In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela

While not as good as Rebirth, the season premiere, In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela manages to pull off some great jokes and a clever story, but there are also many flaws. Primarly, Leela is so out of character - in spite of the excuse that she's dehydradet and confused there are some extremely strange lines, not to mention the ending in which she goes along with sleeping with Zapp without even a complaint. For many others, this would be okay, but Leela is supposed to be the strong woman that protects her dignity even if it means death. Not to mention that the man is Zapp, who she solemly loathes.

When ignoring this, the episode has some wonderful jokes and great storytelling, and I found Zapp's plan unfolding pretty clever, and the idea of V-GINY as well as Zapp's dream TV show was all just hilarious.

So the 2nd Futurama episode after the series was revived was decent, but in my opinion it was significantly worse than Rebirth, but also just as crude as the episode Spanish Fry. Overall, the episode had laughs, a fairly strange ending, and as usual funny Zapp moments, but its still not quite at the top of its game yet.

I have seen this episode, but I'm still not 100% sure on the plot, so here's a quick plot summary. It was something like a death sphere named "V-GINY" (Get it?) was destroying planets by censoring the ones that were inappropriate. This sends Leela and Zapp on a mission to go inside it to find out, but they get shot down onto an "Eden" like planet as a result. Fry and the rest of the crew start to worry about the sphere, and decide to try and clear the planet's sinfulness to try and prevent the sphere from destroying Earth. Back on the "Eden" planet awaken, Zapp uses this moment to take advantage of Leela who is trapped under a log into getting seduced in thinking they are the last two humans left, though Leela starts working it out that Zapp set everything up. The "V-GINY" ship arrives at Earth, and for some reason it will spare the planet if Zapp and Leela have sex. Leela goes for it with no hesitation, but here's the thing, Fry and the other crew arrive and see the whole thing too, as the twist turns out that the planet was Earth the whole time. That makes Leela out of character because why would she want to sleep with Zapp after trying to avoid it for so long? Wasn't she just starting to date Fry too? I got that impression from the end of Rebirth.

Overall, the episode was good but in my opinion had a lackluster 2nd half. The first half was really good, but the episode focused too much on the Zapp and Leela storyline in the 2nd half in my opinion. It was still good, though I thought it was interesting on how far the crude dialogue and sex references got to go now that Futurama is on Comedy Central. Some of the best jokes from this episode came from Farnsworth and Bender. The plot was a little lackluster, but In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela was still entertaining, though could have been a hell of alot better. I do question myself whether the crudeness is pushing too far for Futurama, because this episode was very direct about it, and I'm not sure if that's the right direction for the show to head.

After Rebirth, this is quite a lame way to continue. It's not the worst episode ever, but it's not far off. The first act isn't half bad, with plenty of classic Zapp Brannigan humour. There's a recurring dream-sequence throughout the episode where we see 'The Transcribable Exploits of Zapp Brannigan', a parody of old sci-fi serials which offer a great insight into Zapp's mind. However, the episode gets bad, quickly. Firstly, there's FAR too much sexual humour. I don't have a problem with this in episodes like Amazon Women in the Mood or Spanish Fry because they were actually funny and had intelligence behind them. Here, a space probe is called V-Giny. It's pathetically peurile and Futurama used to be better than that. The probe itself is quite an undeveloped subplot (which should have been the main plot really). Leela acts completely out of character too. Whilst she was 'delirious from dehydration' to begin with, she rehydrates herself with a juicy apple at the end and remains out of character. The ending is awful and destroys a lot of what we know about the characters and so on. Chris Elliott shows up for one of the worst guest appearances in the show's history, turning in a poor performance from an acting point of view, and it's all completely unnecessary. There's also a fucking snake that I hate. It's supposed to be a hallucination, but it's just lame. The episode stinks and is far below Futurama's usual standards. I'm going to attribute it to the writer Carolyn Premish, someone that nobody has ever heard of before and clearly is stupid and shouldn't be allowed to write for the show ever again. I still have faith that the season will pick up however.

Zapp Brannigan makes his perverse, addle-brained and triumphant return to Futurama in "In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela". A mysterious satellite which destroys planets is spotted heading towards earth, and Zapp and Leela are sent in a tiny spacecraft to infiltrate and destroy it. Unable to do so, they retreat and eventually crash on an uninhabited island in an unknown location. Completely isolated from human civilization, Zapp and Leela begin to re-enact the story of Adam and Eve. Meanwhile, Prof. Farnsworth discovers that the satellite is actually a horrific amalagam of a military craft and a "V-chip" which "censors" indecent planets by destroying them, and he and the rest of the Planet Express crew attempt to spare Earth from destruction by attempting to convince the satellite that Earth has cleaned up its act.

While the sideplot is pretty uninspired and is useful only insofar as it reconnects with the main plot, and while the V-Chip parody is horribly dated, the main plot carries the episode. Zapp Brannigan is at his pompous, perverted, idiotic and pathetic best as he attempts to seduce Leela, then watches his plan collapse like a house of cards. "In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela" is a very one-dimensional story, but that's not a problem when the dimension is so hilarious.