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Futurama Reviews: S10E07 -"Murderoni"

I would not have expected the “Pizzagate” episode of this season of Futurama to be the one I was most amused by, but at this stage in the show I’m very happy to be surprised. As far as direct analogues to real world culture and politics go, this is a subject I would expect the show to do better with than the pandemic or “cancel culture” -I feel like the writers actually understand its absurdity and could find a way to extrapolate on it in a warped Futurama way. The result isn’t so bold as I would like, and it gets tangled a bit in bureaucracy, but that is perfectly okay when the humour is there.
“Murderoni” actually starts in a place that seems irrelevant to the main plot but ultimately won’t be: Hermes sending Dwight off for his first day in the Young Bureaucrats Club, which Dwight proceeds to ditch immediately after getting on the bus. None the wiser, Hermes takes the gang out for pizza, to Blek and Blazucchi’s (which has relocated from its former residence across the street). Two things are discovered while there. One is that Dwight is secretly working there, not having any interest in following in his father’s footsteps after all, and the other is that Fishy Joe Gilman is running for city council on a platform of taxing small businesses to funnel into big business. Blazucchi, a ‘humble alien with legislative experience on her home planet’ is convinced to enter the race against him. At their first debate though, Fishy Joe alleges without evidence that Blazucchi’s Pizzeria, known for its tender pepperoni, has a secret basement where it harvests its pepperoni from human babies.
Setting aside the fact that this is a universe where it is established the occasional use of humans in products (Soylent Cola, Human Horn) isn’t terribly taboo, this is a strong satirical articulation of right-wing conspiracy nonsense. I particularly appreciate the use of the phrase “many people are saying”, which still turns up every time a conservative politician is about to spew some falsehood in an interview. Leela once again makes the intent brazen, winkingly addressing the audience by expressing disbelief anyone could fall for such lies. But of course people of the thirty-first century are just as gullible as those in the twenty-first century -robots too, as Bender quickly joins the protest against the pizzeria. Demonstrably though there is no basement to the restaurant, but Fishy Joe and his supporters demand the building plans which Blazucchi doesn’t have.
This is where Hermes essentially takes over the plot, as he volunteers to go search for the plans at the Central Bureaucracy -taking Dwight with him in the hopes of luring him to the bureaucratic profession. Their adventure provides opportunity for a bunch of bureaucracy jokes -a favourite past-time of the Futurama writing staff, and one they are actually pretty good at. Hermes and Dwight go deep into what appears to be another dimension within the Bureaucracy to find building plans as old as they need. It is a place full of strewn-about papers and files, with architecture designed like giant ephemera of mundane equipment. Here we learn of the greatest bureaucratic mind Bureaucrates, who ages ago disappeared in this realm and we see giant paper mites, one of whom Hermes must fight Perseus-style to continue the quest. Dwight is largely present so Hermes has someone to talk to but he proves a good foil. Eventually they find Bureaucrates still alive, whose anal-retentiveness is exactly as you might expect. His filing system is so elaborate and inefficient only he can understand it -he produces the document they need, though declines following them out of this space he is supposedly trapped forever in because it means using the emergency exit (“it’s for emergencies!”).
This section of the episode is unexpectedly fun -unfortunately, it’s counterpart back at Blazucchi’s does little to actually engage more with the conspiracy-hounding commentary, choosing instead to focus on a really empty thread of Fry dirtying his pants (he temporarily agrees to work at Blazucchi’s), revealing he has never washed them since coming to the future for bogus sentimental reasons. An attempt at washing them destroys them so he goes around pantsless for the duration of the episode (something that has weirdly happened a lot to Fry this season). I could complain again about the offensive depths of stupidity the writers are subjecting Fry to, but more than that the material here is just painfully awkward and unfunny. Surely, surely there is some better way to occupy Fry.
Meanwhile, the building plans actually shockingly reveal a basement under an arcade machine, yet all that is found down there is the ruins of Panucci’s Pizza, the pizzeria Fry worked at in the twentieth century (he finds his old locker and a spare pair of pants, thank god). Satisfied with the evidence before his eyes (and proving he’s got more scruples than the entire Republican Party today as a result), Fishy Joe concedes and drops out of the race to pursue Presidential ambitions. Yet in one pretty unnecessary final twist, it is revealed that Blek actually has been harvesting pepperoni down in this basement but from old logs of pepperoni left there since Fry’s time and which by now are mostly clusters of dead flies. Blazucchi’s business survives but her campaign dies as Boxy from All My Circuits -who was also in the race- wins it. Dwight admits a modest respect for his dad (though still bored by bureaucracy) and the episode ends on a lame pineapple on pizza joke from Zoidberg,
“Murderoni” (what an odd title) is let down by that Fry subplot, a few bad jokes, and the abandonment after some good set-up of much of its political satire. But what remains of that satire is good, the bureaucracy material enjoyable, and the jokes actually land a little more often than they don’t. If a Futurama episode is funny and pointed as this one is, I can forgive certain other problems.
Now for some stray observations:
  • We’ve got a new cover of the “Pop a Poppler” song -yet another instance of the show resting on nostalgic laurels rather than coming up with something new. That was a jingle from more than twenty years ago!
  • “Make sure the election results are fishy” -great slogan, Joe.
  • Linda really capturing the priorities of modern journalists in terms of who they choose to interview for a story: “You seem to be yelling the loudest”
  • “You think you can cover up the truth with a bunch of obvious facts!”
  • “We’re going on a thrilling adventure …which might involve a few forms being stamped”. Obviously the best kind do.
  • The old guy from “How Hermes Requisitioned his Groove Back” finally made it to the front of the line for his birth certificate …and he’s dead
  • That Hollywood Squares joke was dated when it was used in “Lethal Inspection”. It is much more so now and lampshading that fact doesn’t help it. Just shows how far the generation writing the show is from the generation watching it. What Futurama viewer will know who Paul Lynde was enough to get that that is an impression of him? Also Hermes has been at the same grade for twenty-four years!
  • “I should never have brought you here, it’s too exciting!” “It really isn’t.” Hermes and Dwight got some good bits this episode.
  • Lauren Tom’s delivery of “Hungry Hungry Hypocrite” had me cracking up, I won’t lie.
  • “So you created a filing system so unsystematic that literally nothing could be done without you? You really are the greatest bureaucrat who ever lived”
  • Love a good deep-cut joke. Fry’s got an album poster in his old locker of Katrina and the Waves. Had to look them up myself. They are of course the band behind Fry’s favourite song, “Walking on Sunshine.”
  • Morbo apologizes for the misleading reporting around the pizzeria. He is the more responsible journalist than Linda -which actually is not very surprising when you think about it.

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