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2ACV08: Raging Bender
First UK airing: Sky One, 7:00pm, 21-5-00
"Crippling pain? That's not covered
by my insurance fraud!"
Mildly interesting fact; during its run, 'Robot Wars'
got higher ratings on BBC2 than 'The Simpsons'. If something
like Ultimate Robot Fighting ever comes along for real, it'll
be a big hit.
'Raging Bender' was laugh-out-loud, start-to-finish
hilarious. And if that's not a good way to kick off a review,
I don't know what is. Even before the full-on MST3K reference
the episode was already off to a cracking start, and afterwards,
frankly Calculon could have kept on reading out his paperwork
and the show would still have got the thumbs-up from me. These
writers are my heroes!
Before I saw the episode, I didn't really think that
the one-liner Sky used to promote it -- "Bender becomes
a wrestling champ" -- had much potential. Well, it just
goes to show I can be wrong. (G'uh.) As well as being a Bender
episode, it was also a Leela show, filling in more about her
past (I guess she's been boring the PE staff with tales of the
Orphanarium since 'Xmas Story'). Fnorg did sound a lot like Leo
Wong, though. Billy West on the case again?
There was so much excellent stuff in this episode
that detailing them individually would take up way too much of
my time and your bandwidth. So here's a list: the love toaster.
The brain slugs. The super-small Slurm and its zitty robo-teen
seller. "Don't talk during the movie" (see below).
The M-14 rating and its response. Joe Eszterhas. "Come quickly
before a fiery explosion chases someone down a hallway!"
Multiple-choice movies (I used to review videogames for a living,
and these kind of things always used to suck bigtime). "I'm
gonna open a file of whoop-ass on you!" The quote at the
top of this page. Bender's press-ups. More brain slugs. "Quit
scratching your axehole and get out there." Amy stopping
a brain slug incident. "You're more than popular, you're
pure lowest common denominator." The Foreigner. URFL (say
it out loud). Sergeant Faeces Processor. "I'm going to teach
you to fight like a girl." The coathanger. George Foreman's
utterly bizarre, completely non sequitur and hence extremely
funny fat-sucking pipe. "You were an excellent student.
Too bad I was a lousy teacher!" Yet more brain slugs. All
in all, a laugh-your-ass-off episode.
The return of the brain slugs was hilarious, which
I think I might have mentioned. Gotta love those brain slugs!
And the fact that Fry is immune to them was the perfect capper
to a joke that was started five episodes earlier. Hell, Voyager
doesn't have that kind of continuity. (Although I noticed that
they're now translucent... pick, pick, pick.)
As for the MST3K gag... as soon as I saw the silhouettes
against the screen, I thought, "They have to do an
MST3K joke" -- and they did it, they bloody well did it!
Too bad they didn't get Trace or Bill to do the voice of Crow,
but I guess you can't have everything. It's just good to know
that the writers of one of my favourite shows watch one of my
other favourite shows, and seeing as maybe one person in 100,000
(in the UK, at least) even knows who Tom Servo and Crow T Robot
are, as far as I'm concerned I'm in good company. Too bad they
didn't get Mike or Joel in, though -- I guess they weren't famous
enough for a jar.
Now all I need is for those bastards at Sci-Fi UK
to show the last two seasons of MST3K instead of constantly repeating
season seven, and Sundays will be the perfect TV day!
Rating: 
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