Futurama: Rage Against the Vaccine

September 6, 2023 10:02 AM - Season 11, Episode 7

A pandemic ravages future Earth.
posted by onya (9 comments total)

A lot of the jokes were less satire, more “this actually happened”. I think I saw Dr. Banjo at the White House in 2020.
posted by Servo5678 at 2:15 PM on September 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

Yeah, aside from "Sandwich Bleach, not for use on rye" this one fell pretty flat.
posted by Marticus at 3:19 PM on September 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

Too Soon.

Also it failed the basic rule of comedy, which is to make things MORE ridiculous than the real world...
posted by mmoncur at 4:55 PM on September 6, 2023 [3 favorites]

Meh with your feh’s - it was a perfectly cromulent episode. There was already satire coming out at the end of 2020, this is not “too soon”.
posted by rozcakj at 6:29 PM on September 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

I feel like this season of Futurama has been pretty weird, like they're a bunch of nerds with Opinions that they've been itching to share with the world, but by the time they get the show actually made and aired, it's all pretty out-of-date. The plotlines have also had kind of a last-few-seasons-of-It's-Always-Sunny vibe (excluding much of the most recent season) where it feels like the show's writers are just talking directly to the audience, to let us know that they're The Good Ones. The idea that a thousand years from now we'll still be re-celebrating the end of covid was some pretty rough chuckles.

I will say, though, that the background and throwaway gags this season have been stellar. "Anger All the Rage" and the like remain excellent.
posted by DoctorFedora at 10:32 PM on September 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

The issue isn't 'too soon', it's 'too late'. The entire script felt like unused b-roll from talk show monologues of two years ago - just flat basic takes that had next to no zing in them to begin with, that didn't really fit the show's whole vibe. I don't recall any other Futurama episodes being all end to end 'ripped from the headlines!' like this one was - and this one's end result is completely unmemorable.
posted by FatherDagon at 11:09 PM on September 6, 2023 [7 favorites]

Yeah that’s a great way to put it. It falls behind only the Susan Boil episode for the title of “South-Parkest episode of Futurama”
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:18 AM on September 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

There was already satire coming out at the end of 2020

Yes, I enjoyed some of it and wrote some. I dealt with the pandemic through comedy.

What I meant by "too soon" is that there's some inherent awkwardness when you center on this topic (as opposed to, say, an episode about the plague or the Crusades or something) and the comedy needs to be strong to overcome (and use) that awkwardness, and I don't think they quite did that.

Also, yeah, kind of too late, ripped from the 3-year-old headlines.

The 1000-year-old yearly "We finally beat Covid!" rally was funny though.
posted by mmoncur at 10:36 AM on September 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

Yeah, definitely the weakest of the bunch in a season that I have enjoyed.

One weird thing for me is that they just went with Covid. Like, I know the "joke" is that we're still dealing with it in 1000 years. And, yes, this season has been topical. But I expected them to make it Covid in all but name. This way, it was too real to rise above stale late-night jokes.

That said, I did enjoy them sitting around the table wearing their masks in every way imaginable. Obviously a well-worn point, but it did make a good sight gag.
posted by fruitslinger at 1:14 PM on September 7, 2023 [3 favorites]