Original release date: September 4, 2023
The premise: An outbreak of EXPLOVID-23 sweeps Earth, causing extreme irritability to all who become infected. While the Professor desperately tries to peddle his vaccine, Hermes travels to New New Orleans, believing he can find a cure for the virus, which is actually a unique form of zombie-ism.
The reaction: I previously talked about how Futurama tackling specific current events appears to be divisive amongst fans, but in my opinion, if the show can take something from our present and put an interesting futuristic bent on it, it could still make for an entertaining story. Ever since we saw glimpses of the show tackling COVID from the trailers for this season, I was trying to hope for the best for this episode. Unfortunately, all of the COVID stuff was pretty much what I was worried it would be. It was almost like they were running through a 2020 checklist: nasal swabs, working from home on Zoom, not wearing masks correctly, vaccine skeptics… There are definitely a number of different routes you could take with showing how a future society would deal with an epidemic (ground they’ve actually covered already with season 6’s “Cold Warriors,”) but here, it’s just the same COVID jokes we’ve seen before. The only real added bit of social commentary here is how the virus increases your level of anger, representative how everyone seemed to be at each others throats in arguing about COVID and the vaccine. But even that didn’t seem to actually build in a way that felt meaningful. Leela is the only initial carrier of the crew, and she’s angry from the start, but we’ve seen her be incredibly pissed off in a normal setting, so it didn’t feel all that special. Then people are kind of occasionally pissed, until the end when it becomes an angry mob at the end. But who cares, really? The pandemic made everybody more insane, yeah, we’re all well aware. Meanwhile, the Hermes plot… I honestly don’t even get the point of it. He theorizes the virus is actually zombieism, like the 28 Days Later insane rage kind, but nobody acts very zombie-like at all to me. By the end when everyone gets into a big fight, they could have had them descend into nonverbal growls like zombies or something, how hard would that have been? None of the New New Orleans stuff is really funny, then Hermes arrives at “Voodoo HQ,” and is surprised Barbados Slim and LaBarbara are there, and then they just make the vaccine. And unless I’m missing something, there’s no joke to it at all: LaBarbara explains that the serum tricks the body into thinking it has the virus when it really doesn’t. Then she tests it out by injecting Hermes and making out with Barbados to test his rage levels, because the show is explicitly cucking Hermes now instead of heavily implying it, I guess. They also inject the shot in your arm while puncturing a voodoo doll of yourself, but that doesn’t actually do anything? I really don’t understand, this whole thing had nothing to do with voodoo, and even if they had leaned into that aspect, it certainly isn’t very futuristic. In the end, Hermes concludes with a line (“Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from science”) that I later learned is a subversion of a famous quote from Arthur C. Clarke (“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”) But was it? They synthesized the vaccine in a secret lab in New New Orleans, there didn’t seem to be any magic involved whatsoever. Unless the voodoo doll the needle goes through has something to do with it, but they never explain it? The whole voodoo/zombie aspect of the story felt like they forgot to develop it, it’s barely even a part of it. What a waste. It’s almost like the writers felt obligated to do a COVID episode, but why do it if you have nothing unique to say? The Simpsons just did their COVID episode a couple months ago, and it was basically the same thing.
Random thoughts and tidbits:
– The little optimistic hope I had for this episode was knocked at the start, when the first scene is Mayor Poopenmeyer announcing that finally, after a thousand years, they had finally triumphed over COVID-19. I get that that’s the joke, then they immediately get hit with a new COVID-esque virus, but it just felt very eyeroll-y. It would have been better if the Professor made some offhand comment about how the new virus is reminiscent of a similar outbreak from Fry’s time, but then Fry has no idea what he’s talking about and says some joke.
– The fact that EXPLOVID-23 was originated from the sewer mutants isn’t even an element of the plot, other than explaining why Leela is an early carrier. You have that entire setting and all the established characters down there, and you just ignore it? Although the ending of “The Mutants are Revolting” has kind of muddied up the mutants a bit. They were forced to live underground, now they are allowed back up on the surface… but they’re all still living down there anyway.
