This Week in Futurama - 7/1/10

I'm still iffy on the feature, as it's not only the first This Week In feature that focuses on an animated show, but a comedy, and not a story based science fiction program like all of our other TWi features. But I'll stick with it for now.

Episode 3 - "Attack of the Killer App"

This week, unlike the last two episodes, is Futurama's first desperate attempt to seem hip. We're onto a good start right? Yeah, let's just get on with it. So, MomCorp is releasing the new eyePhone (Get it? It's like an iPhone, but FOR YOUR EYE! So hilarious...) and everyone just has to have it despite all of its flaws, see how relevant this is? Ok, but get this... Mom also has a new service called Twitcher that lets you record your life and send it to people (this is comedy gold now, cause Twitter jokes are the next big thing) and now Fry and Bender are going to have a competition to see who can reach 1,000,000 followers first, and then Mom will release a virus or something.

But, how does one get to 1,000,000 followers? By posting trashy/gross videos! And what level does Fry steep to? Recording footage of Leela's singing ass-boil, Susan; Susan Boil... GET IT?! This is just funny stuff now. And, yeah, I'm done.

As an animator myself, I understand that the writing and animating process takes a lot of time and you end writing things long before they air and you risk writing about what is relevant then not being relevant by the time the episode actually airs... and this is a moment like that. Apple and Twitter jokes have really just become so cliche they hurt now, and even when they were somewhat new (I'm looking at you Conan O'Brien's Twitter Tracker segment from The Tonight Show) they still weren't very funny. Throw in a Susan Boyle joke (and have it voiced by the screechy Craig Ferguson) and what you have is an annoying cliche mess, that just tries too hard with one lame joke after the other.

I actually enjoyed the films and previous two episodes more than I thought I would, but this attempt at trying to be relevant was too awful to bear. It's almost like... the writers tried to reach out to the Comedy Central crowd that "thinks" they know what geeky humor is by talking about popular web services and cell phones, and not the Star Trek loving, D&D playing, actual nerds that look to Futurama for a taste of humor that we get and wouldn't see elsewhere. Less of this please.

Overall Score: 6/10