This Week in Futurama - 8/12/10

Oh yeah! Keeping these on time for once, here's another Futurama review.

Episode 9 - "A Clockwork Origin"

I was more then pissed off with the abysmal pile of unfunny trash that was last week's episode, so it was a surprise to no one this season that this week's episode was smart, funny, and just generally good (what with the good/bad pattern and all that).

After a heated debate about evolution, The Professor and most of his crew flee to a distant Earth-like planet where they discover that organic life forms aren't the only beings with the ability to evolve; yes, it's ROBOT EVOLUTION. There's also a sub-plot where Zoidberg becomes Q-bert's new father that has it's funny moments.

This episode was to the theory of evolution like "The Late Philip J. Fry" was to time-travel, but with a lot less heart and a bit more humor. Not that that's a bad thing, as I think this season and the 4 films forced a bit too much of Fry and Leela's romantic relationship on us without enough of anything else. Also, while I appreciate some references to the older seasons' episodes, there's some I'm not OK with; like someone digging up a fossilized dog and saying, "Oh no! It's another one of Fry's dogs!" which almost completely takes all the heart and emotion away from the episode "Jurassic Bark" which I still have a hard time watching because it's so emotionally jarring. But nit-picking aside, this was definitely an improvement over last week.

Overall Score: 9/10