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Futurama Reviews: S11E08 -"Oceans Three"

Though some of the writers on the Hulu run of Futurama have been necessarily younger, let it be remembered that the show is primarily staffed by boomers and the oldest of Gen-X. An episode like “Oceans Three”, with a demographic audience age of about seventy-five, is a reminder of that. None of its trilogy of parodies are very culturally understood among people under forty, even the one that is only about thirty years old. I’m aware of them because I’m a nerd for movie and TV history, yet some referential jokes even flew over my head.
And maybe this genre of sixty-year-old pop culture pastiches would work fine if they didn't come boxed in another lame anthology episode. After last season didn't include one I believed the Futurama writers had realized the gimmick had run its course, but apparently not. "Oceans Three", as its title implies, is a collection of stories set out on the sea. A particular thing that does distinguish this one is that each narrative feeds into the others so that the episode as a whole feels marginally less segmented.
It begins with the Professor abruptly declaring he is sick of the universe and that the ocean is a much greater mystery to explore. So naturally of course the Planet Express ship is transformed into a cruise (called "Planet Empress") with the cast taking on various roles associated with The Love Boat -the Professor relegated to bartender for whatever reason. Fully committing, "The Laff Boat" indulges in a cute pastiche of that show's theme song alongside a canned laugh track fittingly paired with several groan-worthy jokes. The episode lampshades this, but of course that doesn't cushion the laziness (including a couple jokes already made elsewhere in the series). The installment features three plots: in one, Fry tries to learn magic to impress Leela, who has a thing for magicians. In another, Zoidberg again attempts to follow his dream of being a comedian, taking the performance spot vacated by Florp (the Trisolian comic from "My Three Suns") whom he accidentally pushes overboard. And then the third concerns Calculon, disguised as an Elvis impersonator (another extremely old joke) to spy on Monique and Boxy, who have come on the cruise together. Each mini-story is fairly tepid: Monique and Boxy it turns out are cousins fulfilling a promise to a late grandmother, Zoidberg bombs but gets hurt on stage during a ship accident to the amusement of a wealthy widow who takes him on as her client and lover, and Fry's levitation trick works wonders on Leela -only to achieve the trick he uses bits of the ship's navigation satellite causing it to crash into an iceberg and set off a chain reaction that results in Antarctica burning.
Sea levels rise over all the land, giving way to the second segment "Wetterworld" in which the gang now live on a small schooner-sized boat surviving off minimal supplies and in the service of Lord "Mombat". Though the aesthetic is obviously Waterworld, the sketch keeps to an old-fashioned sitcom sensibility, as Leela -their natural captain- finds they have run out of food just as Mombat is coming to dinner. The Professor and Fry dive down in a repurposed Bender to the sunken ruins of Planet Express to retrieve something they can eat. At one point Fry accidentally cuts off his own oxygen tube, but the episode chooses to merely explain what happens later once he and the Professor resurface -it's very anticlimactic: like in the movie, he evolved gills. Canned onions is all they've got, so Hermes cooks them with a little packet of curry he still has and it goes over well with Mombat, who is just about to promote Leela when she chokes on the food and dies. They begin to discuss cannibalizing her -however it is Bender's accident this time that dooms everyone as his lit cigarette ignites the gasoline from Mombat's boat destroying it alongside her sons and -to the gang's knowledge- the last people in the world (Bender notes he achieved his goal of "killing all humans"). All is not lost however as Leela knows of a spec of land that supposedly survived the apocalypse, and Amy's got a convenient tattoo of a map there -a three hour tour.
If you're old enough to get that reference, you'll know where things are going for the last segment. The gang all wash ashore on an island (apparently near the tip of Mount Everest) with amnesia sustained via knocks to the head on a log of wood. This allows them to mirror the cast and premise of Gilligan's Island ("Phil Again's Island" -all these titles are exceptionally poor), once again with a parody theme song, featuring Bender as "The Rest". Bringing in Kif to be the Billionaire's (Amy's) wife, Petunia of all people to be Ginger, and awkwardly latching Hermes onto the Mary Anne role (now Mary Jane because weed), they build their obligatory collection of bamboo forts (a mansion for Kif and Amy), before getting a radio signal via Bender from Zapp Branigan -who's been in space all this time. He comes down to rescue just one of them, his ship only having space for two, and so he holds a beauty contest to determine his passenger. Everyone competes, the men in drag, and in the one surprise of the whole episode he chooses Kif -only to come back with news there is nowhere else to go on Earth. Everyone sadly accepts the end of civilization. And then the episode skips forward to show they have apparently built a whole New New New York out of bamboo, insisting that everything is back to the way it was.
That last third is certainly the thinnest and the middle one is probably the best considering, but "Oceans Three" is still a lacklustre episode. The installments are respectively credited to Bill Odenkirk, Morgan Milender, and Eric Horsted, and they are each lacking in both energy and jokes. The derivative, dated pastiches might have worked better had this not been the case, but they feel emblematic of a general lazy vibe to the episode, which at multiple junctures expresses openly its lack of care. The conceit of how they are strung together is somewhat amusing, but it is a very empty episode overall. I sure didn’t learn much about the ocean.
Here are some stray observations:
  • All My Circuits is now “that show people used to like”. I’d be very careful making that kind of joke if I were Futurama.
  • The beep joke being followed by laughter I distinctly recall Futurama playing before I believe in “That’s Lobstertainment!” I can’t believe I would remember that where the writers supposedly didn’t.
  • “For you Leela, I’ll pull a rabbit out of anything”. Romantic in its own way.
  • Thank god this episode is non-canon, because -really Zoidberg?  Getting together with a random rich lady so soon after setting things right with Marianne. I never thought Zoidberg would even have that kind of a problem.
  • “There’s no food left in the entire world …and my boss is coming to dinner”. Maybe it’s the fact that the situation is so absurd or that Katey Sagal has a history in sitcoms, but that delivery did work for me.
  • On the other hand, Amy’s billionaire voice doesn’t do much for me, but Lauren Tom sounds like she’s having fun.
  • I did like the joke about Zapp’s contacts burning up on re-entry being why he can’t decide on who the most beautiful of the castaways is.

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