Season 2, Episode 2: "Brannigan, Begin Again" (A-)
Dec 7, 2014 14:38:38 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Dec 7, 2014 14:38:38 GMT -5
Idiotking’s Futurama (Classic)
Season 2, Episode 1 “Brannigan, Begin Again”
If I don’t make it through this review, tell my wife, “Hello.”
It’s a widely believed fact that the role of Zapp Brannigan was originally intended for the late, great Phil Hartman. Watching this, his third appearance as a recurring character on Futurama, I realized just what makes that connection so natural - well beside the deliciously dulcet tones Billy West gives him. The characters Hartmann played, both as a voice actor and as a sitcom performer (Newsradio is arguably both the last hurrah and greatest triumph of the three-camera format) all have three things in common: An unhealthy love of their own voice, a totally unearned level of self-confidence, and most noticeably, nearly every damn line they have is a quotable comedic treasure. Possibly due in part to those first two qualities, but the point still stands.
Now, Zapp is a more substantial character in Futurama than Troy McClure or Lionel Hutz were in The Simpsons (the only featured role Troy ever got was in the phenomenal “A Fish Called Selma”), but he serves, and goes on to serve, a similar “comic ringer” role in the series. Bringing him in almost invariably ups the comedic ante, providing at the very least for a way to liven up otherwise dull proceedings without having to create an entirely new character. The temptation, of course, is to over-use a character like Zapp, turning them from a reliable humor booster to an obnoxious SNL recurring gimmick. Thankfully, Futurama never falls into this trap, saving Zapp for just a few episodes per season, meaning we can look back at this one as the classic it is, rather than a dire foreboding of things to come.
If last week’s episode was atypically lacking in quotable lines, “Brannigan, Begin Again” is filled virtually wall-to-wall with fan favorites. They come not only from Zapp, but from nearly every corner of the episode, including one-off creations like The Neutrals, who speak only in very… Neutral phrases. Most noticeably, after last week’s episode in which I discuss Leela’s development, our heroine not only gets to revert to her no-nonsense command role, but also deliver some excellent punchlines of her own. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but it wasn’t until this most recent re-watch that I finally noticed the filthy cleverness of the line, “This is the third hose fight I’ve broken up today! And the second involving actual hoses!”
The plot itself is incredibly broad in scope, forcing things to move along at a rapid clip. As Zapp sums up the first act to Kif, “One day a man has everything, the next day he blows up a $400 billion space station and the next day he has nothing. It makes you think.” If we were to continue in Zapp’s style, the rest of the episode might be summarized as “Then, he’s reduced to selling his former subordinate’s body on the streets (in a spot-on pastiche of Midnight Cowboy) for fattening hobo cuisine, but the next day he gets a job where the only woman who’s ever (physically) loved him works, he leads a mutiny against her, launches a suicide mission against the evil Neutrals, and is restored to his former rank and privileges on the back of a tale of magic and heroism that his former lover confirms in order to avoid having to keep working with him. It makes you think!” Specifically, it makes you think how exceptional Futurama was in juggling incredibly complex plots without letting necessary exposition eat up space for comedy and character.
While I can leave most of the appreciation of Zapp’s ridiculousness to the Stray Observations and comments, I want to take a moment to pay particular attention to the use of aliens in this episode. One of the elements of the first season that vexed me was the introduction of aliens that lacked both enough distinguishing characteristics to be intrinsically funny, and enough development to give them amusing individual characters. Of the entire first season, my favorite “alien” was arguably the redneck farmer on the dark side of the Moon, who inexplicably has three robot daughters, giant insect cows, and a firm belief that “The Moon Shall Rise Again!” Compared to the giant blue condoms of Trisol or the unimaginatively robot-like Robots of Chapek-9, he’s a delight of bizarre, unexplained but immediately “readable” humor.
By contrast, last week’s episode managed to create three unique sewer mutants with their own developed personalities, and this week’s episode manages to crank out a veritable cornucopia of alien sight gags and characters. We’re not subjected to any more of the Yarn People of Nylar-4 than we need to in order to get a gag about blunt scissors being used for assassination. The Amazonian Fry hits on, the Insectoids and the Lizard People, the incompetent yet folksy Hyperchicken lawyer, even the Amphibiod (like Kif!) President of the Democratic Order Of Planets, whose judicial technique seems to involve saying “I’ll allow it” to everything, they all manage to make a quick, well-developed impression and get out of the way.
