The 31st hundred show placed itself firmly in the world of 21st C technology last night , explore the fixation with the new “ eyePhone ” and getting a million followers on “ Twitcher . ” Unfortunately , the sequence could n’t do much with this fertile territory .
Let ’s get it out of the path right now : “ Attack of the Killer App ” really is n’t a very good episode . It pains me to say it , and maybe it ’ll improve when I watch it again , but this instalment just is n’t up to the touchstone of last week ’s episodes , let alone Futurama as a whole . Still , I ’m not going to stimulate to judgment on this young time of year , and I in reality think a lot of went incorrect in this episode can be easily secure or avoided from here on out . There were three basic problems with the episode , so lease ’s take a look at them one at a clock time .
Probably the braggart job with the instalment was its centering on current net and technology trends . I ’ve yet to see a show really retrieve anything interesting or intelligent to say about whatever the latest WWW phenomenon is , and part of the problem is the internet moves much , much faster than TV production schedules . To its credit , Futurama did handle to time the episode ’s broadcast to concur with the button of the Modern iPhone , but that timeliness arguably work against the show because it makes it finger even more instantly dated . It was jarring enough to hear Zapp Brannigan talk about CSI : Miami last week , but it tense credulity well past the breaking level to have our hero in the year 3010 precisely reenact the technical school trends of a millennium ago .
Now , make no mistake – Futurama has done timely very well in the past . “ A Head in the Polls ” was a large commentary on the elector apathy that led up to the 2000 election and the far-flung belief that Al Gore and George W. Bush were pretty much identical nominee ( no , gravely … that ’s really a thing people once thought ) . “ criminal offense of the Hot ” manage to parody a lot of the prevail arguments on all side of the ball-shaped thawing debate and the eternally little - terminus thinking that chevvy human efforts to tackle environmental issues .
Those episode were absolutely rooted in current events , and indeed they were bang-up because of it . But those two instalment alone have such wondrously absurd conception like cloned presidential candidates , Bender selling his body and drive his head around in a trivial car , the head of Richard Nixon and the headless trunk of Spiro Agnew , mine Halley ’s Comet for giant ice cubes to drop in the ocean , and a gigantic robot political party on the Galapagos Islands that terminate with all the world ’s golem vent their fuel exhaust system to move the Earth further off from the Sun . In other words , those episodes took quotidian present day issues and wrapped them up in joyously insane scientific discipline fiction concepts .
This installment , on the other paw , just felt way too on - the - nose in its mockery . Very small of what happened here could n’t have happened on a contemporaneous animated show like , well , The Simpsons . ( And considering what The Simpsons has become , that is n’t really a compliment . ) multitude standing in lines that stretch across the city for the new phone , people vapidly post everything about themselves to their patriotic following , people foolishly seek to expend their earpiece while driving … these jokes are just sort of obvious and , frankly , already stale . Yeah , putting the new phones in the characters ’ eyes was a sort of nerveless idea , and it made for some moderately interesting visuals , but otherwise it felt an awe-inspiring lot like the only matter the writer had done to pasquinade iPhone and Twitter was change their spellings . Even the net gag where Mom ’s malefic “ Twit - worm ” that was supposed to release between a million and two million people into zombies really just made them buy a unexampled eyePhone felt less like rationalise sarcasm and more like the writer had unravel out of thought .
Maybe the most obvious issue with this episode was it just was n’t all that funny . I ’m straining to think of any memorable one - liners from this episode . ( It says something when I was praying the anti - mood of a Scruffy non - sequitur could cater a second of levity , but even his line of merchandise fall strangely flat . ) The scenes with Mom were believably the closest the episode descend to systematically laughable , but even that feel like a pretty pale shadow of what the show has done with those eccentric before . The Infosquito was pretty groovy though , I must admit .
Still , I ’ll admit that the stuff about the two - head goat constantly vomiting out of one head and make out of the other into a swim puddle was , if not exactly hilarious , at least admirable in its dedication to the ludicrous , repellant gag . But the less say about that whole “ Susan Boil ” business , the better . I ’ll give Futurama credit for not making it quite as cringeworthy as it could have been , but it was still moderately awed , and I really look forrad to having no estimate what the pit that joke was cite when I rewatch this a decade from now .
The final trouble with this sequence was , much like last week ’s “ In - A - Gadda - Da - Leela ” , this instalment feel overstuffed . More than that , it just felt shapeless , as though the writer had a few moderately undecomposed ideas about engineering and the internet that were each about four or five minutes long , so they just sort of slapped them together . This was a job that plagued some of the DVD movies and was mostly watch as a byproduct of writing ninety - minute movies that could also make for as four individual TV episodes . So it ’s a bit weird to see this an episode that feels so haphazardly plotted and aimless – seriously , what did that roundabout way to the Third World satellite have to do with anything that followed ? – now that the show is back to its traditional half - hour data format .
I think the affair to keep in psyche on that last point is that the show has been off the zephyr since 2003 . It would scarcely be surprising if the writer are still figuring out how to make occasional Futurama again . After all , the first few episodes of the original run are noticeably scratchy around the edges than those that follow , as the writers , theater director , and actors were still teaching themselves the rules of their fabulously fertile and complex universe as they go . ( Admittedly , none of those early episodes misstepped quite so badly as “ Attack of the Killer App . ” ) My promise is that what we ’re seeing here is just the necessary test and misplay of rediscovering Futurama ’s vocalization , and I plan to remain optimistic for at least a few more weeks .
Indeed , I believe there ’s good understanding to think the show ’s about to call on the turning point , perhaps as soon as next week . The next scheduled sequence , “ Proposition Infinity ” , test the 31st century over robosexual marriage , which is pretty much on the dot the character of scifi - filtered commentary on current events that Futurama traditionally does so well . A lot of upcoming episodes also sound like they have much richer plots than “ Hey , are n’t the iPhone and Twitter kinda dumb ? ” and so hopefully will have at least the enough tempo and impulse of last workweek ’s episodes . And as for being rum ? Well , there ’s no obvious remedy for that other than write right jape , something I still trust the Futurama writers to do . Although it ’s a disgrace they so waste theabsurd comic geniusof Craig Ferguson .
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