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| Production number | 2ACV03 |
|---|---|
| Reviews written | 3 |
| Overall rating | 60% |
| Plot | 53% |
| Characters | 80% |
| Gags | 73% |
| Voice actor performance | 83% |
| Guest actor performance | 50% |
| Continuity | 83% |
| Animation quality | 75% |
| Music/sound quality | 75% |
Written by cyber_turnip on 11 July 2010.
| Overall rating: | 6 |
|---|---|
| Plot: | 5 |
| Characters: | 10 |
| Gags: | 7 |
| Voice actor performance: | 10 |
| Guest actor performance: | 5 |
| Continuity: | 10 |
Quite a polarising episode amongst fans. A lot of people adore this episode, other people like myself consider it one of the weaker entries.
Whilst I love Richard Nixon's head as a character and I find the very idea of him being Earth president hilarious, it's not enough to keep a plot about politics from being dull by Futurama's usual standards and the jokes get a bit old after a while. Whilst Watergate jokes are great, it's nice to have variety.
It's far from a bad episode, but it's one of my least favourites from the 2nd season.
Written by speedracer on 2 August 2010.
| Overall rating: | 5 |
|---|---|
| Plot: | 5 |
| Characters: | 6 |
| Gags: | 6 |
| Voice actor performance: | 6 |
| Guest actor performance: | 5 |
| Continuity: | 6 |
| Animation quality: | 7 |
| Music/sound quality: | 6 |
"A Head in the Polls" offers up Futurama's take on the political process and explains how Richard Nixon sidesteps the Constitution to serve a third term as President -- by planting his head on a robot body, of course. The episode starts off with Leela lecturing Fry on his civic responsibilities and Bender hawking his body for some quick cash. Bender soon suffers massive seller's remorse and learns that Nixon has purchased his body in a bid to run for President again. Fry and Leela break into Nixon's Watergate hotel room and play hardball with him in order to retrieve Bender's body.
As in many comedies, the political humor throughout the episode is very uneven. There are some amusing campaign signs and a scathingly vapid televised debate between two human candidates, but much of the rest of the humor (most notably a trip through the head museum's collection of 20th century Presidents) falls flat. Futurama certainly could have done worse with the theme, but the episode as a whole is very one-dimensinoal and isn't particularly compelling.
Written by totalnerduk on 8 July 2012.
| Overall rating: | 7 |
|---|---|
| Plot: | 6 |
| Characters: | 8 |
| Gags: | 9 |
| Voice actor performance: | 9 |
| Continuity: | 9 |
| Animation quality: | 8 |
| Music/sound quality: | 9 |
As US-centric as this episode is, for dealing with the President of Earth, I enjoyed it a lot more than many did.
Nixon makes a wonderful antagonist, and the episode just wouldn't be as funny without him. Not that it has no jokes which don't involve Nixon - overall, this is a very funny episode. But Nixon steals every scene he's in.
With all of that said, there are far stronger second-season episodes than this. WMIBACIL is light-years ahead of it, for example.
Overall, it's good. A solid middle-of-the-deck episode.