But I agree with Pentadact that the characters are one of the shows main drawing points. The writers of Futurama have a way with character-specific dialogue that I’d usually associate with Joss Whedon (or at least they used to).

So anyway I might give it yet another go with this one, but really, it was a terrible start to the season.

Still, this episode, the evolution one and Bender + Hermes’ adventure were enjoyable and made up for the eyephone and proposition infinity ones. Infact I’d quite like another Hermes one, he deserves to be in story arcs more often.

They obviously wanted to reference the girls like a bad boy stereotype so badly that they were willing to ignore Kif and Amy’s relationship just for the sake of dragging the most obvious female character into it. They seemed to forget that they only paired those characters together in the first place to demonstrate that Amy didn’t conform to such lazy stereotypes of women, despite her apparent ditziness. It was what made her a good female character, and they trashed that to demonstrate the world’s weariest, laziest sexist cliché.

I know some people don’t care about the characters, so long as the gags are good. And Proposition Infinity isn’t the worst the gags have been – the EyePhone episode barely raised a smile. But the characters are one of the main things that makes Futurama better than the Simpsons, for me. That show is full of great gags, but because I don’t really care about any of the main characters, it’s just a sketch show. I like the sketches with Wiggum or Lenny and Karl, but any time spent progressing the story might as well be dead air. In Futurama, I actually get excited about what’s going to happen – particularly when it’s a very sci-fi themed episode. I’ve developed a Pavlovian love of those few bars of music they play over the establishing shot of Planet Express HQ, because it means cool things are going to happen to a cast I give a shit about.

Prop Infinity – and having Leela fuck Zap in front of Fry in episode two – degrade that excitement much more than the odd schoolboy level satire like Killer App. There were a fair few duds in the first five seasons of Futurama, as there are in five seasons of pretty much anything, but none of them really made me less of a fan. But before Prisoner of Benda, I was actually starting to feel unexcited at the prospect of another episode. And that’s just weird.

Whatever, I’ll always watch Futurama, no matter how bad it is!

I do wonder how well the ‘they put satire in now it sucks’ angle would hold up on a reviewing – I remember about half of all Futurama episodes as being ‘about’ one or two current events, with most of the rest being about three – though, admittedly, not the best ones. I forget where, but at one point I’d read that as early as the third season antifans were pointing to the show’s reliance on cultural satire and heads-in-jars to dub it Pastarama or some such.

Also what did Zoidberg wretch up? A parasite? Ugh.

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_XWE0JYTtGIk/THBomcIdwvI/AAAAAAAABqQ/-8SeIpLZ-q8/s640/spacial-futerama1.jpg

If you have a fourth person, you can perform a mirrored loop. No common transfers, except the first.

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_XWE0JYTtGIk/THBoq4LWfdI/AAAAAAAABqU/YQAGeyLAzhc/s640/spacial-futerama2.jpg

After these transfers Amy and Professor must be in their original bodies. This leaves fry and bender out of place, who conveniently have not swapped.

It is not possible to accomplish this with 3 people: 3 people can only support 3 transfers, and restoring all bodies requires at least 4.

Given:

Amy and Professor switch

Professor(Amy)
Amy(Professor)

Amy and Bender switch

Bender(Professor)
Amy(Bender)
Professor(Amy)

Do:

Professor and Leela switch

Professor(Leela)
Leela(Amy)
Amy(Bender)
Bender(Professor)

Leela and Amy switch

Amy(Amy)
Leela(Bender)
Bender(Professor)
Professor(Leela)

Bender and Professor switch

Professor(Professor)
Bender(Leela)
Leela(Bender)

Leela and Bender switch

Bender(Bender)
Leela(Leela)

He wrote and proved a theorem to solve this episode’s plot.

http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201005/profiles.cfm