.

But when I do stop to think about it, I should find it offensive.

Directly referencing Covid-19 as still being a thing just fecking awful. Way to be so hot-topic, current-day, 2022 that you have your future-set show appear tired and out-of-date before it's even aired! How hideously lazy and completely unnecessary to make Covid-19 anything more than a passing reference; that's what we have allegory for!

Great to know, though, that now we're at 5G, we're not going to ever get any new generations of cellular networks... sooooooo lazy!

I found a lot of the writing was inconsistent in general; Amy's character in particular; used as a mouthpiece to promote conspiracies (which strikes me as out of character anyway) then without any much revelation later bemoans how such conspiracies are spread. Now, that could be a tremendous and deliberate example of irony and satire, but they need to present it with a little more skill so that it doesn't come across as the writers forgetting what they wrote for the character a few pages before.

It was another episode that didn't quite know what the last line should have been.

I agree with the SpaceGoldfish as well; Bender seemed really underused; not that he always has to be the centre of attention, but he felt more like a party member left out of the mission roster.

And I like LaBarbara a lot, but I was left completely underwhelmed by the plot twist.

But yeah, other than that I enjoyed it...

[Reply #28 on:]

I'm settling in on a 6.5/10 rating for this one. That's bad by my standards. I don't think there's a single episode of Futurama out there that I'd give less than a 5.5/10.

I maintain a big list of every episode of the show ever, ranked from my favourite to least favourite. Based on that, this is my 15th least favourite episode of the show of all time. Which, one one hand, is bad. On the other hand, it puts it in perspective of it not exactly being new lows. And, honestly, if this (and "Impossible Stream", which I'd probably still say is slightly worse) are as bad as season 8 gets, then that's actually pretty impressive.

But for all of season 6 and 7's major lows, they did produce some all-time highs to balance them out. Season 8 hasn't given us a standout episode that really justifies reviving the show to me yet. And I can't see "Zapp Gets Canceled" or "The Prince and the Product" being it either. I have a feeling that the best thing we'll be able to say about season 8 when it's done is that it got them warmed up and ready to make season 9.

[Reply #29 on:]

This is episode gets good marks automatically for the line:

"Been boneskeepin' this here boneyard for three bone-dred years."

Everything else is secondary.

[Reply #30 on:]

Except for the word "blern" "bone" that was complete gibberish.

[Reply #31 on:]

I thought the episodes this season ranged from meh to decent, but good god, was this one terrible. South Park already did this better with their Post Covid made for TV movie. That was nearly two years ago.

It's like the writers had a bunch of covid jokes they wanted to make and didn't have an avenue to do it when they were more relevant, so we get this episode full or ice cold takes with a weird Hermes subplot.

I did laugh at the professor's vaccine actually having 5G in it.

Easily the worst episode of Futurama of all time, IMO. Even worse than the iPhone episode.