Not counting the broadcast season breaks during the Comedy Central run (and the status of “Overclockwise” as the real season six finale over “Reincarnation”), “The White Hole” may be the first season finale of Futurama since “The 30% Iron Chef” more than twenty years ago that does not feel like it was written as a potential series finale. Sure it is pretty grand in scope, but largely uses that canvas for jokes, rather than the notes of sincerity or profundity. Also it lacks that focus on Fry and Leela, which has long been a staple of closing episodes. There is something a little refreshing there, that the writers know they have at least one more season to produce and so don’t feel the obligation to put a lot of weight into this one, though it still has a bit of an air of that in places.
Written by series veteran Patric M. Verrone, the central tenet of the episode is a White Hole that suddenly appears over Earth and a voice from within beckoning representatives from this universe to enter its portal and witness the birth of a new universe. And though the Professor is very eager to volunteer himself and his crew (without him or anyone else considering if other parties in their universe might want to be representatives), only to be informed that at his age he wouldn’t survive -because of the way a white hole functions, the nearer one approaches the older they get. So instead President Nixon decides to send a middle school model U.N. team, who depart only to immediately crash back on Earth, the crew now elderly -having failed to get near enough. The Professor and Bubblegum Tate determine there is a way to reach the white hole, but it is a lot more elaborate.
Getting to volunteer his crew after all (and also Scruffy), the Professor embarks on the mission in the world’s largest rocket attached to the Planet Express ship. Due to the time dilation that would take them ten million years, the crew is to be frozen while various ship functions are carried out by a rotating roster of temporary 3D-printed clones called into being by the Professor’s A.I. hologram, who would disintegrate as soon as they complete their assigned task. From this set-up I expected the episode might go down the route of autonomy for Fry and Leela’s duplicates who would rebel against their orders and find a way to witness the birth of the universe themselves -or go on some long journey together akin to “Meanwhile”. What the episode pursued instead was a curiously Mickey 17-like comedy (the episode was in production long before Bong Joon-ho’s movie came out, but it’s possible Verrone was inspired by the source book) crossed perhaps with Interstellar. And it works pretty well for the episode as a series of gags.
Scruffy 1 is the first to be created, 10,000 years in to fix a pipe, followed shortly by Fry 1 to turn off a light -each crumble to dust as soon as they do. And thus we see a parade of menial tasks over the centuries being carried out by the crew -who couldn’t live very long if they wanted to, as we even see a Leela, alive for presumably just a few hours, beginning to age at the helm of the ship. A Hermes is born to do some calculations but dies before he can eat the manwich provided by a Fry, while an Amy sits by to just give moral support before death. For a while, the only drama comes with the first Bender clone momentarily considering rebelling before the Professor’s hologram convinces him to do his task for the original Bender. The jokes are pretty good too in a morbid way, one Professor’s existence being merely to give an order; but eventually we get a few lingering threads. A Fry duct tapes up a small breach in the windshield, only for it to open and rapidly age some left behind yogurt, which eventually mutates over time into a monster and absorbs other crew members sent to deal with it, until a few Zoidbergs come and eat it -but then Zoidberg 4 cannibalizes his fellow duplicates and wreaks his own havoc until a Leela in a mech-suit a la Ripley comes along to put a stop to him.
Eventually the ship does make it to the centre of the white hole, and a collection of duplicates are assembled with the task of waking the original crew and preparing them for their illustrious engagement. Surrounded by the bones of their predecessors (which the Scruffys had apparently failed to clean up), these clones decide against that order and get into the fancy pod themselves to enter the portal -reckoning that they and their fellow clones did all the work in getting the ship there that they deserved the reward, quite understandably so. They do age as they enter the pod though, suggesting the same would have happened to the original crew, before meeting the entity at the centre of the white hole who welcomes them as Universe 6. The Planet Express ship meanwhile is flung back to Earth after just fourteen minutes there. Thawed out, they are all baffled they were never awakened and can’t testify at all to witnessing anything; but perhaps for P.R., Nixon gives them medals anyway. As to the birth of a new universe witnessed by the clones, it’s left a mystery to the audience as well.
The anticlimax is a bit of a letdown creatively, but “The White Hole” is broadly pretty good -in its concept, humour, and sly theme on existentialism from something of a labour perspective. The Professor’s hologram really went in on how valuable the originals are compared to these duplicates, it bred some pretty tangible resentment. A good end to the season that feels big but not exceptionally gravitational. It reflects well on season ten, which after a very rough start proved to be potentially the best season of the Hulu run so far, with this episode, “Murderoni”, and “Crab Splatter” especially being real stand-outs. As I stated at the start, I don’t have much faith the show will continue beyond the next season it has been renewed for, so I hope we can see more quality reflected next year in the latest (and almost certainly last) Futurama swansong.
And one more time, some stray observations:
- The episode opens on a bit where Bender is trying to rob the Hyperchicken as a half-assed cat burglar alter ego. Foiled by the sudden white hole, it’s not the worst way to introduce the premise, but is pretty mundane.
- Once again on the nostalgia circuit, this episode glimpses the buggalos, Leela’s blind (and deaf) classmate from “The Cyber House Rules” and the Charleston Chews government sponsorship. Also later, Fry 1 uses the thinglonger to turn off the lights. For a fan these bits are cute, but they were all once original weird gags and the lack of those is a notable flaw in the Hulu episodes.
- “The stars called and Scruffy said yyyyyep.”
- I assumed Bender might be the one to follow through this story because as a robot he can’t age. But the episode found a way to give him that vulnerability too, as he rapidly rusts outside the ship when detaching the rocket -with a long rust beard and everything.
- Loved that Scruffy gag of his duplicates being summoned to clean up the remains of previous duplicates until Scruffy 4 decides to airlock himself instead. “No infinite loops on Scruffy #4’s watch.”
- Fry 28: “I got printed by accident. Is it cool if I just stand here and eat yogurt?”
- Zoidberg’s first duplicate comes very late, a cruel joke of how little use he is. But as it turns out maybe there is a good reason for that. Zoidberg is the only character whose every duplicate gets screen-time.
- By the numbers on their chests I can’t quite gather by the end who had been replicated the most but it appears to have been either Leela or Scruffy.
- Oooh, not a fan of that John Williams diss at the end. Sure he’s got some stylistic tendencies, but his music certainly doesn’t all sound the same.
- Perhaps the one thing that puts this season ahead of the prior two is that at long last there was no forced anthology episode. “The Prince and the Product” was really scratching the bottom of the barrel, and I think after “The Futurama Mystery Liberry” the writers realized there’s nowhere left to go with the gimmick so they wisely abandoned it. At least that is the hope. They better not try to bring it back for season eleven.
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