Futurama (TV Series) Rage Against the Vaccine (2023) User Reviews

This was just okay

[ericstevenson · 6/10 · 11 September 2023]

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.

Say, waaa?

[alexdbevil · 9/10 · 5 September 2023]

How does this episode rate. 6.6 on IMDb if only one person (prior to me) gave it a 9? I found it both hilarious and disturbing; especially the use of the exceedingly long Q-tip. It did feel like the lab techs who shoved them into my nose were taking brain samples. The writers were also spot on regarding the anti-vax/anti-science crackpots regarding their lack of trust (and outright ignorance) regarding the disease's treatment. One of the funniest running gags was how many people (humans and aliens) wore their masks. I can't tell you how many real people I've noticed having a mask only cover their mouths and not their noses. But I have a question, if robots weren't susceptible why did bender wear a mask (albeit on top of his antenna like a condom) and later get inoculated along with the "meatbags"? Maybe he just wanted the doll?

Too late and too soon. To this party

[el_phantasmo_1 · 2/10 · 8 September 2023]

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!

Thank you for this dubious honor.

[ardencreates · 6 September 2023]

I just finished re-watching the first 10 seasons and I am rooting for this new season to do well.

Notes watching this episode:

Wondered for a moment if the producers put plot points and character profiles into an LLM blender to churn out script. That would have been quite the meta social commentary.

As is, this episode phones in its topicality; the passage of time may give it a nostalgic patina that helps it seem funnier in the future. There are some good moments on first watch -- Bill Nye's first line got a laugh. So did Dr. Banjo (now a podcaster) barging to the front of the news conference blustering in self-righteous outrage, "Am I the only journalist who bothered to bring my own facts??"

I reflexively grimaced at the micro-chipped vaccine BS, but then I agreed with the decision to lean into it. I figured that, well no, I do not want this to reinforce the conspiratorial hypotheses already out there, but by now everyone has already made up their minds, and anyone who does latch onto this joke as any kind of confirmation isn't likely to be swayed otherwise. (If everyone already knows what your ass looks like, might as well party naked.)

Got excited when I thought this was going to be a LaBarbara episode. Ruefully funny that, even in making the plot point introduced one personal to LaBarbara and expanding her dialogue a bit to tell it, they still make the plot point a Caribbean stereotype.

Leela's miniature video self smooshing a miniature pie in Fry's face in 3D through the video screen was clever and unexpected -- I enjoy moments that remind you they're animation because they work best as animation. The subsequent scene when Fry joined Leela in quarantine was succinct and poignant, good use of the advantage of well-established characters.

I am still confounded by the helmets (force field collars?) on all the alligators: why and how?

I appreciate that they went to the trouble to explain NOLA's existence despite the sea level rise while including a call-back to submerged Atlanta, rather than just retconning that earlier detail.

This plot feels less silly, less organic, less interesting. Maybe because it hews so drearily to real life at the moment. But I'm also noticing, whereas in past episodes the main characters split up on concurrent subplots that parted from what usually remained the main plot line, in this episode every scene is just the next step of the one plot -- oppressively linear. I keep getting restless. I've been pacing a lot.

I paused this episode shortly after Barbados Slim appeared so I could write down my notes so far. Hermes is still standing. I don't know what they are going to say, but it'll have something to do with voodoo and the virus.

Yep!

LaBarbara comes back! Her character still needs more to do.

The Omicron variant bit was a low point, but gets a pass for being obligatory.

Hat tip for the voodoo shots concept and the winking, layered, 'a-rose-by-any-other-name' irony. The larger plot service by the voodoo motif relieves its earlier impression of stereotypical gratuitousness. "Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from science." Nicely done.

This episode is uneven and needs to be watched all the way through to be fully appreciated, needs that shoe-drop at the end to redeem itself.

one of the best episodes

[brainwerx-1 · 9/10 · 4 September 2023]

This was a great episode. It absolutely brought home the science, all the while skewering all the misinformation around it. It explained the science perfectly and, again, cut through all the nonsense that was being posted at the time (and to some extent still is). It really does show that many people will not believe in the work of real science but will essentially look for other things to cure something that they do not understand (we saw this with the various plagues throughout history). Overall this is a really strong episode in favour of a scientific solution and tells people in a funny way that nonsense is just that.

If there is a scientific basis underneath something, look at it.

What happened?

[willijeffery · 1/10 · 6 September 2023]

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'.

Best episode so far!

[pledgerock · 8/10 · 9 September 2023]

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.

The worst Futurama episode I have ever seen

[mattiasflgrtll6 · 3/10 · 15 September 2023]

There are a multitude of problems with how the topic of COVID is handled. For example it had already been done by many other shows. Putting an original spin on a tired subject is never easy, as was proven by shows which parodied Donald Trump. It's the same case with COVID. Eventually it becomes difficult to come up with anything new to say about it. But hey, it's Futurama. Surely they if *anybody* would have a clever sci-fi variant on it?

