This Week in Futurama - 11/21/10

Well well, looks like Futurama's sixth season wasn't done at just 12 episodes. Futurama is back, just this week, for a holiday special, which is kind of annoying since it's not even Thanksgiving yet. But alas, it's here, it aired, and now I'm going to review it...

Episode 13 - "The Futurama Holiday Spectacular"

This holiday special is very much in the vein of the "Tales of Interest" episodes, except there's no use of the What-If-Machine, instead opting for commercial breaks to take the place of actual transitions, so each short is still separate from the other.

In the first short, the Xmas one, Fry longs for a pine tree for the holiday instead of the traditional palm. But pine trees have been extinct for years, and so the Planet Expres crew finds a lab that may still have ancient seeds ... but they might be contaminated, and lets just say it doesn't turn out well for Earth ... or me, the viewer, because this was generally uninteresting and unfunny when compared to previous robot Santa episodes.

The next short is for Robonukkah, Bender's made-up holiday to get off of work. So no Hanukkah Zombie, as this is strictly for the fake holiday, even if most of the humor really is playing off the real holiday. Bender claims to need oil for 6 and a half weeks of fembot wrestling, but oil no longer exists on Earth so the crew plunges to the depths of the Earth to search for some... and die. Bwomp Bwommmmmp. The short was amusing, but nothing great.

The final short is for Kwanzaa, so I'm going to assume this is the first Kwanzaa special outside of like ... Rugrats. Everyone comes to Hermes' house for Kwanzaa, when they realize that they don't have actual beeswax candles for the kinara, and it turns out that all the bees are filled with parasites, so the crew must go to the giant space bees, and fight off parasite with the spirit of Kwanzaa. Still, nothing fantastic here, but this was definitely the best of the bunch.

Overall, the special was nothing fantastic but there were definitely laughs to be had. It's just annoying that they finally have another "Tales of Interest" type episode ... and all three shorts basically have the same exact set up, but just the holiday is different. And not that I'm an Al Gore hater or anything, but this episode was incredibly preachy about global warming etc, and Mr. Gore was in the special throughout. And well... sometimes enough's enough.

Overall Score: 7/10

And yet, Season 6 still isn't over, but for this year it is. New episodes will be back sometime next year, so look forward to more ho-hum reviews...