– Trapping Leela in the Angry Dome for quarantine feels like a good example of fan service, where they bring an old thing back for a contextual reason that makes sense. But then we also get a bunch of guest reappearances in this one: Barbados Slim, the fortune teller robot, Dr. Banjo, and most randomly of all, Umbriel and the Colonel, who’s trying to track down that flaky dugong from Macon that stood his daughter up. I dunno, I feel like if you’re gonna bring these characters back, there should be an interesting or funny reason for it. Like Dr. Banjo, in his initial appearance in “A Clockwork Origin,” a hyper-intelligent great ape denying the existence of evolution was in and of itself a funny concept. Him being against the vaccine isn’t really anything, they just needed to fill the “Joe Rogan science skeptic” role and chose him. I don’t have a problem with fan service, but what we’ve seen of it this season feels mostly like trying to get points from diehard fans, or worse, a hesitance to come up with any new characters. Like it seems like we’ve seen Hattie and/or Petunia in every episode so far. Don’t other people live in New New York?
– More recasting shit: Barbados Slim is now unsurprisingly voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson, doing a pretty dead-on soundalike (he also voiced URL in the last episode, and I didn’t even notice.) Also, everybody’s favorite supporting character Scoop Chang is voiced by the same guy who’s doing Leo Wong now. To the four Scoop-heads out there, what are your thoughts on this?
– I totally forgot about the omicron variant until we finally reveal Omicron Persei 8, and I felt stupid for not calling it. That is the exact reason why they did this episode, but even that felt like such a thud of a reveal. Lrrr is responsible for spreading misinformation about the virus to make Earth vulnerable for attack, but then when he and Ndnd land, they get infected too. That could have been the whole episode, make that the first act reveal and go from there. Throw the Hermes plot line away and just have it be a Omicronians episode.
Me Blog Write Good 
This episode made me realize why these current events Hulu episodes are failing: the satire drives the plot now. Well, that and the satire sucks, but the first part’s more interesting.
Futurama and Simpsons episodes used to have plots driven by characters and their narrative arcs, their goals and challenges determining what would happen next. The writers took every opportunity to sprinkle satire into those stories, but the stories came first. There was always a logical progression.
This episode, though? What even happens in it, structurally? I watched it and can only say it’s about Covid happening and then not. Leela gets quarantined, Hermes goes to Louisiana, Farnsworth and Wernstrom invent vaccines, lots of stuff technically happens but it doesn’t happen for any narrative reason. It doesn’t happen to tell a story. It only happens so the writers can craft such witty groundbreaking satire as “Zoom meetings have connection problems sometimes!”
These episodes aren’t stories about people, about Futurama’s cast of characters we grew to love. They’re vanity pieces for the Futurama writers to show us their incredible, hilarious takes on current-ish events. Those takes have a place, of course, but if you fundamentally aren’t telling stories about people then why express yourself through a narrative sitcom? Start a podcast or something. It’s a lot less hassle.
Whilst the previous episode felt like a good step forward this one felt like several steps back. Why make interesting observations about the pandemic when you can just rehash the same jokes everyone else made years ago? Throw in a messy, nonsensical plot and you have a whole heap of rubbish. Certainly the worst episode of the revival (so far) and one of the worst of the series as a whole. It’s not a good sign when the Simpsons pandemic related episode was better than this.
“The little optimistic hope I had was knocked at the start, when the first scene is Mayor Poopenmeyer announcing that finally, after a thousand years, they had finally triumphed over COVID-19. I get that that’s the joke, then they immediately get hit with a new COVID-esque virus, but it just felt very eyeroll-y.”
Didn’t South Park do the exact same thing in their COVID episode(s)? The South Park COVID episodes weren’t perfect but I feel like they were leaps and bounds better than… this because 1. It actually came out during the pandemic 2. A lot of it was just about how the South Park characters react to lockdown (Cartman loving quarantine, Randy trying to capitalize on people being home by selling them weed, etc).
Jesus fuck, what a bad episode.
“Also, everybody’s favorite supporting character Scoop Chang is voiced by the same guy who’s doing Leo Wong now. To the four Scoop-heads out there, what are your thoughts on this?”
Well, he seems to be imitating Maurice LaMarche’s take on the character rather than Billy West’s, and I would say he does a pretty good LaMarche.
According to the Infosphere, Scoop was originally voiced by Dave Herman. The difference between him and Maurice on the CC years is very subtle, I didn’t even realize.
I meant David Herman, not sure why I wrote Billy West!