Saccharine-sweet, such that it feels forced.
To be clear though, I appreciated what they were trying to do, and loved the episode overall. Best of the new batch by far.
“Last week, I was in Italy!”
Rankin-Bass LOTR.
The only thing I had a problem with was the ending. There are no robot babies, and we’ve already seen Bender get manufactured, fully formed, and attend Bending college before leaving his Mexican factory.
José Servo was a nice touch.
I, for one, would be sad to know there weren’t really any robot babies because baby Bender was adorable.
“Addition never solved anything, man!”
:-)
Good to see more of Hermes.
That was probably just Hermes’ idealized memory of the event. It was a bit off, but still the best episode of the new season and the first to really suggest the writers can match the original run.
I have a feeling “That’s what you get for calling tech support” might be a new meme in our help desk department.
I actually found the endbit to be the weakest part of the episode, not so much because it was twee, but because it felt way too derivative of the Leela’s Homeworld episode (especially the music playing throughout). I’m not sure why, it just felt like they were trying harder to copy the “heart” of another episode’s epilogue than make one of their own.
They were definitely trying for that same feeling. It didn’t really work as well as the Leela one probably because the music and clips didn’t really work for me. They should have just skipped the montage and just shown the Hermes approving baby Bender part. Still, a really good episode.
Yeah, my funky word choice aside, that’s exactly how I felt about it. It doesn’t help that the ending to Leela’s Homeworld was basically perfect in every way, so trying to recapture that was doomed to fail (for a lot of reasons, not least of which is that Leela’s fit into a well developed character motivation, whereas Hermes came out of nowhere, and actually contradicted his established characterization).
However! my view is that the rest of the episode was fantabulous, and it had to end somehow, so that was about as good as one could expect.
“I also would have accepted a bribe.”
True, but the fountain of aging episode (Teenage Mutant Leela’s Hurdles) already pissed on that, with rebellious teenager-bender and baby-bender.
So arguably at this point, there’s more evidence for the baby-bender than the alternative.
But fortunately, it’s just a joke, because baby-Bender is adorable.
“I ate it to gain its power.”
“SOMEONE SAID HOWITZER”
I thought the Killbots were kinda funny.
Nice episode, made me laugh.
I liked the episode as well, definitely the best one since at least the season premiers, possibly better.
The only issue I took with it is the statement that Bender thought he was immortal for as long as he has been on the show. That means a lot of scenes in the past lose relevance, such as sharing a suicide booth with Frye, or being recycled into Slurm cans.
Drama queen!
I thought they did an adequate job of hand waving that away. Also, if you really want to nitpick, “How Hermes Requisitioned his Groove Back” established that a physical, local backup is possible, so that tension was lost already.
Loved it, definitely one of my favourites.
Does anyone know what song that was they played at the end?
Edit: Hmmm, not quite what I was looking for. I was hoping for something I could pick up off Itunes.
I think the other reason it doesn’t work as well is because in Leela’s Homeworld, the main “emotional stake” is that Leela felt alone and abandoned and completely adrift. Not to mention the fact that Leela’s being “the last of her kind” had been a recurring theme throughout the series. So when we finally realize that she was never truly alone, we emit a collective “Awwwww.”
In this episode, there’s no real emotional anchor to it. It’s just about Bender trying to hunt down Inspector 5 to find out why he was signed off on. There’s some offhand dialogue about being disappointed in him, but that’s about it. Inspector 5 has never come up in the series before, and Bender has never really exhibited many emotions to begin with. In short, we really don’t care. So when we find out it’s Hermes, we emit a collective “Ah, okay.”
Buh? Bender’s actually one of the more emotional members of the cast, despite his occasional claims to the contrary. He’s just a little short on empathy.
So why couldn’t they buy and install a new (or used) backup unit from a junk yard?
That’s the only thing that really bugged me throughout. They could have even had him hunting down and killing fellow Benders looking for a compatible backup unit. At least that would have been a play on immortality through cannibalism or vampires.
Well, they did hint during the previous episode that similar Bender units (Flexo, for example) were unsafe and sent off to the Third World be recycled. Bender may well be the last of his kind.