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1ACV09: Hell Is Other Robots
First UK airing: Sky One, 8:00pm, 16-11-99
"Are you jacking on in there?"
I didn't see this episode in LA, but I did see trailer
after trailer after trailer for it -- all screeching out Leela's
line above, which is why I remember it. That one line has been
permanently burned into my cerebellum. Thanks a bundle, Fox.
Something I can't understand about American TV is
how the best of the shows can be so good (even as a Brit, I have
to admit that the notion of 'British TV is the best in the world'
is long dead, certainly for comedies) and their actual presentation
on screen so appalling. Huge channel ID bugs covering the screen,
ad breaks cutting in and out with no bumpers (must make it hell
to tape the shows you want to keep), and the sheer number and
frequency of commercial breaks. I saw the season finales of some
of my favourite shows in LA (The Simpsons, The X Files) and was
horrified by the fact that even these were all but unwatchable
at times. Just as you get settled... bam! Adverts. Bam! Back
into the show with no warning. Bam! More adverts, all of which
you've just seen about five minutes earlier. And as for having
ad breaks between the end of the show and the credits, and the
teaser/titles and the first act... what's the deal with that?
Sky (the channel showing Futurama
in the UK) once attempted to do that when it had a run of four
US comedies, including Seinfeld, back-to-back on Thursdays --
and it received so many complaints that it had to go back to
the traditional British break-every-15-minutes system after about
two weeks. No wonder satellite dishes are so popular in the States
-- everybody must be tapping into the commercial-free downlinks
to local stations.
Not that any of the above is relevant to 1ACV09 --
I just wanted to get it off my chest.
This episode actually left me confused, probably because
I ended up thinking about it too much. Was Robot Hell a fake
created by Bender's new religion, or was it a genuine robot afterlife?
Was Bender actually dead? Could any robot in Robot Hell be 'resurrected'
by escaping into New Jersey? Do robots go to Robot Hell if they
didn't believe in it when they were alive? What had the Beastie
Boys done to end up there? If there's a robot Devil, is there
a robot God? Would Beelzebot's singing have set off Bender's
gaydar? What is it with Matt Groening and expansive musical numbers
anyway?
My brain hurts.
If there's one thing that 'Hell' had going for it,
it was its unpredictability. The Beastie Boys to electricity
addiction to religion to 'a little thing called sleaze' to Futurama's first -- but not, I suspect,
last -- musical sequence is not something that appears to be
a logical progression. It all held together -- just -- but this
was easily the most bizarre episode of Futurama
to date. Personally, I thought it was a bit early in the show's
life to try something so off-format, especially as a season finale,
but then again Groening's name does guarantee the show a certain
amount of leeway to take risks. (Although that's probably what
Chris Carter thought about Harsh Realm, and look what happened
to that.)
This episode wasn't one of my favourites -- the best
jokes were counterbalanced by the uneasy feeling that I'd somehow
slipped into a parallel dimension while watching. It's odd, because
normally I'm innately drawn to 'weird' TV. On this occasion,
however, my subconscious feeling of what Futurama
is 'about' slipped out of sync with what I was seeing, resulting
in some major gear crashing for the last ten minutes or so. Maybe
that's just my problem; I don't know. I just hope that my subconscious
and reality can keep it more together in the future.
Rating: 
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