Season 1, Episode 7, "My Three Suns" (D+)
Sept 21, 2014 2:09:19 GMT -5
Arthur Dent, Jean Luc de Lemur, and 3 more like this
Post by Deleted on Sept 21, 2014 2:09:19 GMT -5
Including the first time Futurama kicks it up a notch… Bam!
Over time, nearly every show, no matter how original or creative, will find patterns, formulas, and habits that can be relied on to produce good, or at least comfortably familiar, episodes. Some formulas are so successful they’ve found their way into the DNA of generations of TV shows. This isn’t a bad thing - far from it. The predictability of an established “groove” not only creates a comfort zone within which to play, it can also create audience expectations which are necessary if the creators ever want to play with, and subvert, those expectations on occasion.
One of the reasons why few first seasons of successful shows are remembered as well as later ones is that there’s simply been little opportunity to find the show’s groove. Actors may still be finding the core of the character, directors and artists may still be finding the right look, and the writers are usually still finding out, by trial and error, what works and what doesn’t.
If last week’s episode, “A Fishful of Dollars” was an example of how Futurama found its groove early and often, then this week’s episode is exhibit “A” of how Futurama could have gone wrong by picking a structure that works, but limits, rather than expands, the potential for humor and character development. It’s in many ways similar to “Fear of a Bot Planet”, structurally. Both start out with a strong first act (and yes, a cold open, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to hear Bender sing disco this week) centered on the Planet Express crew on 31st Century Earth, then stumble as the crew gets into deadly trouble on an alien world.
This was actually part of the original concept creator Matt Groening had for the show -- much like the Enterprise (though Groening is adamant that he never watched Star Trek), the Planet Express crew would travel to strange new worlds each week and get into comedic adventures. “My Three Suns”, in fact, was originally intended to be the second episode of the series, before network pressure led them to place a few more “down to Earth” episodes up front. One of those -- “I, Roommate” -- was so down-to-Earth it lacked any sense of Futurama’s unique character. The others, though, struck a little closer to the mark.
Because what works best on Futurama isn’t the strangeness of alien worlds and races, but rather the familiarity of humanity reflected in the show’s funhouse mirror of a thousand years hence. Consider one of the best -- and indeed one of the only -- jokes to come from any of the watery blue creatures of planet Trisol, this week’s destination: the planet’s “foremost political satirist,” Florp, comes out on stage and immediately launches into a routine about how people from under the orange sun walk like this, but people from under the red sun walk like this -- a hacky cliche familiar to anyone who’s watched more than one episode of Def Comedy Jam and its descendents. Fry laughs uproariously, proclaiming, “Oh yeah! Yeah, he’s right!” Of course, he has no idea how people from under different suns are on this planet, but he’s watched enough 20th Century TV to know when racial stereotypes have been crudely caricatured for a cheap laugh… Which are, of course, Fry’s kind of laughs.
This performance comes in the middle of Fry’s pre-coronation gala on the desert planet of Trisol, where the people are made of liquid, and by inadvertently drinking their emperor, Fry has risen to power in a thirsty coup. When it’s discovered that the previous emperor has somehow managed to survive inside of Fry, Fry’s life is in danger as the Trisolians look to strain their true leader from Fry’s guts -- even if it means putting him through the Juice-O-Matic-5000.
The people of Trisol are, unfortunately, a boring people to spend the better part of an episode around. They’re made of liquid and look like giant, blue, reservoir-tipped condoms. They’re liquid, and, um -- did I mention they’re blue? Yeah, that seems about it for anything that might be interesting about them… Other than, perhaps, having a system of government based entirely on assassination of one Emperor after another. The robots of “Fear of a Bot Planet” weren’t much better, but at least gave us the Robot Elders, whose shadowy incompetence managed to lampoon government conspiracy theories and shout “Silence!” in ever more ridiculous voices.
And that is exactly my point -- those touches of familiarity, the use of a science-fiction set-up to comment on contemporary issues, are what gives Futurama it’s best moments. Consider, in contrast to the Trisolians, the aliens we meet in the first act. There are the four-armed Neptunians (and the four-armed animation is a truly hilarious detail), who host obnoxious cooking shows, and run exotic food shops, where you can get human if you want some, in the “Little Neptune” part of New New York. There’s a bizarre-looking green creature in a Knicks tee-shirt who instinctively replies to Fry’s, “Whaddup?” with the answer of “Word.” There’s also a junkie tormented by a broken crack vending machine, and a back-alley surgeon who attempts to take Fry’s lungs today, in exchange for gills… when they’re in stock next week. They may not be freaky aliens, but they’re also successful bits of sci-fi humor, recognizable characters adapted to a twisted future.
