Post by Deleted on Feb 17, 2015 0:38:32 GMT -5
We all have needs. Mine was to make it with five weirdos and have them scrub my five castles.
I have a confession to make. I may not be able to judge this episode fairly, because from the first time I saw it, I’ve been incredibly frustrated by the fact that they did not get Ed O’Neill to play the role of Alcazar. Something about Katy Segal doing her Peg Bundy voice and having it be answered by someone other than Ed O’Neill -- even if it’s the wonderful Dave Herman -- has just driven me bitter, and let’s face it, crazy over the years. When I finish this review, in fact, I’m going to sell our kids’ organs to zoos for meat, and I’ll sneak into people’s houses at night and wreck up th --
Sorry. Frustrating though that element still is for me, this episode still has rather a lot to recommend it. After all, it’s not really about a Married With Children parody (which you may feel it goes too heavy on just as easily as not heavy enough) so much as being about Leela’s loneliness. So the show actually hits some deeper emotional notes than Married ever did, even when it’s running through the same abusive relationship tropes the first Fox hit helped to lay out.
As I noted from the start, the inherent loneliness of the main characters is a constant underlying all the relationships, and driving many plots. To some extent, this may be part of the reason the post-Fox seasons of Futurama tended to be weaker overall. By the end of the fourth season, (spoiler alert) Leela had a family, Fry’s life had a bigger purpose, and Fry and Leela were, if not in love, than falling into it. Even Bender, the most chaotic of the core characters, finds a comfortable place at the side of the one human exempt from his desire to kill all humans. With no internal pressure to go seeking for new horizons, the show became far more dependent on Planet Express missions, the Professor’s latest invention, or some other Deus Ex Machina to get the cast suitably discombobulated so that they had to struggle to restore the status quo. Part of the joy of the original run were episodes like this, that push the re-set button almost lazily, for the sake of the show rather than for the needs of the characters.
“A Bicyclops Built for Two” doesn’t really get going until Leela crosses path with a fellow Cyclops - the first of her kind she’s ever seen, other than herself. Her lifelong longing to find out the truth of her identity and a place where she belongs leads her to jettison a Planet Express mission and take Fry and Bender along on an impromptu trip to “Cyclopia”. Before that, we get a pretty fantastic first act that takes us into the 31st century’s version of the internet. It’s not so much the jokes -- fairly rote stuff about pop-up ads, porn, chat rooms, porn, dating, porn, porn, and porn -- as the execution. As the creative team repeatedly points out on the DVD commentary for this episode, this outing won the Emmy for outstanding color direction, largely on the basis of the first act, and it does indeed look wonderful. Simultaneously futuristic and intensely retro, and filled with a wonderful range of action, setting, and sight gags, it’s a visual delight.
The central arc, Leela falling into a manipulative and demeaning relationship with an alien who, in our enlightened day and age, we’d say raped her by deception, is a little bit less of a romp. The visual details of Cyclopia are pretty wonderful, and the character designs are wonderful, but it’s hard for the show to stay funny when a highly sympathetic main character is degraded and abused -- and is seemingly willing to consign themselves to a life of degradation and abuse. It can be a bit hard to watch, especially when it’s made clear that Leela realizes how horrible this situation is, but is willing to suffer it all the same for the sake of her species.
The only real redemption the episode has, other than Leela’s final realization that, “I was so desperate to find out who I really was, I forgot who I really was,” is Fry’s unwillingness to see Leela treated so poorly. Fortunately, we’re spared a debate between personal happiness and survival of a species, as Fry seeks to discredit Alcazar rather than simply rely on the merits of that argument. And it is fairly sweet to see the typical roles reversed, with Fry saving Leela from a poor decision rather than the other way around.
Even Bender’s running bit of stealing every piece of Cyclopia he can get his hands on pays off far less than it might have. Short of the inexplicable three fishbowls in his chest cavity, and the kicker when Bender wonders if perhaps he’s finally stolen enough, it provides nothing more than a bit of extra business for the background.
Oh, also, if I hadn’t already mentioned, they do an extended Married With Children riff, with Katy Segal, and don’t have Ed O’Neill. Why, that’s enough to knock this episode all the way down to a…
Grade: C-
This Week’s Opening Title Subtitle:
This episode has been modified to fit your primitive screen
This Week In Futurama Signage:
Forbidden Valley ↑
←Permitted Valley
Required Valley →
Fry is so dumb… How dumb is he?
Fry is so dumb, he didn’t even think of going to the bathroom in the corner!
Stray Observations:
-Seriously, did they at least try to get Ed O’Neill?
-This is a rare episode in which my estimation of it, and corresponding grade, dropped further the more I thought about it, and the more I put those thoughts to page. The gags may land fairly well on their own, but they seem increasingly minor in light of the episode’s very deep and - in regards to what is arguably a type of rape - disturbing flaws.
-The depth perception joke was pretty funny.
-The horribly illogical end has a lampshade hung on it, and then gets explained away in one quick exchange: Leela: But why did you have all five weddings on the same day? Alcazar: Hey, lady, you got any idea what it costs to rent a tux that changes shape?