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Futurama Reviews: S08E07 -"Rage Against the Vaccine"


“Rage Against the Vaccine” was one of the episodes I was most put off by when the title was released. Like “The Impossible Stream” or the upcoming “Zapp Gets Canceled”, it implied the tackling of a subject extremely topical -and Futurama doesn’t have a great history with engaging in highly specific topical subject matter, especially from a team of writers who, for however skilled they are, are likely out of touch with a lot of modern political or cultural issues. However a younger writer, Cody Ziglar, is credited on this episode -and I feel like that’s a likely reason it’s not utterly terrible.
It is largely bad though, albeit with a few bright spots -not through being out-of-touch so much as just kind of lame. It goes through a bunch of very obvious and unoriginal COVID-themed jokes (the nasal swab bit where it’s supposed to go up into your brain is as poor a gag as something off of Jimmy Fallon), when it’s not just mindlessly referencing something. Do you remember Zoom? And people being on it in their underwear? How about that lawyer who wasn’t a cat? In quick succession all are just referenced with no observation or joke attached. And when the episode is just running through a check-list of COVID and vaccine tropes, it can be pretty boring to watch.
Apparently picked up from her parents in the sewer (undergoing its own pandemic) Leela contracts EXPLOVID-23, which soon spreads to everyone else -the symptoms being sneezing and random fits of anger. This of course ties in to the commentary of divisiveness (not much commentary at all, but we’ll get to that), as the Professor formulates a vaccine that is discredited in the social media sphere by a coordinated misinformation campaign driven by Lrrr of the Planet Omicron Persei 8 to render Earth easier to invade. Meanwhile Hermes goes to Louisiana to seek out an ancient Voodoo cure.
It’s in that storyline where the episode is fun and interesting at times, if for no other reason than being disconnected from any expected pandemic trope. Hermes isn’t suggesting bleach or seeking out hydroxochloroquine, as would have been an easier punchline -he’s going to an unexpected place for his solvent. And it allows the show to go somewhere new, even if thirty-first century Louisiana is primarily another stereotype -as is everything surrounding voodoo there. It also provides Hermes the most substantial story arc he’s gotten this season, so that’s welcome. And I’ll say I like the framing of the disinformation pipeline as an intentional ploy to make Earth easier for an alien power to invade. It’s got problems wrapped up in it (attributing the fake news phenomenon to one all-powerful actor, thereby de-legitimizing it as its own conspiracy), but it’s a twisting of popular conspiracy rhetoric same as the Professor’s vaccine actually containing the nano-bots your crazy uncle thinks are in real vaccines, only here they do the job of destroying the virus just as any antibody -and it’s worth remembering all the far more harrowing things people put up with in this universe.
But the episode is very reductive on a lot of it’s satirical points -it’s virtually forced to due to the brief running time. For one thing, it loses just about all credibility for satire by attributing the anger and “divisiveness” to a virus. That just completely fails to engage with the underlying factors that contribute to the hyper-politicized issues it attempts to take aim at here.  The episode will show people fighting with each other over small disagreements, disregarding mask mandates (the episode itself seems to consider masking ineffective), it’ll feature Dr. Banjo (from “A Clockwork Origin”) hosting a Daily Wire-style podcast on the subject of the Professor’s vaccine. Yet it refuses to actually get into the weeds of this anger, because doing so would mean sacrificing its neutral position. A liberal neutral position, but neutral nonetheless; where simple civility in disagreements is implied to be the answer -that or a magic cure. Never mind any populist, political context, the actual severity of certain views and what they entail, or the concept of righteous anger in general. It’s all the same nuance-evading, cross the aisle, hug-it-out bullshit that speaks to a toothless way of approaching zeitgeist material. More than that, it’s just dull.
“Rage Against the Vaccine” is broadly on the side of science, which is to be expected of Futurama of course. It has a curious little theme at the end, when Hermes’ much refined voodoo solution turns out to work. “Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from science” he says -which read to me beyond the Arthur C. Clarke reference as an acknowledgement of how science can sometimes validate culturally traditionalist medicines. A nice sentiment, even as it clashes with the still mostly corrupted image of voodoo the episode presents. Still, the episode isn’t very good beyond that subplot and a few isolated corners. The jokes aren’t quite so dated as “The Impossible Stream”, but they aren’t funny either, and the weakness of the topicality brings the episode down considerably. And given it’s approach here, I’m not particularly confident in next week’s outing.
Now for some stray observations:
  • At least when it comes to sickness and quarantine, Futurama did a far better episode with “Cold Warriors” from season six -an episode that now seems a little ahead of its time.
  • COVID-19 is finally defeated at the start of the episode after 1004 years, a bit that could have been bleakly funny if it didn’t feel so forced. Bill Nye shows up here, strangely his first appearance on Futurama.
  • The episode that I feel “Rage Against the Vaccine” most draws comparison to is season four’s “Crimes of the Hot”, which was also dealing with a fairly topical science-related subject: global warming. But that was a theme broad enough that it doesn’t feel gimmicky all these years later. It’s satire isn’t mostly made up of specific references and it features a more focused and character-based narrative.
  • Barbados Slim is reprised, and still perhaps is casually hooking up with LaBarbara. And Professor Wernstrom shows up to promote some quack vaccine that features magnetism side effects. We also see the return of the Fortune Teller Robot from “The Honking” and Umbriel and the Colonel from “The Deep South”. Futurama is by now like The Simpsons, where it creates less new characters to fill minor roles so much as it brings old ones back. It’s okay though -Barbados and Wernstrom are always great.
  • Another fairly cheap joke from the Gloom meeting (apart from the whole thing being called ‘Gloom’): Dwight dancing in his underwear in the background of Hermes’ feed as reference to that BBC journalist whose kid wandered into his video during a serious report.
  • Despite being seemingly the catalyst, Leela is consigned to the episode’s C-plot, where she is quarantined in the Professor’s all-purpose dome. Fry brings her food and is there for her in spite of the anger symptoms, eventually risking infection (and being beaten to a pulp) to be in there with her. It’s not much, but I’ll always love some Fry and Leela sweetness.
  • Also, for John DiMaggio being first-billed this episode, Bender sits out a lot of it. It’s probably his smallest role in a show this season. But he does get the small end tag and one joke where he being unable to contract the virus doesn’t stop him from going into a “kill all humans” rampage.

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