The episode does, at least, get one thing right: the heart of the show is about the relationships between the central characters. It tries to feed off that towards the end, when Fry, who has been bristling at all of Leela’s “help”, believes that she’s died trying to save him when he finally realized he needed her help. He breaks down crying, but the moment, besides being cut short by Leela’s appearance whole and unharmed, rings false. Fry and Leela’s relationship the entire episode to that point had been antagonistic. To make the moment work, there needs to be some sense, or hint at least, that Leela is something more than a nagging mother figure for Fry, and the episode fails to provide that. But at least it understands that there should be some feeling there.
GRADE: D+ (again, I am grading relative to Futurama’s demonstrated capacity looking backwards. I’m hoping this is the lowest grade I’ll have to give until we hit the Comedy Central years…)
This Week’s Opening:
“Presented in DOUBLEVISION (Where Drunk)”
This Week In Futurama Signage:
Bender’s apron, which reads “TO SERVE MAN” is a reference to an alien cookbook in an episode of The Twilight Zone. The Simpsons referenced this same bit in the first “Treehouse of Horror”.
Stray Observations:
-Leela’s praise of Bender’s “In-your-face attitude” sounds suspiciously like Marge’s praise of Homer’s “in-your-face humanity” in The Simpsons episode “Scenes From The Class Struggle in Springfield”.
-And Fry’s meandering, confused monologue about “The Grasshopper and the Octopus” (a mangling of the fable of “The Grasshopper and the Ant”) sounds more like something Homer would come up with. Fry definitely has a bit of Homer in him, but this felt more like a line being borrowed from The Simpsons writer’s room and dropped into a Futurama script.
-I love the black-market organ dealer’s explanation of the “z-ray” eye: “Is just as good as X. In fact, is better! Is two more!”
-Bender’s voice is off by quite a bit in this episode -- really, the only ones where he sounds as different from the Bender of later episodes (and seasons) are the first three.
-Both Fry and Zoidberg’s heads seem oddly stretched out, horizontally, in their reaction shots to Bender’s horrible meal.
-Speaking of: “That’s the saltiest thing I’ve ever tasted! And I once ate a big heaping bowl of salt!”
-This is the first time in the series the Professor says the phrase, “Good news, everyone!” Bender instinctively knows it means nothing good.
-Sorry this is a little late. It was my Dad’s 72nd birthday and I went out to dinner with him and mom. Still, not bad for cranking it out in 90 minutes, I hope! See you back here next week for “A Big Piece of Garbage”. If memory serves, that one’s anything but.
Over time, nearly every show, no matter how original or creative, will find patterns, formulas, and habits that can be relied on to produce good, or at least comfortably familiar, episodes. Some formulas are so successful they’ve found their way into the DNA of generations of TV shows. This isn’t a bad thing - far from it. The predictability of an established “groove” not only creates a comfort zone within which to play, it can also create audience expectations which are necessary if the creators ever want to play with, and subvert, those expectations on occasion.
One of the reasons why few first seasons of successful shows are remembered as well as later ones is that there’s simply been little opportunity to find the show’s groove. Actors may still be finding the core of the character, directors and artists may still be finding the right look, and the writers are usually still finding out, by trial and error, what works and what doesn’t.
If last week’s episode, “A Fishful of Dollars” was an example of how Futurama found its groove early and often, then this week’s episode is exhibit “A” of how Futurama could have gone wrong by picking a structure that works, but limits, rather than expands, the potential for humor and character development. It’s in many ways similar to “Fear of a Bot Planet”, structurally. Both start out with a strong first act (and yes, a cold open, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to hear Bender sing disco this week) centered on the Planet Express crew on 31st Century Earth, then stumble as the crew gets into deadly trouble on an alien world.
This was actually part of the original concept creator Matt Groening had for the show -- much like the Enterprise (though Groening is adamant that he never watched Star Trek), the Planet Express crew would travel to strange new worlds each week and get into comedic adventures. “My Three Suns”, in fact, was originally intended to be the second episode of the series, before network pressure led them to place a few more “down to Earth” episodes up front. One of those -- “I, Roommate” -- was so down-to-Earth it lacked any sense of Futurama’s unique character. The others, though, struck a little closer to the mark.
Because what works best on Futurama isn’t the strangeness of alien worlds and races, but rather the familiarity of humanity reflected in the show’s funhouse mirror of a thousand years hence. Consider one of the best -- and indeed one of the only -- jokes to come from any of the watery blue creatures of planet Trisol, this week’s destination: the planet’s “foremost political satirist,” Florp, comes out on stage and immediately launches into a routine about how people from under the orange sun walk like this, but people from under the red sun walk like this -- a hacky cliche familiar to anyone who’s watched more than one episode of Def Comedy Jam and its descendents. Fry laughs uproariously, proclaiming, “Oh yeah! Yeah, he’s right!” Of course, he has no idea how people from under different suns are on this planet, but he’s watched enough 20th Century TV to know when racial stereotypes have been crudely caricatured for a cheap laugh… Which are, of course, Fry’s kind of laughs.
