Topical Plots and Missed Shots - Analysis of How the West Was 1010001 - EP03 of Hulu's Futurama 

Roberto's gun that shoots knives is brilliant.

I'm surprised nobody seems to be talking about what seems to be the most important factor in the decreased quality of the show - whereas in the old days, Futurama writers had a physical building in which they would meet, collaborate, spitball, rework, and punch-up scripts, Hulu is only paying a single scriptwriter to do all of the work themselves, in isolation. I think with that in mind, the difference in quality and quantity of jokes suddenly has a very clear explanation.

I think the worst thing about How the West Was 1010001 isn't just that it was boring, but that they already had a good plot with the eyePhones everyone has drilled into their corneas that the Comedy Central run just passed over.

I was pretty hype on the first couple episodes of the series and with this one I felt myself cooling off. I think you're right - it's probably more on the mediocre Dwight-Hermes-Roberto plot than the crypto humor. But I was rolling my eyes with pretty much any crypto joke that's been done to death elsewhere.

You know i think i finally understand why i never had a problem witht he cc current event episodes. Its because both also have decently strong character work, and an emotional core with Fry and Leela. Granted its much weaker in attack of the killer app, but its still there. What character work did the the bitcoin episode bring? Pretty much nothing

Even if the language of the scam will age, the dynamics in the story of the episodes I think were strong enough to last.

To be 100% fair, I’m one of the weirdos who thinks crypto is a scam and also knows WAY too much about it (thanks Folding Ideas)

Wait...1010001 = "81"? ... episode premise is professor owes money to the RM ... is this the first time futuramas almost directly referred to the HA????

I really liked the episode but yea you right

Great video!

Comment For Algorithm

This episode got me laughing though. It's not perfect but I still laughed a good bit.

I hated this episode. The crypto jokes were too much "in your face" and too dragged out, almost none of the jokes were funny, the pacing was horribly slow and most of the voice actors sounded super old and tired. Clearly Billy West is too old to voice those characters now. A joke from earlier seasons that comes to mind "Professor, we decided that you are too old!". Surprigingly, he still sounds good as Zoidberg but that's it. Fry sounds way older than he looks, and professor lacks that energy we had in earlier seasons, even in Comedy Central era. The reason why I think "Farewell to hands" episode works much better is because it has an interesting, engaging story. Leela having a hard time accepting Fry's help worked really well along with the main plot of the end of the world coming. There is none of that here. The crypto mining story is boring and the Kid being a plagiarist is boring. Boring and slow on top of boring and slow. This is probably the first Futurama episode ever where I barely made it to the ending. And this despite that fact that I kinda liked the first episode and loved the second one, in the third one it feels like the show overstayed its welcome and should have ended with Meanwhile.

I like and dislike the reboot, the topical humor is pretty bad, they really don't do anything funny or add any unique twists when referencing something. Just look the Eye phone episode, that took something topical and made it interesting. I've been dreading the new Corona virus episode since I saw the trailer, it won't top the common cold episode either.

I really hate the new season. It feels so hollow. I'm so disappointed, and I'm going to pretend it never happened

The Roberto thing might be referencing when Hermes tried to become a robot.

8:04 the best 3 seconds in history 😂

On the topic of topical references I would suggest checking out Pillar of Garbage’s “Can Futurama Work in 2023?”

this weeks episode is currently my favorite by far again thank you for making these videos

Promo SM