It would be easy to imagine a first-season attempt at a “mission to a planet” episode taking the Neutrals and wearing down their hilarious, but limited, joke to a dull nub. Instead, they’re given exactly three brilliant moments of absurd neutrality, each one a quotable gem, and are never heard from again. lt’s one of those bits that I feel is emblematic of Futurama in terms of both its high-concept silliness, and the efficient skill with which it’s constructed. Plus, it gives the conqueror of the pacifist planet of the Gandhi Nebula a worthy foe to fight against. With enemies, after all, you know where you stand… But with Neutrals? Who knows!
It may be easy to lose one’s self in the barrage of gags this episode delivers, but besides developing Leela’s comic role, there’s also a nice little bit of development between the core trio of Leela, Fry, and Bender. Instead of leaving Leela’s professional competence as a barrier to the man (and robot)-child’s wackiness, Fry and Bender come to realize Leela’s competence is in part protecting them, while Zapp’s permissiveness, rather than being kindly intended, is based in pure hog-headed selfishness. Even better, at the end, Leela has come to realize she does need to show the doofuses some degree of kindness at work… And, much like her turnabout at the end of the previous episode, has a burst of Bender-like mutinous thoughts as the Professor shuts down any attempt to lighten the workload.
GRADE: A- (the only thing holding this back from an “A” is the fact that I want to have *some* place left to go for the very finest episodes of the show’s run. So B+/A- for Futurama is essentially “great, hilarious, quotable, but lacking that extra little bit that makes an episode one of the all-time greats)
This Week’s Opening Title Subtitle:
NOT Y3K COMPLIANT
This Week’s In Futurama Signage:
Stray Observations:
*Not actually. He just helped with some crazy marketing brainstorming
Season 2, Episode 1 “Brannigan, Begin Again”
If I don’t make it through this review, tell my wife, “Hello.”
It’s a widely believed fact that the role of Zapp Brannigan was originally intended for the late, great Phil Hartman. Watching this, his third appearance as a recurring character on Futurama, I realized just what makes that connection so natural - well beside the deliciously dulcet tones Billy West gives him. The characters Hartmann played, both as a voice actor and as a sitcom performer (Newsradio is arguably both the last hurrah and greatest triumph of the three-camera format) all have three things in common: An unhealthy love of their own voice, a totally unearned level of self-confidence, and most noticeably, nearly every damn line they have is a quotable comedic treasure. Possibly due in part to those first two qualities, but the point still stands.
Now, Zapp is a more substantial character in Futurama than Troy McClure or Lionel Hutz were in The Simpsons (the only featured role Troy ever got was in the phenomenal “A Fish Called Selma”), but he serves, and goes on to serve, a similar “comic ringer” role in the series. Bringing him in almost invariably ups the comedic ante, providing at the very least for a way to liven up otherwise dull proceedings without having to create an entirely new character. The temptation, of course, is to over-use a character like Zapp, turning them from a reliable humor booster to an obnoxious SNL recurring gimmick. Thankfully, Futurama never falls into this trap, saving Zapp for just a few episodes per season, meaning we can look back at this one as the classic it is, rather than a dire foreboding of things to come.
If last week’s episode was atypically lacking in quotable lines, “Brannigan, Begin Again” is filled virtually wall-to-wall with fan favorites. They come not only from Zapp, but from nearly every corner of the episode, including one-off creations like The Neutrals, who speak only in very… Neutral phrases. Most noticeably, after last week’s episode in which I discuss Leela’s development, our heroine not only gets to revert to her no-nonsense command role, but also deliver some excellent punchlines of her own. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but it wasn’t until this most recent re-watch that I finally noticed the filthy cleverness of the line, “This is the third hose fight I’ve broken up today! And the second involving actual hoses!”
The plot itself is incredibly broad in scope, forcing things to move along at a rapid clip. As Zapp sums up the first act to Kif, “One day a man has everything, the next day he blows up a $400 billion space station and the next day he has nothing. It makes you think.” If we were to continue in Zapp’s style, the rest of the episode might be summarized as “Then, he’s reduced to selling his former subordinate’s body on the streets (in a spot-on pastiche of Midnight Cowboy) for fattening hobo cuisine, but the next day he gets a job where the only woman who’s ever (physically) loved him works, he leads a mutiny against her, launches a suicide mission against the evil Neutrals, and is restored to his former rank and privileges on the back of a tale of magic and heroism that his former lover confirms in order to avoid having to keep working with him. It makes you think!” Specifically, it makes you think how exceptional Futurama was in juggling incredibly complex plots without letting necessary exposition eat up space for comedy and character.
