Thoughts on 7ACV14 – Forty Percent Leadbelly – SPOILERS

[on:]

Original Airdate: July 3rd, 2013. Bender meets his hero, a famous folksinger who has been in jail 30 times, and wants to duplicate his success. This means duplicating his guitar too, which he tries to steal from a maximum-security prison, but fails, so instead resorts to 3D-printing technology to duplicate the guitar — again resulting in horrible consequences. Rate and Review.

[Reply #1 on:]

So far I am liking it but then again I like all the futurama episodes.  Still need to see Act 3 though.

[Reply #2 on:]

I didn't like the idea so much, but episode had interesting plot of copy-related things.

[Reply #3 on:]

I....don't know! I got mixed feelings of the ep. I loved it, and then I didn't like some things about it. Might actually be the best of the season in my opinion. I'll have to rewatch tomorrow.

[Reply #4 on:]

It was pretty bad!

Ken Keeler bombs at last!

A 5/10.

[Reply #5 on:]

I saw Lucy Liu.

[Reply #6 on:]

I actually thought this was a really good episode, which is surprising since last weeks episode was about Fry eating shit

[Reply #7 on:]

Ken Keeler, what happened to you? So many things that I liked yet so much that I hated. And that ending...well I'll review it later.

[Reply #8 on:]

Easily Ken Keeler's worst Futurama episode ever (Not quite worst Futurama episode though, I can name a few worse). It's not that it was necessarily bad, it was just really boring. The plot didn't grab my attention, the jokes were...uhh, where were they?

4.5/10

[Reply #9 on:]

I saw Lucy Liu.

I could've swore I saw Helper, as well!

[Reply #10 on:]

I also saw a lady with a beard smoking a corn cob pipe.  She must be British.

[Reply #11 on:]

I also saw a lady with a beard smoking a corn cob pipe.  She must be British.

Stuff like that just makes me wanna say "Oh Lord". 

But I thought Helper was dead (7ACV07). Must have had a backup copy.

[Reply #12 on:]

This was another episode this season that kinda reminded me of a lot of season 3 episodes: a somewhat meh episode that will probably be more enjoyable on repeat viewings.

That said, I really liked the twist with Bender's folk song coming true since, until that point, I was mostly wondering where this episode was going.

There were a few pretty good jokes. I really liked Fry's continued annoyance at Bender for leaving him alone at the prison for some reason.

I'll give this one a 6/10.

[Reply #13 on:]

For much of the episode, I was struggling to really care about Bender wanting to be a folk singer for the 3544th time. That's an avenue we saw in season three; so this return felt quite forced. That said, many of the jokes landed and the plot became much more interesting when they discovered Bender's song was becoming real. I loved the design of all the railroad stuff as well.

One thing that bothered me is how inconsistent the intellegence of Fry and Leela was. They somehow worked out that Bender's song was real with a very small amount of evidence, yet didn't think of Bender writing his way out of the situation until right toward the end. But aside from those few logical quirks, I thought the overall pacing and writing were good enough.

This episode wasn't flat-out hilarious either. A few parts had me laughing (We use a process I call "science!"), but the laughs-per-minute felt lower than average. It didn't help that a lot of the episode's running time was filled with Bender singing, which obviously left less room for jokes. One thing I loved though was the use of the "not now, Leela!" gag that felt so overdone last year. They managed to make a joke with the same premise that was funny and didn't feel like a rehash.

It goes without saying that this isn't Keeler's best episode, but it's far from the worst. I'll call for a 6/10 for now, and as always that's bound to change for either the better or worse.

I really liked Fry's continued annoyance at Bender for leaving him alone at the prison for some reason.

I didn't. Well, initially that is. For a while it looked like it was going for another "Fry and Bender's friendship" story (which by this point I'm really tired of), but they managed to make it relevant by the end. I still think they may have overdone it a tad, though.

[Reply #14 on:]

It goes without saying that this isn't Keeler's best episode, but it's far from the worst. I'll call for a 7.5/10 for now, and as always that's bound to change for either the better or worse.

Exactly how I feel. The Honking was more than likely his worst. But this wasn't as bad as everybody is claiming it to be, either. I think this is kinda like "The Thief of Baghead". Bender gets a new hobby/interest, uses it to it's fullest, and winds up causing an issue. I liked the episode for the 3D Printing twister, and the "I can think of 100 endings that will save you, just pick one!" quote. That had me dying. I liked the beginning scenes at the prison, and didn't really like the folk singing storyline. Kinda overused, but those monochrome segments of the song was mildly entertaining to me, for some strange reason.

