“After centuries as a delivery boy, nothing surprises me.” – Fry
Good news, everyone! All future space exploration will now be entirely animated! Lucky for us, the Planet Express has fired up its parody thrusters to full this week, taking us through spoofs of Minority Report, Police Academy, Avatar, and TRON.
After delivering pizzas for his entire life – and his entire resurrected life – Fry becomes fed up with his job and his apparent obsolescence as a crewmember of the Planet Express. Inspired by a hostage situation solved by the New New York Police Department, Fry decides to trade in his shorts for a man’s pair of pants and enlists in the NNYPD.
Fry goes to the Police Academy, where we’re treated to a quick but sassy parody while being introduced to Fry’s aggressive female police chief and his new partner, URL (who’s made many appearances in prior episodes). Fry’s training confirms that video-game skills can directly translate to the real world, fast-tracking him to graduation. Fry’s first day on the job sees him involved in a faster-than-the-speed-of-light car chase, which transitions into a really good-looking TRON spoof, resulting in the capture of one Mr. Schrodinger for breaking the laws of physics (seriously, Big Bang Theory, take note and stop pandering; bring back these nerdy jokes!)
Fry’s presence at the Planet Express is sorely missed, despite his being mildly incompetent. Without him, Bender and Leela have nothing to talk about while delivering pizzas to the not-so-3d planet of Pandora; the Professor has no one to greet in reassurance every time he enters a room; and worst of all, there’s nobody to walk Zoidberg!
Back in the NNYPD, Fry receives something he never got while at the Planet Express: a promotion! Assigned to the Future Crime units, Fry and URL are tasked with preventing murder, larceny, fraud, and clown slaughter (it happens more often than you think) as foretold by the robot-human hybrid, Pickles.
Fry’s time at Future Crimes addresses some loopy sci-fi paradoxes in its typically hilarious way. Once the Oracle predicts that Bender will pull of a big heist, Fry confronts him about it, potentially sparking Bender’s future crime. Retracing the Oracle’s evidence, he discovers that he will kill Bender while he tries to steal the rare Maltese Liquor. Swearing not to kill Bender, Fry apparently changes the course of the future, resulting in the deaths of everyone else at the Planet Express.
The closing sequence is just too good to give it all away – Pickles the Oracle, suffering from what can only be likened to watching Leno, sets out to destroy his human brain cells and live out the rest of his days as an ignorant robot. Fry and Bender unite to do half-a-thing each, and set out to prove the Oracle’s prediction wrong… sort of. Everything ends up back to normal (would you be surprised if I said any differently?) except that Fry is able to coax a new Executive title out of his return to the Planet Express.
I really hope to see more of Chief O’Mannahan – I can’t even find the words to describe her. Is “man-izer” even a word? It should be as “womanizer” is a word. Regardless, kudos to whoever wrote her pristine, female vulgarity and worked in the “nice bust” exchange between her and Fry.
Some stats and info about Futurama, “Law and Oracle”
TV SHOW – Futurama
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 6, Episode 16
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – FOX/Comedy Central
GENRE – Comedy, Animated Shows, Science Fiction
CREATED BY – David X. Cohen, Matt Groening
This review was originally published on TV Geek Army.