Season 1, Episode 5, "Fear of a Bot Planet" (B-)

You guys know I made “Robanukah” up to get out of writing a review last week, right?

The fifth episode of Futurama isn’t one I had fond memories of. I remembered it mainly for Bender’s over-the-top (and seemingly very genuine) hatred of humans, and the dreary color palette of the robot world of Chapek-9. But there’s a first time for everything, and this, I suppose, will stand as the first episode in this re-viewing that surprised and delighted me with previously forgotten pleasures when I revisited it. Then again, maybe I just didn’t remember it fondly because it aired on Hitler’s birthday, which also happened to be the day after the massacre at Columbine.

“Fear of a Bot Planet”, like the previous “I, Roommate”, serves as an important vehicle for developing the deep friendship between Fry, Bender, and Leela, that forms the emotional core of the show. As in that episode, the series still leans a bit heavily on established sitcom narrative, and occasionally seems afraid of its own intelligence, over-selling some simpler jokes. But unlike “I, Roommate”, this episode wholeheartedly embraces Futurama’s sci-fi premise, and as a result both shows some growing pains, and some hints of the unhinged, wacky genius the show was capable of.

In fact, the episode’s weakness may well be that it begins with a display of that brilliance, before settling in for two acts of a more predictable nature. The whole Planet Express crew (minus Hermes) is at the ballpark enjoying a friendly office outing, and Fry is thrilled to take in a game of baseball… Or, rather, Blernsball. It’s a jazzed-up version of the old past-time that owes a little something to “Calvinball”, a little to TRON, a little to tetherball, and a lot to whatever sport involves riding giant spiders and automatic cannons firing countless balls around the arena as players flee. It’s an invention not unlike the redneck farmer with robot daughters on the dark side of the moon back in episode 2 - something hilarious, unpredictable, and utterly alien that Futurama has no interest in explaining to us, trusting us to enjoy the strangeness and go along for the ride.

The sequence also features a fantastic early example of the dark, and even sick, humor the show cheerfully engaged in: at the concession stand, Dr. Zoidberg is rebuffed after asking for a “Jumbo Squid Log”, but when he asks the man working the stand to, “Let me have one of your young, on a roll,” the man gives a shifty look and replies, “We’re all outta rolls.” However, the show finishes out this bit with a request for “something crawling with parasites” being answered with a hot dog, and the utterly unnecessary capper from Fry, observing that, “At least hot dogs haven’t changed!” It’s not hard to imagine, if this episode had been produced later in the show’s run, at the very least, that final line would have been discarded, and the audience trusted to take the implication that indeed, these are the same digusting hot dogs we know and tolerate today.

The ballpark opening also establishes Bender’s feelings of resentment towards humans, who refuse to let automated blern-hitting machines compete with humans in Blernsball, and use robots to make their lives easier -- though Bender proudly notes that <i>he</i>’s, “Never made anyone’s life easier, and you know it!” This sets up the story arc of Bender feeling unappreciated and disrespected by his friends, getting a taste, in another venue, of recognition beyond his wildest dreams, and finally accepting that as nice as that is, it’s not a substitute for those friendships, which he finally acknowledges as stronger than any temporary irritations or grudges.

Embracing it’s sci-fi aspect, however, Futurama plays out this drama on the planet Chapek-9, home to a virulently anti-human robot society. The artwork is as drear and grey as I remember, and while the allusions to everything from Stanislaw Lem short stories to the Atari classic “Berzerk” are gratifying, many of the jokes are predictable, simple, and even crude. For example: Fry and Leela disguise themselves as robots to go down to the planet and rescue Bender, after he’s taken prisoner when the robots discover he works with humans. When Fry succumbs to a call of nature, he’s forced to refuse a searing hot blast of resin to his genitals, because, well, aren’t urination or the threat of mangled wing-wangs hilarious enough in and of themselves? Likewise, when Fry and Leela are later captured and put on trial, we’re subjected to unnecessary and unimaginative jokes about the computer judge “freezing up”, and possible remedies such as “jiggle the cord!”

There are high points, however. Besides some cute 3-D movie gags, seeing the 50’s-style monster movie-cum-propaganda film with a robot dressed as a fire-breathing, robot-devouring “human” is worth the price of admission, and the revelation of the planet’s secretive council of corrupt Robot Elders (“Silence!”) manages to squeeze in not just some political commentary about how the public is manipulated by threats, but also some hilarious vocal characterizations (“SILENCE!”), and an inexplicably hilarious running gag. SILENCE!

After we see that Bender’s rabid cries of “Kill all humans” are for show (and money, and fame, and the depths of sleaze those things buy you access to), and that whatever his resentments, he genuinely cares about Fry and Leela, we get a quick-and-easy escape and conclusion, and the surprisingly satisfying denouement. Bender sees that Fry and Leela have set up a “Robonukah” celebration for him, even though they know he just made up the holiday to get out of work, and he realizes that he was right not to kill them when he had the chance - they really are his friends. He also realizes they’re better at dancing “The Robot” than he is -- though that doesn’t stop him from bloodying Fry with a broken bottle as klezmer music plays us out over polaroids of the Robanukah celebration, in another perfect encapsulation of that great, twisted humor Futurama could deliver so well. What other show would have a beloved main character attack another one with broken glass and come off even more lovable for it?

Maybe Buffbot the Human Slayer, but that’s purely speculation.

GRADE: B-

This Week’s Opening

“Featuring Gratuitous Alien Nudity”

Stray Observations

- “Chapek-9” is a reference to Karel Čapek, the first author to use the word “Robot”

- One of my favorite uses of the commercial break, courtesy of Leela: “ I don't know, I don't know. It's not an easy decision. If only I had two or three minutes to think about it!”

- “My God! He’s become evil! I mean… Evil<i>er</i>,” is one of my favorite early <i>Futurama</i> lines.

- Bender: "Oh, so just ‘cause a robot wants to kill humans, that makes him a <i>radical</I>."

- According to Bender, your basic human is between 3 and 25 feet tall, and is made of a hairy, oily goo wrapped in a t-shirt.

- Films currently showing on Chapek-9:

• I Was A Teenage Human
  
• Yentlbot, starring Barbot Streisand
  
• Buff-bot the Human Slayer
  
• It Came From Planet Earth!

- SILENCE! See you next week.