Also, I'm confused about how Bender's song caused the 3D Printer to print out the characters just the way Bender imagined. He never physically met/took a picture of Jezebel, so how did it print her out? What about Big Kabooz? Was he just something printed out by the printer, too? Or was he actually real? How about the octopus? Stop messing with my brain, Keeler!

Anyways, I gave this episode a 8/10. I think it's kinda like the unappreciated episodes of Season 3 and some of Season 2, as Jezzem previously pointed out. It will probably get better after some repeats. Then maybe not. Nevertheless, I am sticking by my vote. I still enjoyed it, overall.

[Reply #15 on:]

I feel like your comparison to "The Thief of Baghead" is quite accurate, to be honest. Mainly because my initial reaction to the latter episode was similar to this one, but I liked it much more on a later viewing. We'll see if the same fares here (although I think TTOBH is way funnier than 40%LB).

I'm glad "Meanwhile" is written by Ken Keeler, because this would've made quite a disappointing final episode from him.

[Reply #16 on:]

The Honking was more than likely his worst.

huh?




I enjoyed this episode.  Perhaps it's the best episode ever?

[Reply #17 on:]

The Honking was more than likely his worst.

huh?

That's just how I felt about The Honking. Or maybe it's because I haven't watched it in so long. After all, I did used to have the promotional picture of the ep as my phone wallpaper. I'll probably get around to rewatching that this weekend, even though I'm pretty sure that the episode best fits at a 7/10 area.

[Reply #18 on:]

This is kind of one of those Bender episodes where the story is rather sitcommy and largely nothing special, but made a little more interesting just because it involves robots (to paraphrase a Bender line).

It was pretty okay. I think structurally and everything the episode is pretty sound, but it's just an example of why Bender-centric episodes have a tendency to not be among the stronger episodes of the series. Any time Bender gets a new hobby/job/goes on a random adventure you could mostly do on another animated show the results tend to be about as average as the ideas themselves already are. To that end, this episode is generally funny but just sort of forgettable. Still, there were a couple creative and funny sci-fi twists, which is actually sort of unusual for this type of episode (there's nothing about Bender joining the mob or taking up wrestling that necessarily needs to be done on this show, rather than another show). The whole notion of the 3D printer still being connected to Bender and running amock was very funny and a nice twist. All in all, no classic, but just a decent average episode.

[Reply #19 on:]

I hate this episode more than I hated last week's offering. 1 of 4 episodes has been alright so far, but that simply ain't cutting it. Futurama is dying without dignity. 1/10

[Reply #20 on:]

So after 3 fairly good episodes, Futurama gives us 1 out of the 3/possible 4 Bender episodes for this half-Season, where Ken Keeler surprisingly takes us below the usual above average quality this Season. Not really bad, but compared to the last 3 episodes and especially to Ken’s previous episodes, it’s a really big quality drop.

Well for our Bender centered plot, this time we finally get to focus on his secret dream to become a folk-singer (which he’s surprisingly open about in this episode compared to all of the other times it’s been mentioned) where he copies a famous folksingers guitar with a 3D printer, and has to go on a journey to be able to write real lyrics to his song. While doing this, it turns out the 3D printer was connected to him the entire time which causes everything in his song to come to life.

For a decently sci-fi and interesting Bender plot, this episode was surprisingly dull. Honestly, for the most part I didn’t really care for Bender’s dream at all. We’ve already seen most of him wanting to become a music star in Bendin’ In the Wind, and this episode didn’t really add much more to his it. It was just something he wanted to do which could’ve been done by any other Sitcom, and while that’s not really a bad thing, it didn’t really lead to many new things or really funny jokes. As for the 3d printer plot, while the twist that it was copying everything in Bender’s song was really obvious, it was still a pretty good sci-fi twist. Although I’d rather that the 3d printer had been used for a better plot (what if other’s used it to make dangerous things, how does the printer replicate things like humans and animals?), it still brought interesting things into the episode compared to the dullness of the folksong stuff.

Another thing that really made the episode dull was the jokes, or at least the ones I heard. There were barely any jokes in this episode. Most of the episode was just telling the story while occasionally making a few jokes that either landed (the hobos lines, Fry dropping dynamite) or died (the octupuses..octupi…octupeople? attacking Fry, Leela, and Beeler...and somehow getting free from them, the horrible ‘’selling out’’ ending).

