Rage Against the Vaccine

This is probably the worst episode in the new season so far. The main problem is that it's just taking some topic and trying to be too, uh, topical with it. This episode is about a virus coming about and Hermes having to use voodoo to get rid of it. Dr. Banjo reappears. He's probably one of my favorite minor characters. Everybody's already talked about Covid, but I guess it had to show up eventually.

The best part was probably Fry and Leela's interactions. It's so great that they're still a couple! Aliens from Omicron Persei 8 are invading Earth, which sounds kind of cliche. We do get some good stuff with Bill Nye. Yeah, he's always nice to have around. It's just nothing that noteworthy. **1/2.

First an episode making fun of amazon earlier in this season which is about as original as ordering a pepperoni pizza at Panucci's Pizza or any real pizza place. Now we got this episode taking shots at a certain virus and all the nonsense that surrounded it. Sure on paper this may have worked but there is zero edge to this compared to when Futurama was on FOX or Comedy Centeral. Without the edge they might as well have used this as a The Simpsons episode. I'd rather have that certain virus again than have to watch this episode in its entirety for a second time it was that bad.

I groaned and sighed a few times how stupid this episode was. Was there any human involvement in this episode or did some lazy person just use AI to write this script and made the tiniest of tweaks to make it a "futurama" episode. I wanted to turn this off two or three times how dumb it got. Especially near the end. The people who wrote this should never write another episode again. How low is the bar to become a writer for Futurama these days. The animation and everything is the same as say 20+ years ago, the voice actors are still doing a good job but the writing is just awful. There always seemed to be a balance of social commentary, yet going to some adventure where it all blended together. Instead of this garbage where it was just this dull, non edgy horror show. A shadow of what the show once was. I'd never believe this episode would have been green lit. Is hulu to blame? Who knows.

Who wants to reflect on the pandemic already?! The robot made of bones (a completely wasted gag) aside, every joke here swings and misses because they've all been told by late night talk shows 3 years ago.

How did a show that has the limitless playground of a future galaxy manage to make itself feel immediately dated and limited with jokes about topics that exclusively happened in The last couple years?

Zoom was awkward. Yep. That would have been a cute gag video in 2020 .

This has been an issue with much of this season. Bitcoin? COVID? We know! Now please remember what it meant to use your imagination!

Futurama is a show that has a special place in my heart, and it is one of the greatest animated shows of all time. After the perfect finale that was 'meanwhile', I was apprehensive and worried for the announced reboot, but I found myself really enjoying the first episode, to my delight. However the season has kept deteriorating, where most of the plots are stupid and nearly all the jokes don't land. It all culminates in this episode. Futurama used to be hilarious for its slight jabs at social issues where it sometimes almost parodied it, but always kept it fresh and it felt like it had a place within the universe. Now the humour is far too on the nose, with no attempt to be subtle, and it brings in things directly from our world that make no sense within the futurama universe. Futurama already did a great flu pandemic episode, with the one where fry develops a cold and he thinks the cure is with his hamster from a science project, which has touching flashbacks and some great jokes, as was the norm for old futurama. In this episode, it is just jokes about the covid 19 pandemic, most of which are very unfunny, but also just explicitly referencing stuff that happened to us in an attempt to be 'meta', but they don't do anything to make it link to the 'world of tomorrow'. No funny parody, no subtle digs, just 'ha ha remember zoom', 'ha ha remember covid tests'. It's just stupid and it is really sad to see all this it what was once such a great show. A final grievance, is the use of legacy characters, such as Barbados slim, because 'haha remember him?', instead of actually making a half acceptable attempt to fit him in a plot. You could have introduced a new 'voodoo king' or whatever it was that could have been interesting, like the robot devil, but no it was Barbados slim because errrr reasons. Futurama you should have just ended it with 'meanwhile'.

Makes sense they would do a Covid episode, perhaps a little late but that's ok! Containing plenty of hilarious parodying of the virus and how people behaved, I think it's the best one so far next to the Amazon episode. While Covid in our world made everybody sick, the virus in Futurama makes everyone pissed off. In our world no one understood how to wear a mask. To the point where posters in the subway had to be telling people how to wear mask the correct way. The scene with all of them wearing masks incorrectly is hilarious! In the end, it's not science but voodoo that fixes everything. Maybe that's what we needed? But for now, I'm going with trusting science and not being a complete, brainless, childish idiot who still thinks the whole thing was a hoax. Can you believe people like that exist?!

I also laughed hysterically at

"Kill all human!"

"Bender! Can robots also get the virus?"

"What virus?"

Hulu's Futurama reboot is having a little trouble finding its footing. But episodes like this give me hope.