Review: Futurama “Beef; Catfish Hunter”
OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
The Planet Express crew attempt to bring cows back to revive Hot Dog Eating contests. Later, Bender attempts to get back at a phone scammer who targeted his (previously unmentioned) grandma.
OUR TAKE
Futurama is back! Again! Again again! For maybe the last time? There’s been no further renewals after this batch of episodes, but they did just confirm some extra length specials are coming, so maybe that will be like those four straight to DVD movies and basically count as a season. But that’s the future future, and we’re here to talk about the PRESENT future, specifically this two episode premiere, which is…just okay! One of the strengths of this Hulu revival is that it honestly feels like nothing’s changed from either its FOX era or its Comedy Central era, as opposed to the King of the Hill revival which has instead thrived BECAUSE it has changed so much from its original series. But for Futurama, which is perpetually set in the future, it’s still pretty timeless, oddly enough. Take, for example, the first episode we’re talking about, “Beef”, which is once again pulling from a previously unmentioned component of Fry’s past and bringing it into the future, in this case being cows, which have long since become extinct and been replaced with plant based substitutes. That’s a real life thing that didn’t exist in either of the previous Futurama eras, but it fits in perfectly now for the purposes of Fry wanting to try a regular hot dog again and win a hot dog eating contest. Naturally, this has some consequences, as the hot dog they use to clone the cows also contains DNA of Fry’s rival in that competition…who has become a man made of hot dogs who Fry must then eat as a mercy killing. Kinda dark, not gonna lie!
After that, “Catfish Hunter” takes another relatively recent concept in real life, phone scamming, and makes it a Bender story, wherein his robot grandma, who totally existed before, and is probably just Bender scamming her, is scammed by someone else, and Bender cannot allow this. What follows is a series of examples of how numerous systems and authorities actually scam us every day, along with the Planet Express crew going through a farce of a heist that eventually leading to all of the money they got from the heist being fed to catfish. Catfishing being another term for a scam involving trying to romantically attract someone while not looking like the person they think they’re attracted to. And in another darkly funny moment, despite ending the episode saying she’ll live forever, the voice actress of Bender’s grandmother, Renee Victor, sadly died last year, leaving behind quite a diverse and impressive acting career. Regardless, it’s another solid start to a Futurama season, and we’ve got eight episodes to go! We’ll see if we get anymore instant classic ones, and we know we’ve got another “series finale” episode coming up, but that’s just the Futurama experience at this point.