As for characterizations, they were mostly okay. Bender was pretty likeable and like his usual self here which is pretty good compared to other Bender episodes have been in the past, never acting really jerkassy or too overly obsessed in his folk singing career. Though one thing I do have to address is Fry’s characterization here. I felt Fry acted a little too mean spirited to Bender in this episode. I know Bender did abandon Fry at the beginning of the episode with a criminal and ended with Fry getting put into carbonite, but I’ve seen Bender to far worse to Fry in past episodes with Fry barely blaming Bender at all. And even when he did, he never really did it as long of a period as he did in this episode and not nearly as mean. I know this was needed for the plot, but it just didn’t really fit for Fry compared to past episodes. Maybe if he was angry at Bender in general, counting the past times Bender has abandoned him it might’ve worked, but it just didn’t feel right.

Overall I’d say that this is the first really bad episode of the half-Season. Besides some of the 3d printer plot, most of the plot wasn’t that interesting to sit through. Of the few jokes that were in the episode, only a few of them landed, with the episode mostly just being plain to boring. Still, I can’t say it’s the worst episode ever. Benders folksong was nicely animated and fun to listen to, the sci-fi was pretty good, and it never made me really cringe to watch, so it was all and all a forgettable 22 minutes that’ll hopefully be the worst this half-Season gets.

Overall: 6.8/10, or 6/10 for the poll.

Things I noticed:
*The crew at the beginning is wearing their uniforms from 31st Century Fox, along with Leela's hero wind at the start.
*Lucy Liu and the Whale Biologist at Bender's funeral.

[Reply #21 on:]

Wow, I'm pretty surprised this episode was received so poorly. It wasn't the funniest episode, but it sure was entertaining and the story and animations (large and small) kept me engaged.

Folk music, 100,000 terabytes of porn, praiseworthy grammar… What's not to love!?

The story was solid. It may have been predictable at some points, but the plot was varied enough to justify it. The ending at the funeral was wonderful as well, but I feel like it would have been more effective and more satisfying if they didn't explain it in full detail afterwards. It was as though they took a decently smart plot and just dumbed it down for the masses in 30 seconds.

I was pleased to see that four out of four episodes so far had natural pacing -- a problem that plagued much of seasons 6A, 6B, and 7A.

This episode had plenty of great moments. Not just the story, but the new characters, all of Bender's weird technologies that were introduced, and the Professor's CB-talk, to name  afew. The animation during songs felt natural and entertaining. Earth at night looked beautiful. There were lots of great visual cues as well, such as Fry moving the Professor out of the projector's path and Bender stealing the chair from the folk singer from under the curtain.


LIKES
• Story
• Animations


DISLIKES
• Not enough jokes
• I think Gus's voice was different.
• Leela trying to make a move on Fry


GREAT JOKES
• Bender: "I don't care if it's 3pm!"
• Leels: "Exactly like et cetera, et cetera!"
• Zoidy: "They have to come from the heart!" (Points to his brain)


I really did love this episode, but it just needed some more jokes. I watched Bendin' in the Wind earlier today and was laughing constantly at that, but not at this. 8/10

[Reply #22 on:]

The start of this episode gave me mixed feelings, some parts were good while other's where not. I liked the animation of how fry was released from taht carbonite, the bright light gave it a bit of a magical touch.
The second part of the episode was nearly perfect, there were some nice continuity moments on the railroad and the story combined with the song was great! I do agree there weren't very much jokes, but the ones there were were really good^^ ("I'm sorry! Octupusses would have also been acceptable!")
8/10

[Reply #23 on:]

I saw Lucy Liu.

I could've swore I saw Helper, as well!

Also penguins.

One thing I loved though was the use of the "not now, Leela!" gag that felt so overdone last year. They managed to make a joke with the same premise that was funny and didn't feel like a rehash.

^That. It was very funny and fitted to characters.



While folk-singers write songs about their life, Bender lives the songs he wrote.
Interesting theme in episode with inverse songwriting process and pretty much a single storyline. Bender, as character, fitted to craziness (due to his imagination) of episode.
"And that's what I call a great ending": I think I can agree with that. But WTF was that rap-ending!

Nice, different animation in Bender's song and computer-like animation "inside" Bender.
Btw, Bender's song was pretty good.

I really liked the jokes:
"Using my fancy technology..."
"I call the process: science."
"I've improved it using fancy, modern technology!"

