VoVatia

While the previous Hulu seasons were released one week at a time, this one was dropped all at once. It was also around when there was a push for people to cancel Hulu because of Disney caving to Trump in canceling Jimmy Kimmel. I doubt there was a connection, but it was weird timing. I kind of liked one being released per week, but since we didn’t get around to watching any of them until about a month later, it ended up not making much difference.

Destroy Tall Monsters – This kind of feels like a more fleshed-out rehash of the first Anthology of Interest segment, with Bender becoming gigantic and fighting another huge monster in a Godzilla-style city-crushing montage. The excuse for it this time is that Bender feels he’s too short after falling for a robot who is immediately attracted to the tallest thing in a room. In order to grow, he takes D-Roids, a robot version of steroids, provided by the Robot Devil. There’s a recurring joke about Godzilla rip-offs, all using slightly different names, none of which are actually “Godzilla.”

The bit with the movie being filmed did kind of bring back a complaint of sorts I’ve had about this show at least since “That’s Lobstertainment!”, which is that there doesn’t appear to be any new technology in the entertainment industry of the thirty-first century, except for robot actors. Granted, there’s somewhat of an excuse in that both The Magnificent Three and the kaiju movie are incredibly low-budget, but still. The fact that the monster is a real space monster in a suit is pretty funny. There’s also a subplot with Fry and Leela arguing about whether they’re the same or different. That’s even used in the resolution, although the show itself acknowledges that the ending doesn’t make a lot of sense.

The World Is Hot Enough – Another reused idea that calls back to its previous use has the crew once again battling global warming. The giant ice cubes being dropped in the ocean come up in the plot, but the Earth being moved farther from the Sun isn’t. I guess that would still have only been a temporary solution, and the Professor eventually acknowledges that it wasn’t really as bad as it had been previously. Anyway, he has to team up with Wernstrom and Dr. Banjo to ignite a volcano, and there’s a good joke with the bombs they use containing baking soda and vinegar. Meanwhile, Fry tries to raise two polar bear cubs he finds in the Arctic and thinks are orphaned. There’s also a parody of celebrity songs to raise awareness. There are references to a “climatastrophe” in the past, and perhaps that was what was canceled out by nuclear winter, as explained in “Xmas Story.” Leela tells Fry in “The Luck of the Fryrish” that “you guys didn’t have a single nuclear war,” without making it clear who “you guys” are. Since they’re in the ruins of old New York at the time, maybe it means the nuclear war happened after the destruction of the city in 2308? I doubt there’s any real attempt at a consistent timeline, however, and the fan-made ones I’ve seen online haven’t been updated since the Hulu episodes started.

Fifty Shades of Green – This one features a temporary threat to Fry and Leela’s relationship, as Fry not only refuses to go with her to visit her parents, but also forgets to water her plant. She breaks up with him, despite the fact that the main reason why he forgot is that he was planning a celebration for the anniversary of when they met on New Year’s. The Professor and Hermes reveal that there are forbidden devices that can actually determine who someone’s soulmate is, technology that was banned because it drastically increased divorce and murder rates. Fry finds out that, while Leela is his soulmate, Leela’s is a botanist with the ridiculously appropriate name of Branch Woodsman, who spends his time fighting off invasive plant life in Central Park. Fry is dismayed that he gets along quite well with the guy, and feels introducing him to Leela would be the right thing to do. It turns out that she only likes him as a friend, and Fry turns out to be her soulmate after all. The portrayal of Branch as an action scientist is done well, and the portrayal of alien plants is entertaining. There’s also a return visit to the space market with the porn-peddling creature, and apparently fireworks are considered way more taboo than porn in the future, although of course he sells those as well. Farnsworth’s hand-waving not knowing how many years Fry and Leela have known each other due to having been caught in so many time loops is a clever joke, although it’s probably only really necessary because nobody wants to draw the characters aging even though we know time is passing. Besides, that probably shouldn’t apply to anyone outside the crew. The walk-in microwave is a joke that had previously been used on The Simpsons, but it makes more sense for the Futurama universe.

