Day Forty-one - Futurama: Season 7, Episode 3, or "Wait, we're still making Palin Jokes?"

Woo! Season 7 finally dropped on Netflix and I couldn't be happier!

Wait, now that I think about it, in the grand scheme of things, I probably could be happier. I could be happily married, dividing my time between a private island in the Caribbean and warm cabin in Alaska or Washington. My royalties check could be in the six figures and all my bills could be paid. J.J. Abrams could've tapped me to write the new Star Wars movie.

NO! STOP! Get out of your revelry, Mokti! You must resist! Dream big, but come back to Earth!

Phew.

That was close.

So, Season 7.

I've been tempted to pick this up as I just saw it over at the store the other day at quite the reasonable price. Now that it's on Netflix, I might wait a while... which is kind of a bummer, now that I think about it. I love owning series and movies, but it's just easier to double click than it is to pop a disc into my PS3 (that's right, Playstation rep-prah-zent!).

I'm sure that I'll get it eventually, it's just better for my budget if I put it on the list.

Anyway, I zoomed straight to the election episode as I remember the first time Richard Nixon's Head was elected the President of Earth. It felt like pretty good satire similar to the Simpsons election episodes of old (you know, Kang and Kodos replacing Clinton and Dole?).

Does that date me too much?

In the episode, Leela gets an itch to get involved in the process. That would be fine if the episode just centered on that. Instead, she gets involved by almost immediately becoming the head staffer for an actually reasonable sounding candidate... who is being overshadowed by the vacuous candidates our election cycle tends to throw at us.

To be honest, I was kind of mad when the writers threw another tired Palin joke at us. Not that I don't think the gal deserves to be mocked mercilessly, but it didn't have any panache. It felt like a retread of a rework of a grainy representation of Tiny Fey's impersonation from 2008's cycle.

I mean... c'mon guys. Michelle Bachman would've been a bit more prosaic as a target, wouldn't she? She was actually in the primary for quite a while, for one thing.

The main thrust of the episode is the same old birther argument. Personally, I think both the joke and the argument is dead as a doornail, but I do know plenty of people in the oil town where I live and work that STILL FREAKING BELIEVE.

Maybe the satire would've been okay if they had got the Severed Head in a Jar of Donald Trump in on the action, but seeing as how he's suing folks for jokes of late, methinks Groening and company went a safer route.

And that's more that just a bit sad (even if it is just speculation). Futurama was hip and prescient once upon a time. Since the reboot, though, it feels like they just don't know where to go. Their time travel stories used to make some odd amount of sense. Now, instead of being smart, they opt for sitcom era resets at the end of the 22 minutes of allotted time.

Instead of averting the coming Robot Apocalypse (at the hands of a certain B.B.Rodriguez), the epi is given a silly paradox out. I would've been much happier if the Professor had just swooped in and saved the day by putting the Baby Travers in a biodome that simulated the Robo Apoc so that the loop could be maintained... but noooooooo.

Anyways, as much as I'm piling on the hate, it's STILL good to have Futurama around. Even at its worst, it's better than Family Guy ever was.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~