While I can leave most of the appreciation of Zapp’s ridiculousness to the Stray Observations and comments, I want to take a moment to pay particular attention to the use of aliens in this episode. One of the elements of the first season that vexed me was the introduction of aliens that lacked both enough distinguishing characteristics to be intrinsically funny, and enough development to give them amusing individual characters. Of the entire first season, my favorite “alien” was arguably the redneck farmer on the dark side of the Moon, who inexplicably has three robot daughters, giant insect cows, and a firm belief that “The Moon Shall Rise Again!” Compared to the giant blue condoms of Trisol or the unimaginatively robot-like Robots of Chapek-9, he’s a delight of bizarre, unexplained but immediately “readable” humor.
By contrast, last week’s episode managed to create three unique sewer mutants with their own developed personalities, and this week’s episode manages to crank out a veritable cornucopia of alien sight gags and characters. We’re not subjected to any more of the Yarn People of Nylar-4 than we need to in order to get a gag about blunt scissors being used for assassination. The Amazonian Fry hits on, the Insectoids and the Lizard People, the incompetent yet folksy Hyperchicken lawyer, even the Amphibiod (like Kif!) President of the Democratic Order Of Planets, whose judicial technique seems to involve saying “I’ll allow it” to everything, they all manage to make a quick, well-developed impression and get out of the way.
It would be easy to imagine a first-season attempt at a “mission to a planet” episode taking the Neutrals and wearing down their hilarious, but limited, joke to a dull nub. Instead, they’re given exactly three brilliant moments of absurd neutrality, each one a quotable gem, and are never heard from again. lt’s one of those bits that I feel is emblematic of Futurama in terms of both its high-concept silliness, and the efficient skill with which it’s constructed. Plus, it gives the conqueror of the pacifist planet of the Gandhi Nebula a worthy foe to fight against. With enemies, after all, you know where you stand… But with Neutrals? Who knows!
It may be easy to lose one’s self in the barrage of gags this episode delivers, but besides developing Leela’s comic role, there’s also a nice little bit of development between the core trio of Leela, Fry, and Bender. Instead of leaving Leela’s professional competence as a barrier to the man (and robot)-child’s wackiness, Fry and Bender come to realize Leela’s competence is in part protecting them, while Zapp’s permissiveness, rather than being kindly intended, is based in pure hog-headed selfishness. Even better, at the end, Leela has come to realize she does need to show the doofuses some degree of kindness at work… And, much like her turnabout at the end of the previous episode, has a burst of Bender-like mutinous thoughts as the Professor shuts down any attempt to lighten the workload.
GRADE: A- (the only thing holding this back from an “A” is the fact that I want to have *some* place left to go for the very finest episodes of the show’s run. So B+/A- for Futurama is essentially “great, hilarious, quotable, but lacking that extra little bit that makes an episode one of the all-time greats)
This Week’s Opening Title Subtitle:
NOT Y3K COMPLIANT
This Week’s In Futurama Signage:
Stray Observations:
- Speaking of character development, we also see that Kif, for all the contempt he has for Zapp, is also utterly devoted and dependent upon him. It makes for a much richer comedic relationship than the initial “forced to be underling to an idiot” setup.
- The parody of the Star Wars holographic chess scene that’s used in the cold open is a brilliant little gag. And also, apparently, got episode scribe Lew Morton a trip to Skywalker Ranch, where he helped them develop the concept for Jar-Jar!*
- It’s unfortunate that one of the few Trisolian gags I like was cut. In a deleted scene, Bender chugs a bottle that apparently contained Glork from “My Three Suns”. Glork pours out of Bender’s chest case and, offended, says, “Can’t a guy sit at a bar without getting drunk?”
- “All I know is, my heart says maybe!”
- “What makes a man turn Neutral? Is it lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?” - my favorite non-sensical Zapp rant.
- “You forgot one thing! Rock crushes scissors. But… Paper covers rock! And scissors cut paper! Kif! We have a conundrum! Search them for paper… And bring me a rock.” - runner up, my favorite non-sensical Zapp rant.
- I love Fry’s “WOOOOO!” when Zapp gets Leela to confess to their tryst in court… And Leela’s equally excited “WOOOOO!’ when Zapp’s sentence is handed down.
- Great throwaway Bender insult, when Leela exclaims, “I don’t want to die at the age of 25,” he replies, “Honey, unless we hit a time warp, I wouldn’t worry about it.”
- See you all again next week, in AVQ&A for “A Head in the Polls” and in Simpsons (Classic) for “X-Mas Story!”
*Not actually. He just helped with some crazy marketing brainstorming