Yesterday ’s Futurama gleefully smash together parodies of such modern sci - fi classic as Minority Report , Avatar , Tron … and , uh , Police Academy . It also bend Erwin Schroedinger into a supervillain and gave us the most ridiculous constabulary tribal chief ever . Now this is Futurama .
I ’ll acknowledge , the source of “ Law and Oracle ” , which sort of pointlessly retreads Fry ’s delivery boy origins , did n’t inhale me with hope . The sequence is meant as a quick way to institute why Fry is drill with his job and wants to find a professing with seraphic fringe benefit and constant promotion – which the law force of the 31st one C has in spades – but it does n’t really exercise as sudden motivation for an arbitrary patch development . ( I ’d betoken to the rootage of “ state of war is the H Word ” , in which Fry and Bender bring together the army in order of magnitude to get a 5 % military discount , as a much funnier direction of receive characters to flip-flop job . )
Anyway , because being a cop is patently preposterously easy in the future tense , Fry quickly gets through the honorary society and is partnered up with URL , one of the show ’s two recurring pig characters . Fry and URL prove to be a surprisingly effective squad , and their walking tough guy commonplace of a police chief ( who is , incidentally , a woman ) advance them to the Future Crimes division . All is run well until Fry discover Bender is plan a major stickup that seems fated to end with someone dying .
“ Law and Oracle ” is probably my favorite installment of this new batch of Futurama episodes , and that ’s mostly just because I happened to find it very , very funny . It helps that the show had n’t really delved into cop tropes before outside of Smitty and URL cameos , so the cloth here feels fresher than some of what we go through in the last few weeks ’ episodes .
alfresco of all the sci - fi stuff , one thing Futurama does really well is take a well - worn figure and ratchet it up at least three layer past the item of complete silliness . The law head is a good object lesson of this , as she ’s enclose with a gloriously graphic monologue about female physical structure portion and then grows steadily more over - the - top until it ’s bring out that “ the self-aggrandizing load ” she had to drop was actually a baby . I ’m not sure what any of this is reference , and that ’s kind of the point – the whole matter feel gleefully strange for its own interest , and I line up the sheer shamelessness of the fictitious character pretty hilarious .
Then there ’s universal resource locator . I ’m kind of stunned it ’s claim twelve year for URL to finally get a major persona in the episode . It ’s a laudable bit of simplicity on the show ’s part , because he ’s clear Futurama ’s cool character . Between the constant one - liners , awesomely deep vocalization , freaky sexual urge biography – hell , even his street wearing apparel are pretty sharp – uniform resource locator proves a very fun character to hang around with , and he ’s arguably a far well robotic friend for Fry than Bender ever was .
I infer we should run through the various movie lampoon . The Police Academy riffs were pretty good – I liked Fry pointing out that sound effects are n’t as telling when a golem subs in for Michael Winslow – but I ’m glad the sequence quickly dispensed with them . The Tron stuff palpate pretty conversant – for better or bad ( definitely spoiled ) , Family Guy kind of cornered the lightbike parody greensward a decade ago – but any sequence that ends with an lengthened riff on Schroedinger ’s Cat is fine by me .
I was probably most leery about the Avatar takeoff , if only because the show was so weirdly on - the - nose about it . Hell , they even called the planet Pandora alternatively of even mistily disguising it ( they could have die for a nice double citation by calling it Pandorica , but c’est la vie ) , but it really worked all right as a sort of general mockery of the 3D craze . It was n’t a neat chronological succession , but the final subtitle “ Put on 3D methamphetamine one minute ago ” sell me .
But most of the installment was taken up with an extended Minority Report pastiche . While the installment could have belike done a more specific parody of the pic , I eff the resolving power , which neatly tied together the Maltese Liquor ’s ability to kill human brain cell with the special power of the prophetic golem . It was a courteous bit of plot in a season often marred by languid storytelling , and it even raise some interesting questions about what it would actually be like to have foreknowledge .
“ Law and Oracle ” is not a chef-d’oeuvre , and I ’ll intromit that I ’m a bit hard - press to explain why I liked it as much as I did , as might be seeming from this recapitulation . This just take place to be an episode where I found pretty much every joke after the first three or so minute of arc laughable , whether it ’s snake god Scruffy , the various failings of the heavy effects golem , the chief ’s mounting grossness , Leela and Bender recover out they ca n’t stand each other without Fry around , Erwin Schroedinger reimagined as a hombre - torturing criminal , or the sudden appearance of a leathered up Hedonism Bot . Actually , that last one in all probability does n’t call for any account .
I presuppose it only goes back to the fact that , at its most basic , this is a comedy show , and sometimes funniness can make you laugh even if it ’s hard to put one ’s fingerbreadth on why one sequence mould and another does n’t . For me , this instalment just worked – I laughed out loudly more during this episode than in the last three combined – and I ’ll lief take that result , at least for a workweek or two . Of course , I imagine there wo n’t be unanimous consensus on that point . funniness is immanent , after all …
FuturamaTelevision
Daily Newsletter
Get the proficient tech , science , and culture news in your inbox daily .
News from the futurity , delivered to your present .
You May Also Like
