Futurama

I still tear up every time at the end of Jurassic Bark.

Yeah. I was actually kinda annoyed they brought him back in the movies because it felt like pandering, and for me it completely undermined the emotional weight of Jurassic Bark.

Yeah. I try to pretend like that movie never happened.

This week… cats take over Planet Express. Because they’re cute.

Sigh.

To be fair, the cat Bender had was ADORABLE.

He’s one of those dog-operated puppets that’s been designed for use by a cat!

I laughed at the tootsie roll line. A pretty middling episode made worse by coming right after such a great one.

I dunno man, I liked this one. It was a good, rapid-fire joke episode. The exposition about the cat planet was pretty awesome.

Oh c’mon - it had Dr. Fisher Price Seeandsay!

“Nay”
“Nay”
“Nay”
“The horse says, ‘Doctorate Denied’”

That one got me to laugh out loud.

It may be that I am weak to cat-related humor (and very likely space cats) but I thought this week’s episode was hilarious. I loved that farnsworth’s cat was all screwed up in the exact right way.

I thought this episode was awful.

It was Family Guy-esque. Not that Family Guy is awful… just that the ADHD nature of Family Guy didn’t suit Futurama.

I don’t think it was the subject matter. There was just something off about the timing in a lot of the jokes, and the rest were reaching too far.

I can see that. The closest I can think of is 300 Big Boys, which while I think is a great episode, has a very different pacing than most eps. (Big Boys also hews very closely to the classic A story-B story structure, which Futurama rarely uses.)

I don’t see the Family Guy comparison at all though. Family Guy’s humor, to me, is about a few core tenets, including random flashback / asides and beating jokes into the ground. This had none of that. The entire episode followed Amy and Nibbler, the only cutaway was a single contextualised flashback. The only thing that made me think of Family Guy was the cat’s voice, which, combined with his cute/evil personality was very reminiscent of Stewie.

Also, I’ll admit, I liked the LOLcat poster.

MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW

I thought the problem with this episode was that it barely had any jokes. It certainly felt that way.

Plus… Amy Wong with a PhD???

Well she has been his doctoral student from the beginning. And she’s never been portrayed as dumb before. A vaguely slutty twenty-something, sure. But not really stupid.

Amy’s claim to shame is being a klutz.

Where Fry is almost super humanly stupid, Amy is super humanly klutzy. She did slip on a miniature banana once (the room mate episode) and fell slipping on some slime in Fry and the Slurm factory.

There have call backs to her klutzyness in a few episodes.

Also, the dancing cats make me laugh.

Nibbler’s naval uniform made it all worth it.

Hey, his best friend died in that uniform. Show some respect.

Hooray paleoarchaeology!