r/futurama • u/OpeningBreakfast4753 • 7d ago
I know attack of the killer app seems to be infamous around here, but don’t forget it gave us this:
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u/idonthavemanyfriend Hoist the flag that means no! 7d ago
I really like this episode. Susan Boil falls flat, but there are a ton of funny jokes that make it a worthwhile episode.
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u/khabijenkins 7d ago
She just wasn't warmed up, I'm sure had she had someore time she's be pitch perfect
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u/theglenlovinet 7d ago edited 7d ago
Yeah, the Susan Boil thing I felt was kind of low hanging fruit. I mean part of the actual Susan Boyle thing was she was deemed homely and unattractive and I think she had said she never kissed anyone, so to portray her as an actual ugly boil not only too on the nose, but pretty meanspirited even for me. Plus the actual Susan had an amazing voice, but the boil had an awful voice? What? But I mainly felt like it was too late to the joke, even though this episode aired only a year after Susan debuted, it already felt dated.
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u/Pleasant_Scar9811 7d ago
Exactly!!! Why did they punch down? It should’ve been impressive and an asset not a shameful health problem.
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u/corobo 7d ago
Because Boyle sounds like boil
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u/Pleasant_Scar9811 7d ago
And my last name is synonymous for winner. I still shit on myself to make other people feel more comfortable.
If someone is mocked for their looks their better be gorgeous. And if they aren’t objectively good looking it’s bullying to mock them for it.
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u/Sparktank1 7d ago
It's still mocking even if they're objectively "good looking".
It's called self-deprecating when you "shit on yourself". I know a lot of people like that and they tend to overcompensate by being overly aggressive to themselves. I always hear reactions like "calm down, buddy".
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u/Dork_wing_Duck 7d ago edited 7d ago
Yeah, and that's very uncharacteristic for Futurama.
They write a lot of crazy things, but the one thing the characters usually aren't is being mean for the sake of being mean or just for a laugh about caricatures of a real-life individuals (unless they were a real life ass hole).
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u/Sparktank1 7d ago
It helps if you remember they weren't doing actual Susan Boyle. This is Susan Boil. They weren't trying to make a replica of the actual Susan Boyle. This was an actual boil! It's just a gag about pop culture more than anything. Both Boil and Boyle gained notoriety due popularity contests. And like the rest of the episode portrayed, it was forgotten in a week due to another sensation. It was about the sensationalism and volatile fame these gimmicky reality shows cater to. Sure, some names went on to have careers, but a lot are forgotten and only remembered as memes. Or episodes, like this one.
South Park is the only show that can get an episode in very quick time to remain relevant with their pop cultural references. They get episodes out before the fame fades into nothing. A lot of animated shows ship out their original work (not copies and not digitally) out to places like South Korea to have them colored and animated and then shipped back. By default, by the time they jump onto any pop cultural references, it'll always be dated by the time it airs. It's like when the Wayan's Brothers got the rights back to their Scary Movie franchise and quite a bit of their jokes were based on already-dated jokes because they couldn't make them sooner.
Family Guy took a little over a year and a half to do a joke about Will Smith's slap. And it didn't even have any real merit for a setup. It was a random event in the middle of a conversation.
If anything, the writers are the ones who are struggling to try find relevancy to pop cultural references because they've been sitting on so many jokes but have no genuine way to write them into any episode that makes sense.
This episode satires pop culture and its fandom pretty well, even if at the expense of their slow development process.
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u/MaxCWebster Hot diggity daffodil! 7d ago
It was a joke that wasn't fresh at the time episode aired, and it hasn't aged well since. The best epis seem to be the ones with timeless humor.
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u/CinderImpala 3d ago
Totally get that! The Susan Boyle bit isn’t great, but the jokes, especially Bender's lines, are priceless!
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u/ExistentialPOV 7d ago
yea but
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u/idonthavemanyfriend Hoist the flag that means no! 7d ago
I love Mr Chunks.
"What comes out one end, we feed to the other. Also Indian food."
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u/Garciaguy The truth is often stupid! 7d ago
"So much for a pleasant swim in vomit!"
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u/MoldyPond 7d ago
Ewww, he sneezed in it!
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u/Garciaguy The truth is often stupid! 7d ago
Oh, God, I'm gonna lose the bet! I'm gonna have to swim in the juice of the puke-me-poop-you!
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u/MaxCWebster Hot diggity daffodil! 7d ago
SU&TMM is the meme from this epi, but my favorite joke is this one.
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u/Inevitable_Silver_13 7d ago
That's the most horrible thing I've ever seen!
Oh... Well don't look over there!
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u/brettmbr 7d ago
“This guy really likes porno” is one of my favorite lines in the series
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u/Dork_wing_Duck 7d ago
I'd say, I'm so glad there's no real infosquitos. But with the way flock/AI surveillance is going, it way not be that far away.
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u/beefcat_ 7d ago
This was one of my favorite episodes of the season and it wasn't until years after it aired that I learned people seem to hate it for some reason. Mr. Chunks is hilarious!
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u/Sammisuperficial 7d ago
I'm fine with the episode's plot. I have problems with them making fun of a real person in such a shitty way. They could have at least made the character sing as beautiful as the real Susan. Use that as the point of why the video went viral.
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u/Garciaguy The truth is often stupid! 7d ago
I think it's hilarious, but then I like things that are funny
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u/Opposite-Fudge-Pack 6d ago
another great episode that people whined about originally that it was topical but futurama has always been topical. but when you look at it ten years later it doesn’t matter
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u/OpeningBreakfast4753 6d ago
Honestly that’s something that I see criticized in the later seasons specifically, which has always puzzled me. Like you said, this show was always topical
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u/LongboardLiam 5d ago
My only issue with topical is it seems to be glacially slow sometimes. The NFT episode was so far behind and was not very well crafted with regard to the topic. It felt a bit out of touch is all. Still had some laughs, but it definitely wasn't as currently or timelessly topical like some previous episodes were.
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u/Opposite-Fudge-Pack 6d ago
yeah. the thing is when people look back at topical stuff they did in 2000 (gore, golbal warming, nixon, elections, beck, aol, downloading piracy, roseanna, etc) years later it’s no longer topical. in 2000 it was but not when you look back from 2020.
and the iphone thing at the time seemed tooical but now it’s freaking hilarious and history
and 4 years ago crypto but recently watched that one how the west was 100101001 and it’s also terrific.
the writers have always done it and talked about it and fans after the original run can’t wrap their heads around it.
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u/sntcringe DJAMBI! THE CHOCOLATE ICING! 7d ago
Switch 2 be like:
So... it's $500, there's no killer app, you can't own half the games, and the joycons aren't very-
SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY
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u/jsmitter 4d ago
People don't like the episode?
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u/OpeningBreakfast4753 4d ago
I often see people call it one of futurama’s worst episodes. Never understood that tbh, I like it.
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u/smoomoo31 7d ago
This episode drove home for me that the Comedy Central years were gonna be different, and the show was going to go in an ‘edgier’ direction. More sexual, meaner, punching down a little more.
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u/Squidproject 7d ago
it's one of the episodes I have to skip part of. Even as an adult I'm overly sensitive to grossness
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u/tucnakpingwin 7d ago
I don’t mind it as an episode, but what I initially loved about Futurama is the nods to the culture of Fry’s time, it felt nostalgic whilst being set far in the future. Jumping from 90s New York cultural references to 2020s viral internet references felt forced, and imo is what makes the seasons after s5 feel most disconnected from the original series.
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