This Week in Futurama - 7/22/10

A day late, but it's here, sorry for the lack of updates.

Episode 6 - "Lethal Inspection"

After a war reenactment, Bender decides to gloat about how physically superior he is to his fleshy human (and decapodian) co-workers, and claims superiority over them in the name of Inspector #5, the person that approved him in the factory. That is until he springs an oil leak and starts dealing with the thoughts of his own mortality. So, he sets out on a quest to find this Inspector #5, and it leads him and Hermes to the Central Bureaucracy and then on an episode-long adventure.

The most awkward part of this whole episode is that it stars the unlikely duo of Bender and Hermes. Even in Hermes-centric episodes he doesn't appear that much. So to have this awkward pairing of him and Bender was bizarre yet surprisingly fresh. In fact, I wasn't even sure what to think of this entire episode... until the ending.

And to continue on that though, perhaps the best, but out of nowhere, part of the episode was the ending reveal that Hermes was Inspector #5 all along (which I guessed right away, just saying). Because it wasn't just a reveal, but it was a whole montage of Hermes' early bureaucratic life as an employee of Mom; it was very echo-y of the ending sequence of "Leela's Homeworld" from Season 4, and an unexpected return to the emotional tugging that Futurama used to have. An unexpected surprise of an episode, and definitely the better of the season so far, but still not in the show's overall top ranks.

Overall Score: 7.8/10