Nope. Besides the virus being renamed Explovid-23 (And COVID-19 has apparently existed for 1000 years, which makes so little sense I don't know where to start) and everyone becoming angry after being infected, what you expect is exactly what you get. Commence the goofy Zoom call, the incorrect mask wearing, the conspiracy theories, the silly anti-vaxxers, the distrust in science, the constant coughing, the q-tip tests... You get the idea. Of course a few of these things would be necessarily to include given the subject matter, but when all you have all the basic tropes and nothing else, there exists no real purpose for this story to exist in the Futurama universe. Even the bitcoin episode from the same season felt less dated than this!

On top of that, the pacing is more sluggish than the slowest slugworms. The Hermes sideplot is especially horrible with this, with every sidequest being taken with no real humor to be found and a poor, uninspired use of Barbados Slim. I could comment on his recasting alone (Which is a new problem with the revival), but even if you look aside that his character has no purpose other than delivering exposition and furiously flirting with LaBarbara. I know that's been a running gag throughout the show, but somehow it was too over-the-top and irritating here. You could've had two jokes dedicated to it, that's it. Otherwise it's gonna start feeling like Bonnie and Joe's toxic marriage in Family Guy.

Wasting characters in general is one of the biggest issues. Wernstrom got very underutilized in the Comedy Central era, so seeing him return should've been a pleasure. But instead he shows up as a red herring, making you think he will play a major part in the plot only to never be seen again after the press conference. What the hell was the point of his appearance??? You can't play such a cruel trick and bring back a fan favorite just to have him do his schtick then fk off for the rest of the episode. They also do this with Nixon. And with Zapp. And with Leela's parents. That last one is particularly weird since they say at the start the new virus stems from the mutants living underground, yet they never come back to it at any point. This was a chance for two characters you don't see very often to get involved, but instead they choose to ignore it as if it never got brought up.

The characterization is not the best. Leela spends the entire thing behaving like a totally different person. Which would've been fine if the season hasn't struggled with writing her already. Leela can be a really cool and interesting character when they put their minds into it, but besides the premiere and Related To Items You've Viewed, I haven't found myself enjoying her a lot lately. Hopefully they move past this snag in her development soon, because I really don't want to see her becoming a blank slate which the writers can just throw stupid jokes on. Which speaking of that is exactly what happens with Amy as well. Making her a conspiracy theorist comes so out-of-left-field and exaggerates her personality from cute ditziness into straight-up moron. I hope they don't bring this side of her up again in the future, otherwise I might have to ask Bender to strangle the writers. Hermes, LaBarbara and Barbados are all bland at best and frustrating at worst. Zapp for the first time in the whole show didn't even make me chuckle.

Bender, bless his soul, is the only one who gave me a chuckle. Unfortunately he doesn't get used here much.

The ending tries to spread some sort of message about science, voodoo, religion or whatever the hell they were going for. It was so badly executed I was left with a dumbfounded look on my face once the credits rolled.

Nuturama is not a lost cause. I liked The Impossible Stream, Children Of A Lesser Bog and I Know What You Did Next Xmas, which even though they weren't perfect were still enjoyable. Please don't give us any more desperate attention hoing like "What if COVID, but it's the fuuuuture". You can do better. *We* deserve better.

Please be silent and return my money once again

[joonasjjr · 1/10 · 24 September 2023]

Kinda curious that imdb deleted my review and now I have to post it again. I wonder why the deletion tho. I wonder if it was due to mentioning ESG

Just atrocious. Worse than what happened to the simpsons.

The earlier episodes this season have been okay at best compared to the edge the original had but this episode actually hurt to watch.

Futurama used to have brilliant societal commentary. Now it's whatever this is. It being late is obviously sort of understandable since they could've not predicted that the pandemic would end but the thing is: covid jokes were not fun or inventive even during the pandemic. They were the worst of both millenial and boomer humor. Doing an entire episode of it just SCREAMS the effect of the ESG-rating on what kind of scripts are nowadays mandatory to get your project made.

This makes me sad. In oh, so many ways.

This show ought to stop trying too hard at being relevant to current times

[ddempseylewis · 3/10 · 17 September 2023]

This show often tries to be relevant to current political and cultural trends but here the writers tried too hard at this and just feel short. There are too many plot points and plot twists going all at once, lots of lame and repetitive jokes, the omicronians got hamfisted in the episode just because a variant was named after them in real life. And Lrrr's own son, Jrrr almost got his characterization destroyed when he spreaded online misinformation on his dad's request to make earth ready to invade. Jrrr was always a kind kid who didn't want to invade planets or kill things as established in "T: The Terrestrial" so this was somewhat out of character for him and he did that for no reason or personal gain out of seemingly just to "obey his parents" and he only had just one line in the episode. Lrrr and Ndnd are sadly flanderized beyond recognition at this point as all they do is invade planets, bicker and domestically abuse each other, and use their own son as a tool to get what they want. They were also extremely stupid as it is never a wise idea to invade a planet during a pandemic, which they had to learn the hard way. That omicronian couple should just divorce already. And omicronians invading earth has just become so overused and cliched by this point. That being said the way covid is was handled was just an absolute mess as was just plain nonsensical due to the incorporation of rage transmission, and the art of voodoo. This episode just shows that Futurama should stop trying so hard at being relevant to the 21st century and instead should just stick to original storylines.

struggle against the originality

[talllwoood13 · 1/10 · 12 October 2023]

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.