This performance comes in the middle of Fry’s pre-coronation gala on the desert planet of Trisol, where the people are made of liquid, and by inadvertently drinking their emperor, Fry has risen to power in a thirsty coup. When it’s discovered that the previous emperor has somehow managed to survive inside of Fry, Fry’s life is in danger as the Trisolians look to strain their true leader from Fry’s guts -- even if it means putting him through the Juice-O-Matic-5000.
The people of Trisol are, unfortunately, a boring people to spend the better part of an episode around. They’re made of liquid and look like giant, blue, reservoir-tipped condoms. They’re liquid, and, um -- did I mention they’re blue? Yeah, that seems about it for anything that might be interesting about them… Other than, perhaps, having a system of government based entirely on assassination of one Emperor after another. The robots of “Fear of a Bot Planet” weren’t much better, but at least gave us the Robot Elders, whose shadowy incompetence managed to lampoon government conspiracy theories and shout “Silence!” in ever more ridiculous voices.
And that is exactly my point -- those touches of familiarity, the use of a science-fiction set-up to comment on contemporary issues, are what gives Futurama it’s best moments. Consider, in contrast to the Trisolians, the aliens we meet in the first act. There are the four-armed Neptunians (and the four-armed animation is a truly hilarious detail), who host obnoxious cooking shows, and run exotic food shops, where you can get human if you want some, in the “Little Neptune” part of New New York. There’s a bizarre-looking green creature in a Knicks tee-shirt who instinctively replies to Fry’s, “Whaddup?” with the answer of “Word.” There’s also a junkie tormented by a broken crack vending machine, and a back-alley surgeon who attempts to take Fry’s lungs today, in exchange for gills… when they’re in stock next week. They may not be freaky aliens, but they’re also successful bits of sci-fi humor, recognizable characters adapted to a twisted future.
The episode does, at least, get one thing right: the heart of the show is about the relationships between the central characters. It tries to feed off that towards the end, when Fry, who has been bristling at all of Leela’s “help”, believes that she’s died trying to save him when he finally realized he needed her help. He breaks down crying, but the moment, besides being cut short by Leela’s appearance whole and unharmed, rings false. Fry and Leela’s relationship the entire episode to that point had been antagonistic. To make the moment work, there needs to be some sense, or hint at least, that Leela is something more than a nagging mother figure for Fry, and the episode fails to provide that. But at least it understands that there should be some feeling there.
GRADE: D+ (again, I am grading relative to Futurama’s demonstrated capacity looking backwards. I’m hoping this is the lowest grade I’ll have to give until we hit the Comedy Central years…)
This Week’s Opening:
“Presented in DOUBLEVISION (Where Drunk)”
This Week In Futurama Signage:
Bender’s apron, which reads “TO SERVE MAN” is a reference to an alien cookbook in an episode of The Twilight Zone. The Simpsons referenced this same bit in the first “Treehouse of Horror”.
Stray Observations:
-Leela’s praise of Bender’s “In-your-face attitude” sounds suspiciously like Marge’s praise of Homer’s “in-your-face humanity” in The Simpsons episode “Scenes From The Class Struggle in Springfield”.
-And Fry’s meandering, confused monologue about “The Grasshopper and the Octopus” (a mangling of the fable of “The Grasshopper and the Ant”) sounds more like something Homer would come up with. Fry definitely has a bit of Homer in him, but this felt more like a line being borrowed from The Simpsons writer’s room and dropped into a Futurama script.
-I love the black-market organ dealer’s explanation of the “z-ray” eye: “Is just as good as X. In fact, is better! Is two more!”
-Bender’s voice is off by quite a bit in this episode -- really, the only ones where he sounds as different from the Bender of later episodes (and seasons) are the first three.
-Both Fry and Zoidberg’s heads seem oddly stretched out, horizontally, in their reaction shots to Bender’s horrible meal.
-Speaking of: “That’s the saltiest thing I’ve ever tasted! And I once ate a big heaping bowl of salt!”
-This is the first time in the series the Professor says the phrase, “Good news, everyone!” Bender instinctively knows it means nothing good.
-Sorry this is a little late. It was my Dad’s 72nd birthday and I went out to dinner with him and mom. Still, not bad for cranking it out in 90 minutes, I hope! See you back here next week for “A Big Piece of Garbage”. If memory serves, that one’s anything but.
