We were feeling kind of down on the first set of commentary based episodes, but with last week’s episode focusing on a parody it began to feel a tad more natural. Cue this week’s episode, where we finally have a full homegrown tale that was quite akin to classic Futurama story telling — no overt commentary, all originality, and an unexpectedly heartwarming ending.
In this episode, Bender — once again praising himself — finds out that he does in fact have a defect: where other robots can die and be replaced in another robot, he lacks the proper programming to allow this. If Bender dies, Bender dies. Crippled by a fear of death, Bender instead decides to take on the quest to finding the inspector who allowed him to slip through the factory process defected and takes on the help of the only bureaucrat he knows: Hermes.
Take a look behind the cut for my thoughts on the episode. As a note, spoilers are discussed, and this time they’re really not that mild. So if you haven’t seen the episode, you might want to avert your eyes.
First off, I can’t say how happy I am to get a fully original story. Last week’s episode was funny, but I prefer the plots that feel more organic rather than clearly just poking fun at Dan Brown. This episode solidifies itself to a central theme and plot and spends the entire episode with Bender and Hermes as they traverse the universe and world that Futurama takes place in. To me, a story like this is ten times better than something that pokes fun in the real world because I would rather Futurama take the time to expand it’s own universe now that it’s able to. There were a lot of elements that were never quite discussed the first go around, such as how Bender was created in the first place, and taking the time to do that now is obviously the smart thing to do if the writers are having problems with ideas. There are also throwbacks to earlier episodes that we had seen, like the Beholder, which I personally found to be one of the funniest and most surprising elements of the episode — because really, who was expecting him to come back?
The thing is, this really worked out well. Most of you who watch Futurama on a regular basis love Futurama because we’re so attached to the characters and the writer’s recognize that. They want to pay off our emotional attachment to the characters in ways that other cartoons like this don’t. Nobody will ever care about some plot resolution in Family Guy because every single episode is the same basic formula. Futurama managed to do something that other shows can’t manage, and that was made especially clear in the Seymour episode (which is still one of the saddest TV show episodes of all time and I absolutely refuse to watch it anymore). It’s that same warm feeling you get when watching the quiet moments between Fry and Leela, especially when it was from an unrequited love angle. This episode brought that quality back with the story of how Bender was created, and the ultimate reveal of Hermes as Inspector #5.
Now — Inspector #5 being Hermes wasn’t particularly shocking. It began to get quite clear, especially towards the end. That’s ultimately not the point though, because even figuring out the “twist” still allowed for an adorable emotional pay off in the form of baby Bender and young Hermes to the tune of “Little Bird” by Elizabeth Mitchell. That sort of sequence resonates well with the viewer, and in turn it skyrocketed this episode to the best of the season since the rebirth episode. Futurama has always been quite great with it’s timeline, so while I’m sure this was just decided now and not something that was always intentional, it does seamlessly fit into the timeline without causing any problems. It also allowed us to actually see Bender as something that was “cute” and not just crass, especially with his little bottle of Cerveza.
Finally, just the fact that the episode really gave Hermes the time to shine as a main character was pretty great. Most of the episodes feature the prime three characters (Fry, Bender, Leela) as well as a tag along member of the Planet Express crew. It’s not that often that we get whole episodes devoted to someone else in this manner, and least of all Hermes. Hermes probably has the least amount of specific episodes to any other character besides possibly Scruffy. I thought it was a really nice idea to give him his own episode in a sense, because ultimately he’s more important than Bender here.
This episode is arguably the best of the season so far. The jokes are more fresh when they’re organic to the plot as opposed to veiled in messages and opinions, and I love when Futurama throws a curveball heartwarming ending like they did. I’m not sure what else is in store for us this season, but for now I’m putting my money down on Baby Bender (although he does technically clash with previously seen versions of Bender as a “child”).
Oh, and don’t forget that hilarious scene with Zoidberg! What? You forgot it? Aww…