The Numberland Gap – I read somewhere that this was inspired by Donald in Mathmagic Land, a bit of which is shown on the screen the ship crashes into during the opening credits, only highlighting more advanced mathematics. There’s a not-so-direct joke on generative AI with Fry creating art with a futuristic technology that turns out to be paint-by-number instead. We also learn that Bender is afraid of numbers, except for zero and one, sort of a callback to early episodes where a two sometimes showed up in a series that was otherwise entirely binary. He freaks out after turning himself to a numbers station on the AM band, which, as Leela said directly to the audience, is a real thing, and it is kind of creepy because their actual use is classified. The best guess is that it’s used to transmit secret information. Amy discovers that a pattern of numbers that keeps showing up is the key to build a device, which turns out to be a means of transport into a world inhabited entirely by numbers.

Well, except for the mathematician Georg Cantor, who’d been trapped there, and who was the one who sent the transmission explaining how to build the machine. The setting obviously leads to a lot of math jokes, and Cantor demonstrates a proof he devised in real life that the infinity of irrational numbers has to be larger than the infinity of rational numbers. The Professor initially prefers this world to the physical one, but later comes to realize that he prefers math as a tool for other things. Cantor, on the other hand, moves on to an even more hypothetical universe. This was a pretty good one, and a nice mix of simple and more complex humor.

Scared Screenless – This comments on a modern issue, that of screen addiction, but in a fairly general way. Not being aware of any other actions, Kif sends his son Axl, along with Cubert, Dwight, and Bender to a camp on the planet Remotus led by Zapp Brannigan. He sends them on a snipe hunt, only for them to find out that snipes are actually real, and are used as food by members of the infamous Waterfall family who had moved there centuries ago, and were pretty inbred by that time. Meanwhile, the adult men of the crew end up in jail due to Dr. Zoidberg’s terrible driving, and manage to reach Zapp by using an old-fashioned pay phone in their cell to call his subspace phone. There are some jokes about electronic devices requiring the Internet to work when there’s no particular reason for that. It also allows Cubert to return to his old role of pointing out everyone else’s errors, and continues the trend of a Waterfall family member promises to avenge another who’s just died. Hermes makes a mention of suicide booths accepting Venmo now, and I wondered if they were purposely not showing the booths in newer episodes. The episode shows Dwight playing Monkey Fracas Jr., which was interesting as we watched this one the same day as a new Simpsons episode where a few characters were playing Donkey Kong. Both shows are largely stuck in the eighties in terms of video game references, but so am I to some extent.

Wicked Human – I appreciated how absurd this one was, and I often like jokes about religion. The inhabitants of New New York start seemingly randomly floating into the air, and some religious leaders think it might be the Rapture. The Professor prefers to find a scientific explanation, but is unable to do so, and starts acting like a cult leader. I’m generally kind of annoyed at the implication that science can be just another religion, but it does fit with the Professor’s character. It’s eventually revealed that the disappearances are due to alien fishermen with New England accents on a boat in space. Maybe they’re from Space Massachusetts, as mentioned in “Proposition Infinity.” That’s where the title comes in, a play on the Massachusetts-based fishing show Wicked Tuna. It’s amusingly ridiculous enough that I’m willing to overlook that it doesn’t make much sense that nobody noticed the boat or the hooks prior to this, even with all the space traffic to and from Earth. Also, they catch Fry with a Cheez Doodle, but there’s no indication that any of the other people who are caught bit on anything. But then, if you really get down to it, I’m sure the show has a lot of examples of people not thinking of something introduced in another episode that would handily solve the problems in the current one. Hermes makes the fishermen give up their catch by citing obscure fishing regulations, and the aliens pronouncing “guard” like “god” was quite funny in context. The group of faith leaders included Father Changstein El-Gamal, the Space Pope, Reverend Preacherbot, and the Grand Midwife, all introduced earlier; but also the Grand Poobah from The Flintstones.

There are also reappearances by the Borax Kid and the fortune teller machine.

