Season 1, Episode 11, "Mars University" (A)

I’ll need twelve kegs, a continuous tape of “Louie, Louie”, and a regulation two-story panty raid ladder!

Let me explain a little bit about why this is one of my favorite, and most personally beloved, Futurama episodes: It was the second episode of the second broadcast season, and the first time all of my college friends and I got together to watch Futurama at a shabby rented row house on Howard Street in Baltimore that was our first experience of off-campus housing. We were in our sophomore and junior years at Johns Hopkins, and had grown up on 80’s college comedies like Animal House and Revenge of the Nerds. There was no way we weren’t going to especially enjoy a college-themed episode.

But I found myself laughing even harder, and more frequently, than my friends. You see, I grew up with both parents working in academia. My dad was a professor; and for the first time in the series, I saw The Professor as a professor, and one my own dear father, who might be charitably described as “absent-minded”, bore more than a passing resemblance to.

Lines like “I don’t know how to teach - I’m a professor,” and The Professor’s dismissal of the distinction between Nobel categories because, “They all pay the same,” had me rolling on the floor. It was the first time I’d ever seen the world I grew up in satirized smartly in popular entertainment.

I shouldn’t have been surprised - after all, Futurama can easily claim to have had the most academically overqualified writing staff in the history of television, with two hard science PhD’s and a mathematical theorem as highlights to their credit. The parallel reality of the ivory tower is something they’re as familiar with as most television writers are with liberal arts degrees and improv comedy classes.

Besides obviously knowing how to satirize college life and academia, the writers are clearly at home paying loving tribute to Animal House and its descendents through the B-plot, as Bender takes on the John Belushi role in a snobs-versus-slobs, students-versus-teachers, nerds-versus-everyone romp. The previous episode, “A Flight to Remember” was the first Futurama episode to juggle multiple plots, and this is the second. However, unlike the previous episode, “Mars University” makes both plots feel like full, satisfying arcs. Though the run-time is the same, one almost feels like having watched two full episodes by the time it’s over. It’s probably helped by the fact that the two plotlines only casually intersect, with breif overlap at the parent’s reception at the Dean’s house, in the Martian jungle (“Are you sure this is a short-cut?” “Not as sure as I was an hour ago!”), and the final, inexplicable dance party paying homage to both Caddyshack and Animal House.

As fun and as quotable as the “Robot House” romp may be, it’s the main plotline that really packs a punch. The professor’s latest experiment, the result of six month’s slaving over a hot monkey brain, is a chimp with a hat that makes him think and act like an intelligent (if somewhat arrogant) human. Guenter, played with an adroit mix of pathos and adorableness by Tress MacNeille, becomes Fry’s antagonist, as he bests the aspiring college dropout in class and in love. Fry can’t quite deal with being knocked a peg lower on the evolutionary ladder, and the animators have a lot of fun showing Fry as animalistic in his mannerisms as non-hatted chimps like Guenter’s parents.

The conflict Fry forces between Guenter’s animal nature and the intelligence given to him by the hat (best expressed as, “Consider the philosophical impl--” “Banana! Banana! Banana!”) results in a surprisingly touching sequence as Guenter laments his lonely place in the world and embraces oblivion instead -- sort of. As he ponders the value of life and death, he just starts to re-think letting himself fall to his death when a frayed vine decides things for him. It’s one of the funniest, and cruelest, moments in the series so far. The follow-on of the Professor looking to eat some freshly smashed monkey remains might be a step too far for some people, but while Futurama may allow fate to be cruel, its characters rarely are (unlike, say, Family Guy’s). After all, The Professor didn’t break Guenter’s little legs to keep him from running off… He only regrets that he didn’t.

Thankfully, Guenter survives the fall, though his hat is damaged enough that higher learning no longer appeals to him, and pursuing an MBA does (take that, Fox executives). The Professor’s horrified scream of “NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!” is one of my favorite punchlines in the series, made all the more enjoyable by the fact that most people (at least according to my understanding) would have no idea what possible objection one could have to being a successful Business School graduate. Again, growing up in the world of academics and researchers may have given me a skewed persepective, but one that certainly lends itself to enjoyment of this episode.

But as has been the case before, it’s not simply the stranger or more esoteric elements of Futurama that lift it into the pantheon of sitcom greats. It’s the execution of some of the most basic jokes. There’s a brilliant moment when Leela whispers her plan for Guenter to the Professor and Fry. The Professor, hand cupped to his ear, screams, “What?” That would be the joke for any ordinary show. A simple little gag playing at the convention of the whispered plan to be played out in the next scene. Futurama goes one step further as Leela sighs and clearly, loudly, repeats herself for the Professor’s benefit. Hand cupped to his ear again, the decrepit and senile professor screams, “WHAT?” It’s moments like that show the real mastery and genius at work here -- Not, however fun they may be, background jokes about particle physics and the Greek alphabet.

Though I might be a little bit biased, as I mentioned above, the episode is such a brilliant blend of high and low humor, and so brilliantly executed in writing, performance, and direction (the timing and animation of Guenter’s parents is a thing of beauty to behold), I can’t imagine that many people would disagree when I give “Mars University” a....

GRADE: A

This Week’s Opening:

“Transmitido en Martian en SAP”

This Week In Futurama Signage:



Stray Observations:

-There is no letter that looks like the modern “R” in the Greek alphabet. So you couldn’t really have a fraternity named “ERR”. I’ll forgive it.

-”I Say! You’ve damaged our servant’s quarters… And our servants!” is one of my favorite “out of touch snob” lines in any snobs vs. slobs setup.

-”Dodecatuple Secret Probation” is a nod to the multiple secret probations and the ridiculously convoluted ways of getting out of them that seemed to be standard to 80’s college comedies.

-”Mars was just a dreary, uninhabitable wasteland, uh, much like Utah. But unlike Utah, it was eventually made livable!” - take that, Utah!

-The diagram on the Professor’s chalkboard is, apparently, both a particle physics joke AND a poop joke. Doesn’t get more “Futurama” than that.

-Glad to see Tress MacNeille turn in such a brilliant performance this week after a lackluster turn as the Contessa last week.

-”Go Whitefish!” is a bit of a dirty joke, given that Fry attended “Coney Island U.” You see, back in its sleazy 60’s and 70’s days, “Coney Island Whitefish” was a euphemism for a used condom… Which you could find in abundance many mornings under, on, and around the boardwalk.

-Bender, rendering lovable what should be horrific: “You robots are a disgrace to this university! Whenever a fire alarm is pulled, Robot House! Whenever the campus liquor store is looted, Robot House! Whenever a human corpse is desecrated--” Bender: “Now I can explain that!”

-Actually, I could quote almost this entire episode. I’ll let you do that for me instead, in the comments.

- No, wait… One more: “ROOOBOT HOUUUUUUUSSEEEE!”