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Futurama Reviews: S11E05 -"Catfish Hunter"

Well, there’s some unfortunate timing on this episode’s part. Or maybe on my part because Hulu dropped it a few weeks back despite being out of order and I haven’t watched it until now. Either way it’s weird at this moment to be seeing a caricature of Dolly Parton in a Futurama episode.
Perhaps that’s not exactly what Idabelle Sue is meant as, but Tress Macneille is very clearly doing a Dolly Parton impression for her generic sultry southerner voice. It’s a connection hard to miss and it is a little distracting -though that is of course not any fault of the episode “Catfish Hunter”, which is rather good otherwise. An episode about scams and catfishing, naturally it is a Bender show.
It also naturally begins with unfortunately an instance of elder abuse. Bender takes Fry to visit his Abuelatron (as seen in “The One Amigo”) who has left Mexico and moved into a nearby retirement home called Rusty Acres where Bender has made a point to see her once a year. Against the snapshot of her dour life there, it is revealed that she sold her lucrative tortilla business when she left Mexico to her “boyfriend” Sebastian, an anonymous male robot she met online. Identified quickly as a scam, Abuelatron is heartbroken and Bender -himself choked up over his lost inheritance- determines to track down the scammer and get her back her money. On Leela’s suggestion, Bender infiltrates Rusty Acres disguised as an elder (via a blowtorch to the face to mimic metal fatigue). He promptly takes the next call from “Sebastian” only to discover it is a sexy fembot and like a sucker is immediately pulled into her grift.
It’s great to see the return of gullible Bender, as in spite of everybody else (even Fry and Zoidberg) seeing through the obvious scam, he is still enamoured with the wooing this Daniella is laying on him, getting him to invest in a catfish farm among other things. The Professor tracks down the address of this supposed farm to “Alabama…no, worse -Mississippi” and off Bender goes. Once there, he pretty quickly discovers that Daniella is in fact a fraud -she is really a different, comparably sexy fembot called Idabelle Sue who uses a blank robot face to change her appearance and voice from one scam personality to another. However, Bender is still quick to fall for her sweet-talking and especially once it is revealed that the catfish farm is indeed real and is supported by her other scams. Bender gets in on the racket and together they set about scamming another dope -the Professor.
That the Professor does initially fall for Bender’s ploy is unsurprising, and if the episode had gone that route it would be considerably duller. However, Leela and the rest clock it and decide to scam the scammer instead. The plan is to feign that a speeding altercation is holding up the million dollars Bender asked for and to thus get out of Idabelle a thousand dollar impound fee; the money they will then hand over will be a million dollars worth of phony money with the Professor’s face. A foolproof plan…. until the Planet Express ship actually is pulled over for speeding by a local robot sheriff and his orangutan deputy. Bender is willing to uphold his end of the bargain despite Idabelle’s suspicion. Though the crew doesn’t seem poised to gain anything, the Professor sneakily replaces the bank teller’s machine with a rigged one that hides a zero in the decimal point. Once Idabelle has collected the thousand dollars and leaves, the crew collect the rest.
As scams in Futurama go it is a nice one, and satisfying to see the crew get one over on Bender while Bender thinks he is getting one over on them. All are arrested however by the corrupt sheriff when he catches them dancing in a bar -this being the town from Footloose apparently. He takes the duffle of fake money from Bender and quickly learns that it is fake. Everyone guns it to the Planet Express ship, which blows a thruster causing the Professor to deploy never-before-seen wheels that pop out the sides and so naturally, an elaborate car chase ensues. The episode takes great joy in its southern rural stereotypes -Leela in particular adapts her language to fun effect- and it’s nowhere more prominent than this sequence which goes full Dukes of Hazard when the ship careens off a twisted broken bridge swerving upside down in the air as the cargo hold opens and all the money spills out. It is actually one of the best 3D effects the show has conjured in a while -silly though also kind of cool. The water they barrel over of course happens to be Idabelle’s farm and so all the lost money is eaten by the catfish.
In the wake of this and the crew revealing their scam, Idabelle notes that the money they stole didn’t come from her but one of her victim’s accounts -Abuelatron’s, leaving the poor old robot broke. This at least is a bridge too far for Bender, who cuts their partnership -though regrets it on finding that Idabelle had fallen in love with his elderly alter ego. Perhaps it is one last scam on her part. Fortunately, it later worked out for Abuelatron, the majority shareholder in the catfish farm which actually is now a booming business. Idabelle turns down Bender’s offer to join on the scam by noting she “doesn’t need anymore money” which of course appalls Bender. He ends the episode resolved to stay in Abuelatron’s good graces for the sake of that inheritance.
Futurama has been on a pretty decent run lately -I hope I don’t jinx it. “Catfish Hunter” is a very enjoyable Bender episode that properly makes a fool of him while playing into his well-worn character tropes. It’s fun to see the scam and counter-scam play out, how it goes right even when it goes wrong. And Abuelatron is a gem of a character to bring back as well. Unfortunate timing aside with that Dolly impression, it is a solidly entertaining, wacky story. Worth every Planet Express Fun Buck.
Onto some more stray observations.
  • Fry thinks Bender is taking him to a strip club trampoline park with all-you-can-eat ice cream. Naivety? Or is there precedence for that?
  • Abuelatron was forced to leave Mexico because her family got tired of all the smoking, drinking, and cursing around the children. I get the smoking and cursing, but surely for robots there’s nothing objectionable about drinking. The image of her with the cigar in her mouth is inordinately hilarious.
  • Bender takes on the role of Mordecai Pantscrapper –complete with a jitter phone like I’ve seen so many elderly people use.
  • “Can’t lose stock in a catfish farm” ought to be a new “there’s always money in the banana stand.”
  • ‘Scamton, Mississippi: Home of the collapsed porch.’
  • This episode is written by one of the younger writers, Shirin Najafi, yet it still manages an old reference most of its audience won’t get. The robot sheriff and his orangutan deputy is a reference to a bizarre Clint Eastwood film called Every Which Way But Loose.
  • “My friends are really nice -let’s go rip them off!”
  • I see Coco Charm is still quite big in the south. Hell, after last week’s episode she is probably bigger than ever before.
  • Bender waited six months to tell Abuelatron he lost all her money? Yes, yes he is a terrible grandson.
  • “And you ain’t gonna live forever.” “Yes I am.” For whatever reason, this ending was really funny to me. I think it’s down to Renee Victor’s delivery, it’s so sweetly blunt.

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