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3ACV09: The Cyber House Rules
First UK airing: Sky One, 8:30pm, 22-4-01
"But you're better than normal!
You're ab-normal!"
Digital TV -- better or worse than analogue? Not that
it makes a difference, since in a few years analogue broadcasts
will be terminated in the UK anyway, but tonight's broadcast
of Futurama showed up some of its
downsides. First of all, like a DVD, the more movement there
is on screen the more data is needed to update the picture --
unfortunately, as I understand it digital TV doesn't have anything
near the 10Mbit/sec maximum bandwidth of MPEG-2 since each channel
has to be multiplexed with others, so lots of movement causes
pixelisation every time there's a fast camera movement. Like,
f'rinstance, during the opening credits of Futurama.
Second of all, any transmission glitches cause total loss of
picture and audio -- which happened five times during
tonight's episode! A full hour of Simpsons without a single glitch,
and then...
Still, enough of my problems with 21st century technology.
This was another good, if not awesome, episode, and was actually
the first proper Leela episode for exactly a year (in production
code terms, anyway), since we haven't seen any major emotional
events in our favourite cyclops' life since 2ACV09. The subplot
with Bender's new family was rather entertaining too, particularly
the bit in O'Zorgnax's. (Hasn't the place gone downhill since
Amy scored with Armando, though?) The moment with the baseball
bat was just a masterpiece of comic timing, which would be impossible
to do in live action.
I did think the fact that everyone thought Leela only
seemed normal (in the 'average' sense) with two eyes was a bit
weird, since in plenty of past episodes it's been shown that
most people think she's quite the babe -- until they notice the
one giant eye, anyway. She seemed to fall for Adlai even faster
than for Alkazar, too! No wonder Fry got so jealous. That makes
Leela two for two when it comes to failed relationships with
guys whose names begin with 'A'... guess that's me out, then.
Although this wasn't one of the funniest episodes
ever, Bender's child cruelty made me smile -- and the jokes would,
if done in a live-action sitcom with a human 'father', probably
have never got past the censors. Being a robot obviously lets
you get away with a lot more (although not enough, as the banning
of 'A Tale Of Two Santas', with Bender's Xmas rampage, showed).
Leela's side of the story didn't have the same kind of emotional
payoff as Fry's (oddly similar) odyssey of self-improvement in
'Parasites Lost', but it was still good to see her actually be
happy for a while.
Too bad that Adlai was as dull as a character as he
was meant to be (if that makes sense) -- to make dullness work
for a comedy character you really need somebody like Cliff from
Cheers, but Adlai was like a human version of the people from
the Neutral planet. Mind you, the Professor gawping like a moron
and Zoidberg's ink pouch helped make up for it. Now, here's hoping
for a glitch-free episode next week!
Rating: 
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