Talking Futurama - The Prisoner of Benda
Added 2025-03-10 04:00:07 +0000 UTC"As I told you on Sucker Punch Day, I'm through being a chump!" - Philip J. Fry
As the Planet Express crew trades forms willy-nilly, they learn valuable lessons about what it's like to be trapped in a horrifyingly old or brutally ugly sack of flesh. But will they be able to get their minds back in the right skulls in a way that's mathematically possible?
Comments
"The Simpsons and their Mathematical Secrets" by Simon Singh, which I received ages ago as a gift, has a chapter about "The Futurama Theorem". Singh breaks it down in a rather accessible way, using cleverly-designed diagrams. In the simplest terms I can think of, each Globetrotter picks someone to swap with, then whoever is in the Globetrotters' body swaps back into their correct body until everyone is in the correct body. Note how on each half of the screen, the bodies appear in sequence of the minds inhabiting them (Prof, Leela, Hermes, Amy on top; Washbucket, Emperor, Bender, Prof on bottom). James Grime (the guy from the YouTube channel Numberphile) pointed out that since Fry and Zoidberg didn't swap bodies with anyone else, and since Clyde and Tate start swapping with the other 7 characters while in each others' bodies, Fry and Zoidberg could have filled in for the Globetrotters and eliminated 4 swaps. I have a feeling Keeler ignored this to prove the theorem could work with an odd or even number of bodies. This episode made me wish I could go back in time and warn myself about the collapse of the animation industry so I could pursue a math degree.
Mike Kachur
2025-03-20 04:59:48 +0000 UTCNot the way they did it
Joshua Marchant
2025-03-14 06:51:24 +0000 UTCThe math joke with Bender being asked the square root of 9 feels like a throwback to that notion about how people would forget how to do math because of calculators. My trig teacher in high school even handed out a short story (I can't remember the title or author) about a future where one guy knew how to do math and everything thought he was some sort of pariah. It was all to reenforce how important it was for us to learn how to do this stuff via pencil and paper, but joke's on him since no one predicted we'd have super computers in our pockets at all times! Fun episode that's intentionally complicated. I find some of these plots exhausting, but it does help them to hold up on a rewatch. With Futurama, whenever they make a hacky joke (often gender-based) that would play on a lesser sitcom I can never tell if it's a sincere attempt at humor or if it's being played ironically. I guess that's the benefit to being classified as smart humor as it lets you get away with bad jokes to some degree. With Amazonian Women in the Mood, I think it's very obviously poking fun at that type of humor and I'm curious to see how it plays out with the gender swap episode coming later. I remember not liking the episode very much, but maybe time will help, or hurt. We'll find out in...10 months?
Joe Hodgson
2025-03-12 14:05:13 +0000 UTCI think this went over people's heads, but when Bender says "I'm 60% storage space" in this episode, it's a topper to the series' long-running joke where he keeps saying "I'm 40% (blank)" - zinc, titanium, dolomite, etc. I think they are intentionally saying Bender is made up of 40% "blank" + 60% storage space.
saalvarem
2025-03-12 05:20:20 +0000 UTCThis is my favorite episode of the post-Fox era. A fun, well-executed gimmick, fast-paced, intertwining stories, and some great jokes. Even Big Bertha's sacrifice feels compelling when she only had 30 seconds of screen time! I'll take their word that the math theorem/proof is solid, but it's impressive there was no cheat to reset things back to normal. The scene with Scruffy and the wash bucket was hilarious but when you compare how they handle Amy's 'young and desirable' body having sex to how they handle the two 'grossest' characters' bodies having sex the 2010s-era sexual politics become obvious. Also doesn't Zoidberg die after having sex?
PurpleComet
2025-03-11 19:05:52 +0000 UTCOh man I would love Talking Bojack
Nate from Kalamazoo
2025-03-11 16:11:01 +0000 UTCor we could wait 10 or so years for when the TalKing of the hill does "a portrait of the artist as a young clown"
Eugenio Alvarez
2025-03-11 02:15:52 +0000 UTCIf you do talking Bojack I bet you would have a great excuse to get Paul f Tompkins on ๐
Covey M.
2025-03-10 18:51:01 +0000 UTCMy favorite Body Swap episode is Gravity Falls where Dipper and Mabel switch bodies and grow closer as a result. And Soos gets engaged after swapping bodies with Waddles the pig
Giovanni
2025-03-10 18:40:17 +0000 UTCI can say we're better off with the Nostalgia Critic still being around over Freidberg and Seltzer because Nostalgia Critic is getting better more analytical and less with the over the top humor
Giovanni
2025-03-10 18:23:40 +0000 UTCI hadn't seen this episode before watching it for the podcast and I have to say I was REALLY impressed with both how it handled its high concept and how funny it was. I had no indication that we would end up seeing "Zoidberg" and "Farnsworth" relaxing post-coitus and it + the date lead-up got me really good! The Late Phillip J. Fry is a great episode, but this one kind of rivals it for me in terms of being my favourite of Comedy Central era (so far)
Dylan (batmanboy11) Freitag
2025-03-10 17:30:05 +0000 UTC
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