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Futurama Reviews: S09E09 -"The Futurama Mystery Liberry"

And we have another Futurama anthology episode before we close out the season. As I stated last year, the Futurama anthology episodes have had diminishing returns since the Comedy Central run and “The Prince and the Product” is the worst they’ve yet done. On some level I appreciate the writers’ interest in branching into something completely different, but often these are just shallow concepts struggling to find the joke, and especially with the low episode count already give the appearance of the show running out of ideas in their own universe.
But while “The Futurama Mystery Liberry” is not particularly great, it does at least break the downward spiral and might be the best version of this episode since “Reincarnation” at the end of season six. Being hosted by LeVar Burton probably helps, as he brings his Reading Rainbow earnestness to a framing device about children’s mystery books, and what follows are a triptych of parodies in that genre.
The first turns to the classics. Leela is the girl detective Lancey Trew always on the lookout for minor mysteries to solve and notices a lot of things disappearing -even if they were there a second earlier. She goes on the look-out until she herself disappears and her friends the Smardy Boys -Fry and Bender- take up the case. Apart from everything in Outskirt Town disappearing at a ridiculous pace, the running gag of the story is the casual meanness of both Lancey and the Boys to their sidekicks -Tomboy Andy (Amy) and Portly Chud (Zoidberg). I’m not well versed in either book series to know if this is an accurate observation, though both being relics of the 1930s it would make sense. Ultimately once the house and town itself disappear it’s smart kid Tom Snift (The Professor) who reveals a wormhole inside a grandfather clock as the cause. Fry and Bender go in to investigate, safely tied to Chud’s jalopy, only for him and Andy to cut it loose out of revenge and escape as the whole world is sucked into the wormhole -an abrupt and bleak ending a little in the style of “The Futurama Holiday Spectacular”.
This won’t persist however -and the next chapter is easily the best. It’s a Tintin pastiche and unlike the others actually redesigns the characters and animation to fit Herge’s aesthetics. Everyone speaking in cartoon French accents, Fryfry, along with his dog Zoidy, Captain de Leela, and Professor Algebra fly their Planet Express plane to Argentina so the Professor can marry the love of his life whom he fell out of touch with after the war (the little insinuation that Mom is a Nazi in hiding is one of the best gags of the episode). When they get there though, she reveals it was a mistake as she is actually married to Dr. Geology (Wernstrom) whose rotting bones Fryfry later finds dead in the side of a cliff. Geology is alive however and as they investigate they realize half the skeleton is missing. Algebra believes that Geology stole the rest of the find, but Fryfry using a special crank from his last adventure planted onto his globe, literally rewinds the Earth to discover who really stole the bones -going as far back to when South America and Africa were connected, and in a clean twist accidentally crushing Dr. Geology between the tectonic plates, revealing the body actually was his all along, his bones splintered across the continents. It’s probably the sharpest part of the episode, a genuinely smart and funny bit of time travel shenanigans for a resolution that feels equal parts in the spirit of its subject and Futurama itself.
The last sequence is the weakest, as Bender stars as boy detective Wikipedia Brown looking at everything through his magnifying glass. Leela playing his bodyguard Lolly, he first solves a minor mystery of who ate most of Hattie McDougal’s Saltwater Taffy -it was Claws Pinchy (Zoidberg), leader of the local miscreant gang (that includes Fry, Hermes, and Scruffy), before embarking on another case involving flaming bags of dog doo on people’s porches. After very little detective work and again pointing the finger at Claws (whose grim alibi was being executed for the previous crime), Wikipedia can't figure it out until Neil deGrasse Tyson comes in and quite literally explains the subatomic nature of the dog doo and where it came from in a cosmic sense -distracting everyone at least momentarily from the fact that he is the culprit.
It's a good, silly ending to a very rushed story; and I was pleased to find several strong jokes and funny lines scattered throughout the episode. It could have used more variety, the first and third parts are far too similar genres of satire; the third especially feels a touch half-assed -I think a Poirot story centred on Zoidberg would have been a better fit. But it's actually pretty okay as far as Futurama anthology episodes go -charming and amusing enough with solid guesrt performances and a bit of fun stylized animation in the middle; though I don't think that necessarily means the tradition should continue. You can only play the LeVar Burton card once.
And here are some stray observations:
  • It’s interesting comparing these Futurama anthology shows to their counterpart Treehouse of Horror series from The Simpsons. On The Simpsons, the Halloween special is an excuse for the show to go weird with an idea or concept. Weirdness is Futurama’s bread and butter (it’s no coincidence that during his time on The Simpsons, the bulk of David X. Cohen’s writing credits were for Treehouse of Horror segments), so an anthology episode like this is weirdly a way of Futurama being more typical.
  • Fry and Bender should have just been the Adventure Boys, the pseudonym names are so blandly effortless throughout the episode.
  • “Must you deface my finest glooouube!” It’s the awkward pronunciation on that last word from Billy West that makes the line.
  • “It’s a priceless fossil dating to geologic antiquity.” “You’re a priceless fossil dating to geologic antiquity!”
  • Bender, Amy, and Hermes show up at the end of the second story to be the Thom(p)son twins but as triplets. Felt like just an excuse to get everybody in there.
  • During the third story, Bender’s parents are URL and Petunia. URL I get, but Petunia is just the most random choice and speaks to an issue with Futurama not having a lot of women as tertiary recurring characters.
  • Wikipedia Brown’s teenage design is of course a callback to adolescent Bender’s look in “Teenage Mutant Leela’s Hurdles”. Though of course his backstory has been rebooted some three or four times since then.
  • Not generally a fan of Neil deGrasse Tyson, but I like the use of him here and the dumb way that he gets exposed. LeVar Burton is also a treat, as always. His earnest deliveries of deeply sarcastic lines are a highlight of the episode for sure: “Here’s another one I’ve been looking forward to because it’s so short.”
  • Where the anthology shows go from here I’m a bit worried. Especially given Disney now owns Futurama, I fear its only a matter of time before the show dips into the brand shilling that The Simpsons has been doing for a few years now.

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