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Futurama Reviews: S10E09 -"The Trouble with Truffles"

I kind of wonder if writer David A. Goodman, or whoever actually conceived this episode, got the idea from the movie Pig. Certainly the relationship that develops between Bender and his little pig Jambone feels reminiscent. “The Trouble with Truffles” is a pretty decent outing for most of its run -though the ending is quite slap-dash in a way that really doesn’t work. But it does well with its new concept and plot, a far better one for Bender than he has gotten in a while.
Given he starts the episode underneath Fry and Leela as they’re making out, that alone is something. Though he tells them to get lost he winds up crashing their date anyways at a new and very exclusive Elzar restaurant where despite uncertainty at the expense (“it’s market price” says Elzar), they have some truffles with their food and the experience is orgasmic. But as always, truffles are a delicacy, and Fry is faced with a bill somewhere in the thousands that is kindly but suspiciously paid off by the Robot Mafia -who warn they will someday ask Fry for a favour that he is all too willing to oblige. Still, they crave truffles, as the Professor and Amy explain with the aid of an educational film what truffles are, why they are sought after by wealthy gluttons, and how now truffle hunting is mostly confined to a region of asteroids called the Truffle Belt. Excited by the prospect of a fortune in truffle hunting, Bender dons a French affect and immediately leaves for it.
The episode follows Bender almost exclusively from here on out, as he arrives in the Belt controlled by a truffle cartel that takes a nearly one hundred percent cut of all profits earned. He is confronted by French stereotypes and comes to realize how difficult truffle hunting is in the light of its industrialization. Bender is beaten to most of the truffles by other hunters and their large genetically modified talking pigs. And he is forced to get by with a young, tiny piglet he names Jambone -who is quite good and enthusiastic in spite of his size. The relationship between Bender and Jambone is a nice cornerstone of the episode -Bender’s not as mean as he has a tendency to be, though he doesn’t treat Jambone particularly well either. There’s a sense of respect and protectiveness as they are in their predicament together. They ultimately make for a good team, up to when they visit a distant asteroid that no hunter has ever returned from and turns out to be a giant truffle tree itself.
It is a goldmine of truffles but also full of dangerous tree monsters that prevent Bender and Jambone from escaping with their loot easily. The animation has some fun with the various ways Bender tries to get out, the weight of his massive truffle bag often holding him back in a great visual demonstration of gravity -feels like several sequences from the classic run. He and Jambone are saved however by Fry in the Planet Express ship arriving with the Robot Mafia who had called in his favour -they being the truffle cartel. You would think a confrontation would then arise from this, that Bender would try to hang onto his loot -but strangely that doesn’t happen. The Mafia take the truffles without issue and Bender essentially gives up on truffle hunting. And he sets Jambone free in a sweet beat that is made a little strange by his insistence on Jambone having the last bit of truffle he saved. Jambone views it now as symbolic of his servitude to a gluttonous elite class -and indeed that theme is a bit undercooked throughout the episode for as much as it is meant to resonate. In any case the plot seems to end a bit early here.
Yet we next see the ship touch down at the Glutton Awards, the client for the Mafia to gather all these truffles for. And there are a few rich fat cat jokes that follow in the Calculon-hosted event. When the truffle case is opened it reveals only a grown, morbidly obese Jambone -who after trying the truffle, found he was genetically unable to resist it and snuck into the crate where he gorged himself on the stock. Now he bemoans having become a a glutton just like those he hunted the truffles for -which does save him from being eaten by the attendees when Hedonism Bot pronounces him Glutton of the Year and relinquishes his own award.  But nothing is really solved by this as the episode just mildly ends. The beat of Jambone becoming what he despised carries virtually no weight given how much of the episode undersold any kind of dissatisfaction with the beneficiaries of truffle hunting and his own role in that. It feels like a late attempt at a halfhearted wealth commentary, and one that doesn’t make any kind of a strong statement. A very weak ending.
“The Trouble with Truffles” would be an okay episode without it -relatively free of distractions and set largely in a new scenario for Bender that offers some good jokes -particularly from the delightfully cooky old truffle clerk- and a nice new relationship for the cantankerous robot with Jambone, who is very cute and voiced by Maria Bamford. I’d like to recommend it more, but the final impression undoubtedly leaves it middling.
Here again, some stray observations:
  • We see Elzar once again pulling his shady crap around how much his patrons will have to pay. You’d think the gang would know better by now.
  • Honestly, Fry has the right reaction. Taking some kindness from a gangster on the vague return of a favour years from now. “I could be dead by then.” Sounds like a good deal.
  • Do today’s audiences even get that style of educational video as we’re shown here? It’s still funny, but the format of parody hasn’t evolved at all since the early Simpsons days.
  • “France? Never heard of it.” Fraaance on the other hand….
  • Is Jambone’s extending snout a product of genetic engineering? Because that came out of nowhere.
  • It’s not the sort of thing that really matters, but that major continuity error of Bender being impaled on one of those spikes, though bearing no hole in his casing moments later is pretty egregious -borderline lazy animation.
  • “Someday you may ask us for a favour”. “We take turns. It’s common courtesey!”
  • Maybe not the whole Glutties sequence, but the In Memoriam bit is purely there to facilitate a ‘Cookie Monster died of diabetes’ joke that honestly does not warrant that level of attention.

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