I disliked the concept of folk-singing and subject of Bender's "new career", but interesting twist of song becoming true was... good. Very plotwise episode, not so much jokes indeed (still enough). I'll go with octopusses, I mean 6.5/10.

[Reply #24 on:]

Yeah, it was okay, I guess. If Mike Rowe had written this episode I'd probably be a bit kinder with it. The good news is that there weren't any really bad jokes, but the bad news is there simply wasn't very many of them. The plot functioned well enough and the twist was nice, if not particularly shocking. The ending seemed to go on for a while as well. I feel like it could've easily ended a couple minutes early. 6/10.

[Reply #25 on:]

I saw Lucy Liu.

I could've swore I saw Helper, as well!

Also penguins.

That whole scene was full of minor characters. I think I caught a glimpse of Bev as well.

[Reply #26 on:]

I though this episode was okay. I expected worse because of the comments I saw on twitter prior to watching this episode. The story was kinda boring because we've seen it so many times but I did enjoy the 3-D printing thing and how everything came true. I think they could've made a better episode involving that but whatever. There were some jokes that I liked and some that I didn't. I liked the sign on the door (when Bender got booed) that said "and stay out." I didn't like the joke with Leela at the beginning when they were at the prison. I thought it was very out of character for her. Normally if men did that to her she would slap them or something. I thought the way Fry turned down Leela joke was funny and I also liked the continuity with their relationship. Overall, I would give it a 7/10. It wasn't great but it wasn't horrible.
P.s. I forgot to mention the pacing was great in this episode aside from the solution for the problem being figured out quickly.

[Reply #27 on:]

This episode was pretty boring IMHO (and I'm a Bender fan). I might feel differently when I watch it again, but I give it a 5/10 for now.

[Reply #28 on:]

Here's a panoramo shot from the room... Some parts are not very good overlapping but it's something(did you see the bearded woman? because I didn't before...)

Some images I screencapped:

Zoidberg drinking is hilarious


Everyone at the funeral, also a shot of WONG hote&casine with a stripe trough(Viva Mars Vegas!)

[Reply #29 on:]

I watched this episode quite early in the morning (early for me, anyway), and I've yet to create an opinion on it. I think I'm going to give it a second watch, but for now I'd say it's "meh."

I liked the animation of how fry was released from taht carbonite, the bright light gave it a bit of a magical touch.

If you weren't aware already, that's pretty much identical to the effect used when Han Solo is thawed out of carbonite in Return of the Jedi.

[Reply #30 on:]

The good thing about doesn't have expectatives for an episode is,doesn't matter what hapens everything goes better than I expected, and this was the case.Anyways it needs a re-watch but was a good first impression.

I'm not a huge fan of Bender's episodes (I prefer him in minor roles or B-plots, because even if he can carry an episode,almost everything seems forced for me all "BENDER MUST BE FUNNY ALL THE DAMN TIME" and that annoys me) but this one was very good as The Bots and the Bees (maybe my favorite Bender's episode) so I liked see Bev in the funeral.

In fact,you can call me slow if you want but I wasn't expecting that ending also the videoclip made me laugh, it saved the episode,imo.Also the animation in Bender's imagination was pretty cool.

Also,I agree with some people here, is one of these episodes that aren't great but in future views gets funnier,so I don't understand why the very low ratings and people being so harsh....or that was because is a Ken Keeler's episode? I mean,he is a great writter,but isn't a god either,people should stop to treat him like that,he can write more relaxed stuff than episodes about angst and science and this was a proof.

This episode isn't bad as Butterjunk Effect or Holiday Spectacular,at least gives you a reason of why everything is happening,also I think Bender is in character,whatever it's a decent one at least.

The only thing that really annoyed until not end,was when Leela was flirting with these prisioners at beginning and Fry being a crybaby because Bender abandoned him,but oh well I'll let it pass, again it's a decent episode.

7/10

[Reply #31 on:]

This was an awful episode. I was bored out of my mind with Bender singing. Really ? They are resorting to that now ? 

I absolute love this franchise but this was just disappointing.

[Reply #32 on:]

I will say on the upside the 3d printing was neat.  and the star wars reference.

[Reply #33 on:]

I'm sorry to say it but this was just crap.

Best season ever?? WTF. Based on these 4 episodes this seems like it could be the worst season ever.

And this episode is by far the worst of those 4.

[Reply #34 on:]

God damn it, season 7.

I really fucking hate season 7, guys.

