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Futurama Reviews: S09E06 -"Attack of the Clothes"

One of the best types of Futurama episode is the one that takes a look at an environment or industry in our own world and imagine its equivalent in the year 3000 …er, 3024. Episodes like “Mars University”,  “That’s Lobstertainment!”, “A Leela of Her Own”, or “Future Stock” (season three had a lot of them). Even if they’re not among the series’ best, I always love them for their funny and interesting world-building. And “Attack of the Clothes” is one of those episodes, exploring the fashion industry and fast fashion trends through this futuristic-extrapolation-on-the-present lens. It’s not as creative or demented as such episodes past, but it is pretty curious and pointed.
A densely plotted and high-paced episode though, that begins with the Professor “recycling” body parts for a science competition -essentially becoming Dr. Frankenstein as he creates a hulking body that he is eventually convinced to get a Head for and chooses from the Head Museum’s supermodel line-up Cara Delevingne. Now Delevingne has had credits on random episodes these past two seasons -for apparently voicing some animal sound effects, which has been very odd for such a big-name guest. Here in voicing herself though, she’s much more prominent in the episode, in a manner akin to guests like Beck and Lucy Liu from the early days, as she guides the Professor through what becomes a new career. He fails to win the science award, but the reaction to the elaborate dress he designs for Delevingne’s awkwardly shaped body sets him on the road to becoming a fashion designer sensation. And later through Zoidberg’s urging he develops a way to mass produce what are highly intricate and specifically styled outfits (involving RNA coding and moth gestation to create the perfect silk) for the general public. But these outfits moult after just one day and must be discarded through a wormhole. In the last act we find out what is at the other end of that wormhole.
It’s a busy episode, but luckily a lot of it is focused on the relevant topic, satire, and even messaging. It’s written by Ariel Landensohn, and she really seems to understand the subject, its character and various critiques. As far as the fashion world goes, it nabs a Tim Gunn appearance, some good jokes on the vanity and shallowness of that industry (like the clothes, the Professor has a new elite pet he trashes every day as well), and it manages some pretty good representations of chic style that are brazenly modern but fit this world well -where one of the most famous models is an amoeba (maybe the winner of the 3000 Miss Universe Pageant from “The Lesser of Two Evils”). Delevingne is clearly not above making fun of her profession, and the episode allows her some good comedy material to play, especially by the end. And positioning Zoidberg in opposition to the designer Professor here, actually casting his poverty in a new socially-conscious way I thought was quite smart. I like when the show decides to use Zoidberg as an everyman. Of course he immediately becomes obsessed with his new-found sense of style -prompting the crew to venture into the wormhole just so he can get back his pristine white pants.
Where they find themselves is a world that has been destroyed by all the discarded clothes that have been sent there through daily disposal of virtually everybody on Earth. And it brings to the fore the problem of the environmental impact of fast fashion, a concern of our era as well, though understandably diminished by everything else distracting us. This episode therefore intends to raise awareness, which it does in incredibly blunt if bewildering terms by the end.
The circumstances of the episode’s ending I’m mixed on. At the last minute the crew discovers that the world destroyed by all the clothes is in fact Earth in the future (cue obligatory Planet of the Apes joke); but that future winds up being immediate, as clothes rain down on New New York and the episode ends on what might in another show be construed as a cliffhanger. Certainly with the portal in the sky it resembles the ending of Bender’s Big Score leading into The Beast with a Billion Backs. The allegorical message comes through, that the damage from this industry’s wastefulness  is already here and needs to be dealt with in the present, but it makes for a non-resolution that’s more confusing than anything. Episodes like “When Aliens Attack” and last season’s “Related to Items You Viewed” also ended on notes of real devastation or bleakness for Earth, but they did so as part of a scathing joke, which this episode could have done too if the future Earth turned out to be just a few decades away and everyone just decided to ignore it -as is the prevailing attitude to ecological collapse today.
Instead it’s a very awkward attempt at a thematically cogent ending for an episode that was otherwise quite decent. “Attack of the Clothes” is not particularly special by general Futurama standards, but by those of Hulu’s run it is more remarkable -an episode that very much feels like those great silly world-building exercises of classic Futurama and plays around pretty gratifyingly with its subject.
Now for some stray observations:
  • The Professor’s other new invention: the Toelonger -probably the most useless of all his ThingLonger spin-offs.
  • I love the little detail of Leela covering Fry’s eyes during the the body reanimation process. It’s very cute.
  • In the Head Museum, I missed the joke of why Reagan called Obama “Mommy”. Is there some U.S. political comment that even I’m missing out on?
  • Fry is the one to recognize Cara Delevingne at the Head Museum. Fry should not be the one to recognize Cara Delevingne. When he was frozen she was eight. The show’s writers need to realize that while Fry initially represented a contemporary person in the future, the world he came from is now twenty-five years out of date.
  • Bill Nye is back again. Is he the show’s new Stephen Hawking?
  • “Mitosis, Lies, & Videotape” is one of my favourite offhand jokes of the entire series. “Lawrence of Amoeba” is good too but not as beautifully original.
  • I liked seeing the cameo by Umbriel! Though sadly not voiced by Parker Posey.
  • Zoidberg getting a lady back to his dumpster, I’m impressed. And always charmed to see Zoidberg get some love. Even though I wish it were Marianne from “Stench and Stenchibility”.
  • Cara Delevingne’s best line: “What is one life against a completely decent pair of pants?”
 
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