[FUT] Into The Wild Green Yonder

TV Programme: Futurama
Season: 5
Episode: 13-16
Date I watched this episode: 24/10/2009
Time since I last watched this programme: 2 months, 22 days.

Life has been busy recently and I'm only just getting around to writing up these reviews for finale day 7. The finale day did go ahead as planned and was very enjoyable, though not as good as some previous finale days. The day kicked off with this finale film/episode which was only released this year and rounds off the direct-to-DVD (5th) season of Futurama.

This episode was actually very good, making a nice surprise after the disappointing middle episodes. I don't think it was quite as good as the premiere "Bender's Big Score", but shared certain similarities with that episode, like a brilliant, shocking and heartwarming ending sequence, and a big cliffhanger.

We knew right from the title sequence that this episode, set in some form of Vegas, would be quite cool. We spent quite a lot of the episode on Mars, showing the Wong empire spanning both hemispheres, the giant golf course under construction, the streets and casinos of Mars Vegas. In fact I don't think New New York was in the episode at all. The side-story of Bender and the Mafia was slick, and managed to be both a bit of a spoof and almost theatrical in nature. Kind of reminded me of The Sopranos in places, which was intentional I'm sure.

The whole "secret society" thing was also quite cool and gave some meaning to this Number 9 Man who has been popping up in Futurama episodes for quite a while. The story was on such an epic scale and actually worked out quite nicely; it didn't feel like an anticlimax because of what was at stake.

I think though that every episodes this series has had a main theme: Time travel, dating, high fantasy and now this one really focussed on ecofeminism. Kind of an odd subject for Futurama but it really worked in a very natural way. It fitted quite nicely with the theme of sabotage, and the actual sabotages performed were cool in a "Fight Club" kind of way. In general the story fitted together well here and it actually felt shorter than earlier episodes this season, despite having the same running length. Fry and Leela really carried the story with the two aforementioned threads; the other characters faded into the background somewhat.

Obviously the episode was sprinkled with humour or it wouldn't be Futurama. Particular favourites of mine were "the Supreme Justice D.O.G.G. and the associate justices" and the mindreading sequence in the crowd at the end. In fact, in general the mindreading was pretty funny, both as a concept and in practice.

So as I mentioned before, the ending was brilliant. What with the crazy mindgames going on (Fry thinks he is the dark one, not unlike the shock at the end of "Bender's Big Score" when he realises he is Lars, but the bigger shock is that that isn't even true), the amazing trust that Leela has in Fry, the awe from the crowd as the Encyclopod is born, and all the time the crescendoing music, this is altogether an emotional and satisfying ending to the episode. My only complaint would be that the bug thing was rather silly and almost spoilt the mood.

There is a massive cliffhanger at the end of this season, with Leela and the Feministas on the run from Brannigan, Leela and Fry finally declaring their love for one another (only didn't they do that before in the season 4 finale?) and entering a wormhole leading to somewhere trillions of light-years away. So there's no end of what they can do with season 6, and hopefully it won't be just a standard season of disconnected episodes like with seasons 1-4.

All in all I enjoyed this episode a lot more than I thought I would after the last two. It's probably not been my favourite season of Futurama, but then it is hard to compare with the others due to the entirely different format. Hopefully on reflection, Groening and co will realise that the first and last episode were the real gems of the season, and try to build on that towards an amazing season 6.