This episode is far from the worst, this season, but it still sucked. The plot started to develop in a fairly interesting way, with the twist of the printer still running based on Bender's imagination, but it developed in a completely under-developed way, it was only developing a plot that was pretty dull to begin with and the humour just wasn't present.

[Reply #35 on:]

It wasn't THAT bad, you just gotta take what the writers give you and create some respect for it I guess, by the way we still got so many episodes to go!

I nearly forgot one joke I found hilarious:

"But that's crazy! Fry is a unique and beautifull object and- *gasp* THE PRINTER!"

[Reply #36 on:]

For me, this is the 3rd worst episode since the CC revival. Beating just TFHS and AOTKA (but only just for the latter).

The only thing I liked about this episode was the octopus. And an octopus is not exactly a reason alone to like an episode.

[Reply #37 on:]

I felt like the plot was too much like Bendin' In the Wind in many regards. We've seen Bender go for his dreams countless times, and of all his hope and dreams, we've heard about him wanting to be a folk singer most often (I think). Tragically boring episode and nothing overly exciting but aside from gratuitous Bender song time, I generally didn't want to rip my hair out after watching it.

I generously give this episode a 6/10 though it probably deserves lower.

[Reply #38 on:]

Hey! The Honking is a classic. Leave it alone, or I'll plug your exhaust pipe with this silver potato. 

This episode ranked about a 7/10 for me. 

• The animation during the folk-singing sequences was great. Stylistically, I love it when the show pushes the boundaries like that and tries new things - it's one of the reasons I liked Reincarnation so much. Here it really worked - the faux-sepia and use of silhouettes was impressive and fit the theme. (I especially liked Big Caboose turning up in NNY and seeing the silhouttes of Bender and Jezebel making out in the window of every building.)

• But the more visually ambitious the episodes in 7b try to be, the less focused they are on character - so far, anyway. It was a problem I had with 2D Blacktop - it was visually impressive but the characters were drawn in very broad strokes, and some of the jokes required them to be almost out of character. (In this episode Leela fell victim to it again. Enjoying being hooted at by prisoners felt like a joke that was more suited to Amy - who lapped up this attention in Prop Infinity - than Leela, who is traditionally impatient to the point of violent when men hoot at her (Parasites Lost, War Is The H-Word, etc).

• I didn't think Fry was out of character this episode though. He was just grouchy about Bender leaving him behind, and sulked about for longer than he should have done. That's not unusual for him though, and when Bender is in danger, he and Leela immediately rush to the Professor to try and fix it. (The Fry who shut him out of the apartment wasn't the real Fry, so his behavior doesn't count. Although I would like to know what happened to him. )

• The pew of penguins at Bender's funeral made me laugh, as did "Penguin Personality" being a much bigger file than Bender's usual one. 
  

• I also liked Fry's obliviousness when Leela pulled the fake-yawn trick . . . and he thought she was actually tired. 

• Bender jumping on the bed was just really funny for some reason.

I don't think this episode was as bad as some seem to. It wouldn't be my favorite, but it's by no means awful. It just lacks that little extra something that nudges an episode from "good" to "great" for me, and which I've come to expect from Futurama. I don't think it's symptomatic of any great decline either. For me, this episode was on a par with "Raging Bender" or "Bendin' In The Wind".

[Reply #39 on:]

I found this episode very underwhelming. Certainly not "bad" (I reserve that distinction for cringeworthy, unwatchable episodes), but not good either. It's light on laughs, and generally dull. I'm really surprised this is a Keeler episode, and I hope that it's because all of his effort is going into "Meanwhile".

The main problem is that the episode is based around a niche theme. I'm sure someone familiar with folk music would find this episode clever and funny, and I recognised this in some jokes (though not entirely, as I'm only barely familiar with it), but most people just won't "get" this episode.

The pacing was off, and Bender's folk singing career plodded along. Bender tends to be a very strong character. Too much of him can be overpowering, as it was here. Other Bender-focused episodes tend to break up his time on screen a lot more, or have him interact with a bunch of other characters. There was a long stretch in this episode where the focus was solely on Bender, often on his own or with one other character. It was too much.

Unlike many recent episodes, I found the third act to be the strongest part of the episode. I always thought that 3D printing would work as an episode (too bad they shifted away from the concept for most of it) so it was great to see that it was more than a throwaway plot device. The twist was simple, yet genuinely surprising. Also, I always enjoy the funeral scenes on this show, and this time was no different.