That Darn Katz!

Compared to last week's episode, this one was still a little below-par in comparison to the ones shown before it this season. The lolcat jokes could only hold the episode's humour for so long (though it did deliver a good poster joke, which made me lol pretty hard). Many of the other jokes on this episode were hit and miss, and that can-can cat one was probably the one that fell hardest on its face the most.

On the positive side, we do see Amy finally getting her degree, and having Nibbler as a focus is always a nice change. Plus, we see most of the crew revisit The Hip Joint, which was a nice touch. On the other hand, the plot was kind of boring after the first act though, as the cat villians were kind of lame in my opinion (It reminded me too much of that movie 'Cats & Dogs'). So overall, it's one of the weaker episodes of the show, but at least this one had a purpose and a reason. Overall, I'm going to give this one a 7/10, passable but not that great, and putting it on par with Attack Of The Killer App.

I liked it.

It's not one of Futurama's all time greats, but it's a healthy middle-ground episode. Very funny and it addresses the change in relationship between Leela and Nibbler now that she's aware of his intelligence -something I never found satisfactory in Bender's Game. It's also nice to see Amy's degree finally being addressed too. Add on to that, an unusual pairing of Nibbler and Amy -hell, seeing Nibbler in a non-epic episode like this is unusual in itself, but also add lots of great humour (and one terrible can-can joke that we'll ignore) and a lovely concept involving cats being aliens that came to Ancient Egypt and were worshipped as Gods due to their technology and you've got a good episode on your hands.

Continuing a Season 6 trend of exploring unusual character combinations, "That Darn Katz!" pits Amy and Nibbler against an army of intelligent cats from outer space who plot to siphon off the rotational energy of the Earth. In this episode the link between Amy and Nibbler is their shared antipathy towards cats and their intellectual superiority to the rest of the crew; though Amy has often been portrayed in the past as slutty and sometimes vapid, having her finish her university studies after 10 years of the show does add an interesting dimension to her character. The cat-related humor is hardly the most incisive material Futurama has written, but the satire of academic science departments is brutally hilarious.

Though not a remarkable episode, "That Darn Katz!" is not at all bad either. It is in fact one of those episodes you watch, laugh to, and then more or less forget without a big impact - simply a solid Futurama episode. But there are some things that will make it rememberable - for one thing Amy Wong finally graduates after twelve years of studies, and for another we see a both hilarious and odd pairing of Amy-Nibbler that gives both of them a full new dimension. We also see the Futurama team coming up with joke after joke after joke of cat humour - and most of them are hilarious, including several laugh out loud moments. One sorrowful exception is the can-can cats on Thuban 9 - though just a short throwaway joke it easily takes you out of the episode and it could so easily have been skipped or replaced with something else.

But there is not only relatively easy cat humour. We also get the wonderful academia satire and science humour that Futurama does so well, and Professor Fisherprice Shpeekenshpell will surely go to the history as one of the funniest tertiary characters ever.