Season 2, Episode 4, "Xmas Story" (A)

I’m going to shove coal so far up your stocking, you’ll be coughing up diamonds!

If “A Head in the Polls” gave us Futurama going all-out on political satire, “Xmas Story” gives us Futurama in full-on heartwarming mode. The fact that the show can manage both extremes without contradiction or inconsistency reflects the same sort of strength The Simpsons had in its heyday, and it’s fascinating to see how the show toggles between those modes while retaining the same spirit and humor.

The humor, as noted in my review of “A Head in the Polls”, is incredibly black, particularly for a network show of the time. The science-fiction aspect of the show is used less to build Star Trek-like allegories and more to satirize stupidity and ignorance we’re familiar with today, by exagerating it in a futuristic context. To paraphrase Richard Nixon’s Head, in the world of Futurama, computers may be twice as fast as they were in 1973, but the average human is as drunk and stupid as ever.

Futurama never gives in to the hope that the passage of time, or even technological advancement, will solve our problems, because we’ll always find a way to create new ones. It’s a bit of a bleak worldview, but it’s also funny precisely because it undermines the cultural expectations we’ve built around the future. Most visions of the future are either utopian or apocalyptic, but Futurama instead opts for “Pretty much the same, but with more hovering.”

But it’s that black heart of the show’s humor that also generates the urgency of its squishy pink heart of genuine human emotion. As I noted back in review of the pilot, the recurring emotional theme of Futurama is misfits finding comfort in friendship with each other. It’s the absurd and unpredictable cruelty of the universe that gives real urgency to that need to find and create a family, whether you’re a refugee from the year 2000, the only one of your species, or a drinking, gambling robot that likes to pretend he’s only out for himself.

“Xmas Story” is an episode that highlights that urgency -- by having the entire cast hunted down by a deranged robotic Santa with John Goodman’s voice and Scarface’s love of shooting things. Again, Futurama takes a sci-fi trope, in this case the apocalyptic technological horror created when our intentions go awry, and uses it not to make some point about why things bite back, but to add comedically high stakes to the plot. Robot Santa isn’t a Skynet sort of catastrophe, he’s just a given part of the yuletide, which now involves more defensive armament and curfews than doorbuster sales and caroling.

The opening act of the episode is nothing but futuristic wackiness, as the gang goes on a ski vacation in the Catskills and attempt to forget the moldy old antics of Conan O’Brien’s Head. As we’ve seen before, Futurama is happy to play both highbrow and low, even in the same breath. A joke about global warming and nuclear winter canceling each other out (again, humanity keeps fucking its way up from one status quo to the next) is followed just seconds later by a sight gag involving (two!) painful impacts between Fry’s genitals and the trunk of an automated fake tree. It’s also worth noting at this point, I suppose, that this episode is the first instance we see The Professor and Hermes’s willingness to disrobe at the drop of a hat (or bathrobe). It’s childish, of course, but that doesn’t make the Professor’s solemn comforting of Fry any less giggle-inducing when it’s done buck naked, in the snow, with saggy sesquicentinarian flesh a-plenty.

The episode’s heart kicks in while, over Xmas preparations (oh, and besides saying “Xmas”, we say “ax” in the future, not “ask”), Fry realizes that his own loneliness experiencing the holidays without his family is nothing next to Leela’s loneliness experiencing them without ever having had a family. It’s a simple and intuitive setup firmly rooted in what we know of the characters, and leads naturally to the conclusion in which the gang learns that the real magic of the holidays is coming together with the ones you love -- even if that means coming together under siege by a heavily armed automaton. As Leela puts it -- and it could well be the unofficial moral of the show, "I'm lonely, and you're lonely. But together, we're lonely together."

Much as in the previous episode, the message, such as it is, is prevented from being too preachy or too saccharine by the dire circumstances in which it’s delivered -- but those circumstances also never squash the humor, because they’re rooted in futuristic zaniness. It’s that balance that really defines Futurama. The inventiveness of its setting and the freedom it allows the creative team lets Futurama get away with jokes and plots that would be uncomfortable or even abhorrent in present day or in live action. Much of the humor makes me think back to Mel Brooks’s incomparable Spaceballs(The Movie!), and his observation, coming upon an “out of order” self-destruct cancellation button, that, “FUCK! Even in the future, nothing works!”

In Futurama too, nothing works -- or works the way it’s intended. That’s both what makes so much of it funny, and so recognizable. The plots of the best episodes too, come to the right end the “wrong” way, and that’s what makes “Xmas Story” the perfectly sweet and sardonic holiday tale.

Grade: A

This Week’s Opening Title Subtitle:

Based on a True Story!

This Week In Futurama Signage:



(OUR MOTHERBOARD OF MERCY LIQUOR KITCHEN)

Stray Observations:

-Some gorgeous animation here, though the standout is, early on, the shot of The Professor flying through the air, catching a J.J. Abrams-worthy amount of lens flare. The very verisimilitude of the shot makes it even more hilarious to realize it’s not only The Professor, it’s The Professor fast asleep performing tricks that would make an olympian jealous.

-I love the little riff on O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi” with Amy, Hermes, and Zoidberg. Finally! I look as pretty as I feel!

-I also love that Dr. Z gets his due from Santabot. Did any of you stop to consider Dr. Zoidberg’s feelings?

-Christopher Ting’s score is excellent, with Santa’s attack underlined by a menacingly minor-key take on “Don We Now Our Gay Apparel” (snickering at “gay”? That’s so naughty, I’m going to have to add it to my list right now!).

-Tinny Tim. How can you not love that pathetic little wretch? He was originally just written as a one-line joke, but the producers loved him so much he not only got a larger part in this story, he got to come back several times.

-Excellent use of the “observatory” set on the roof of the Planet Express building. Tricky staging, but excellently done.

-Next week is “Why Must I Be A Crustacean in Love?” If memory serves, that will help us forget the moldy old antics of Conan O’Brien.