Season 2, Episode 6, "The Lesser of Two Evils" (B-)

Did you hear maracas? No? Then it wasn’t space banditos...

What differentiates a good episode of Futurama from a great one? We’ve reached that point in the series’s run where, looking ahead at the episode listing, it almost effortlessly cranks out episode after episode that’s funnier than most sitcoms have any right to be. If we were to grade it against the background noise of TV programming in the thousand-channel era, almost every episode this season would be some flavor of “A”. But since we’re focusing solely on Futurama and what makes it tick, we have to measure episodes against each other, and consider how a merely good episode differs from those that people still quote from memory a decade and a half after they aired.

I raise this question because I genuinely enjoyed “The Lesser of Two Evils.” It is a fun, and funny, episode. It’s got some great sight gags and pop culture references, it’s got jokes both dirty and exceedingly nerdy (yes, Bender and Flexo’s serial numbers are both expressable as the sum of two cubes, but there’s a trick to it), and even throws in comedy ringers Zapp Brannigan and Bob Barker’s head in the final act. So why is it so hard to give this episode anything higher than a “B”? Why do I hardly remember some of the best jokes of the episode after watching it twice back-to-back in preparation for this review?

Futurama never became the joke machine that The Simpsons was in its prime. Whether that’s because of a more familiar setting, or lower stakes, or being able to draw directly from a half century of tv family humor, I don’t know. Maybe The Simpsons was just a better show, written by funnier people. But I don’t think so. I think it has to do with the fact that Futurama is capable of such higher stakes, and such epic scope, that perfectly funny jokes about bad driving or stylish beards seem to disappear on the cavernous stage Futurama built itself. The Simpsons, in a sense, is a comedian telling jokes in an intimate club, while Futurama is telling its in a stadium - all other things equal, only the biggest emotions and the highest concepts that are going to stick with the audience.

The emotional core is different, too, in a way that makes itself felt more constantly. While the emotional core of The Simpsons is the reassuring love of a family, lending the stories a sense of permanence and safety, Futurama has no such tether. Its core characters are lonely, seeking for things they didn’t have: a place to belong, a family, the death of all humans. If Fry, Leela, and Bender don’t have each other, and don’t have Planet Express, they have nothing. And as the Professor has made clear, the only way in which Planet Express is a family is that they’re used for free labor.

Now, I will admit that there are a few episodes far ahead in Season Four that operate very successfully as joke machines with similarly low stakes (“300 Big Boys” and “Where No Fan Has Gone Before”), but by and large, a great, memorable episode of Futurama has episodes that flow from a high and original concept, the emotional questing of the crew, or both. “Ahead In the Polls” was lifted by the former, and “Xmas Story” by the latter. Those are great episodes of Futurama, even if they aren’t the best the series ever made.

“The Lesser of two Evils” has neither to fall back on, and is, essentially, just another good episode of a great show. The series is no weaker for airing it, but neither is it striving for greatness in the way its best episodes have and will. Plus, if it weren’t for this episode, we’d never have this handy meme:



But that’s enough time spent justifying what might seem like an abysmally low grade to a nation of idiots in which 90% of the students at our allegedly most rigorous university all get “A” averages. What makes this episode good, even if it’s not great?

Well, first of all, the first act. Something as simple as converting a Cops-type reality show into one featuring centipede monsters who can blur their faces manages to get not just a few good jokes, but a fine reminder of Bender’s own criminality (Leela thought they were watching because Bender would be on this week). Their subsequent trip to Past-O-Rama (located on the former site of Brooklyn) gives us a good few minutes of one of my favorite Futurama tropes: how completely horribly the future will remember our time, just as we almost certainly have wildly inaccurate impressions of past eras.

From Einstein and Hammurabi disco-dancing, to primitive cave-robots assembling cars, to Fry educating Bender and Leela about the many places you could sleep and/or defecate in old New York, it’s a solid series of gags. In fact, one of my favorite jokes of the entire series crops up here… Though since no one else ever knows what I’m talking about, it’s of limited utility. A tour guide points to an “ancient and mysterious tablet which has yet to be deciphered”, which is, of course, a not-very-exaggerated New York City parking rules sign. Leela asks Fry if he knows what it means, to which he replies, “Yeah, I asked a cop once. It means "Up yours, kid.”



Which is, to my mind, what almost every parking sign in this city is actually saying.

An accident with a stand-in AMC Gremlin introduces us to a bending robot named Flexo, who looks identical to Bender, except for a stylish “Evil Spock” beard. The plot, such as it is, is largely just a device to get us to an extended “confused identities” scenario with Bender and Flexo, and the creators on the commentary for this episode basically cop to this. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad episode at all, though learning that did reconfirm my conviction in the relative weakness of this story, which basically boils down to: Planet Express is hired to deliver a tiara and its priceless (well, $150,000) atom of Jumbonium to the Miss Universe Pageant, while keeping it safe from Space Banditos. Flexo, whom Fry has developed a strong dislike of, is hired as extra security, the tiara is stolen, everyone suspects Flexo, it turns out it was Bender, and an exceedingly grumpy Bob Barker sends Flexo to jail because he “looks like the guy.”

It’s a perfectly serviceable and humorous sitcom plot, and the jokes mostly land well. But this episode falls in the middle of the curve (and yes, I’ll do a C+/B- curve, I’m not totally heartless) because there’s nothing else going for it, in a series that’s already shown itself capable of reaching for far more original jokes and more resonant plotting.

Grade: B-

This Week’s Opening Title Subtitle:

The show that watches back!

This Week In Futurama Signage:

Contestants May Not Exceed More Than 50% Implant

Stray Observations:

• ”Nah, this week I'm on Caught On Tape 3 'cause of what I did in the coffee pot.”
  
  
• “Hey, my girlfriend had one of those! Actually, it wasn't hers, it was her dad's. Actually, she wasn't my girlfriend. She just lived next door and never closed her curtains.”
  
  
• Ass whiplash should totally be a thing.
  
  
• The creators were disappointed that “rage dump” never took off as a phrase.
  
  
• “No one in New York drove. There was too much traffic.” (cue rim shot)
  
  
• “I don't like this place. It's 120 degrees and there's very little oxygen.” - oh Fry, quit whinin’!
  
  
• I love the Professor’s increasingly apparently immodesty, inviting the crew to a private exhibition in his bed, and then decamping to the bath when Leela feels uncomfortable.