Murderoni – This episode satirizes the Pizzagate scandal, a really stupid conspiracy that became dangerous when someone took it seriously. When Fishy Joe runs for City Council on the platform of heavily taxing small businesses to favor large corporations, Blazucchi, one of the insect Cygnoid owners of the pizza parlor near Planet Express, decides to run against him. So Joe accuses the restaurant of making their pepperoni out of human babies. Earlier episodes have suggested that killing humans for meat isn’t illegal in the thirty-first century, but I guess they draw the line at babies. It also brings up something I’ve noticed before, that while child murder could technically be considered worse than child molestation, it comes across as much creepier and less appropriate to joke about. Hey, Freddy Krueger was apparently originally supposed to be a child molester, but was later changed to (only?) killing them. For obvious reasons, Fishy Joe is very Trumpish in this one, which never seemed to be part of his characterization before. But then, he’s a rich, immoral (New) New York loudmouth, so it works. He and his supporters, including Bender, who doesn’t actually believe the accusations but loves to be part of an angry mob, refuse to accept that the parlor doesn’t have a basement. And since the plans aren’t online, Hermes takes Dwight, whom he wants to follow in his footsteps, to the Central Bureaucracy to find them in the endless piles of paper records. The labyrinthine nature of the building, including fantastic monsters, is always amusing. Hermes tells the story of Bureaucrates, who had supposedly died in his own files, and no one knowing what filing system he had used. It turns out that he’s still alive, but that he didn’t have a system, and just sort of remembered where he’d put things. He says he’d been lost there for 500 years, with no indication as to how he’s lived that long. It turns out that the restaurant does have a basement, and it’s the ruins of Fry’s old workplace, even though that was excavated somewhere else in “Jurassic Bark.” I sure hope someone got fired for that blunder. Not really, but it was a weird thing to overlook. And while there aren’t any dead babies, the Cygnoids were making pepperoni out of thousand-year-old flies, so Joe (who did like their pizza with live hornets in the crust in “A Leela of Her Own,” but I suppose those were FRESH hornets) and Blazucchi both end up losing the election.

Crab Splatter – When a meteorite from Zoidberg’s homeworld, Decapod 10, hits the apartment below Amy’s, the family living there moves into his Dumpster behind Planet Express. When Leela gets annoyed at his staying with her, Fry, and Bender, she has her parents take him in, and, much to her confusion and irritation, they end up adopting him. Leela is jealous, but Zoidberg later saves his life by donating a blenal gland, something they both turn out to have due to Decapodian genetic material landing on Earth five billion years earlier. There’s also a bit of a subplot with the Professor having a crush on a Decapodian scientist.

The Trouble with Truffles – This episode really focuses on Bender, with the rest of the cast mostly just having small roles. When he tries truffles at an expensive restaurant, he loves them despite not having a sense of taste. He learns that most truffles in the time of the show grow on an asteroid belt, so he goes there to try to get rich, getting into the part with a stereotypical French outfit, a hilariously bad accent, a space scooter, and a talking piglet genetically engineered to sniff out truffles.

He names the pig Jambone, and as might be expected, he’s initially rude to his companion, but later develops a genuine friendship with him. Unfortunately for his dreams of getting rich, there’s a lot of competition, and even the truffles he’s able to sell require an enormous cut for the Truffle Cartel. It ends with a gross-out gag that’s very similar to the one from the what-if segment where Bender becomes human. Beth commented on how Elzar is kind of an outdated parody at this point, as Emeril Lagasse was very famous at the time the show started, but presumably not so much now. I appreciate that they didn’t write out the character, though.

The White Hole – The last episode of this season is rather high-concept, but also a bit of a cop-out. A white hole appears, inviting up to eight inhabitants of the universe to see the birth of a new one. The only problem is that approaching it causes a time distortion that makes travelers grow old really quickly. So the Planet Express crew has themselves frozen in carbonara (silly pun, but not out of place for the show) for ten million years of ship time, with a hologram of the Professor to direct clones of the crew to each perform one task before they grow old and die. These brief exploits take up most of the episode, and they are pretty entertaining. At one point, a few Zoidberg clones are sent out to eat Fry’s yogurt that had started moving around on its own, and then has to be taken down by other crew members. It ends with the remaining clones deciding to see the white hole themselves instead of unfreezing the originals, and the audience doesn’t get to see what happens.

Until next season, farewell from the world of tomorrow!