Rate and Review: "All the Presidents' Heads"

[Oh, that's raspberry!]

Fry and the gang travel back in time to 1775 and accidentally change history....again! Discuss:

[blueguy]

Still watching, but why is there a head for Sharon Anders in the hall of presidents? Can't really find anything about who this might be.

[HRH Sir Prince Charles]

was ok, appreciated a lot of the historical jokes (Franklin was such a poon hound).The Big Dig joke also had me lullzing, as did the Lars reference. I'm mildly upset they continue to ignore the Farnsworth/Fry connection, but I guess that's beyond hope at this point. The British jokes alternated between cool (the shot of London-esque New New York, with the Columbus Circle Tube Station, Harrods Fifth Avenue and, of course, the Doctor) and the usual stale crap. But I dug the conceit.

4/5

[Oh, that's raspberry!]

I love history humor I mean I have a college degree in history, but I failed to laugh out loud even once here. I appreciated some of the jokes and there were numerous "cute" moments that made me smile, but really not that great for me. I'm hoping I like it more on rewatch but as it stands I might've actually liked last week's better, which I really didn't like at all. 2.5/5, rounded down to a 2/5.

Also, ending/solution felt extremely lazy and like an afterthought which isn't a good thing, but maybe that was because of, again, the obscenely quick pacing?

[HRH Sir Prince Charles]

yeah, on second blush the ending was kind of horrible. I'm getting pretty bored with the laziness.

As for the history thing... I mean, there weren't many of them to be found. They kind of ignored most of them, but I did like the one about Franklin that I mentioned and the jokes with the various Presidents always make me laugh.

[jordan]

man this is like the 2nd or 3rd episode this season I have just completely disliked. that hasn't really happened before with Futurama. I thought even the last batch of episodes last year were pretty much consistently good to amazing.

the Onion TV Club review sums up my reactions pretty spot on. Just a huge waste of a time travel story and with like no care or precision at all...Didn't seem like a true Futurama episode.

[chris]

this was the one i was looking forward to most. i found myself drifting towards other matters halfway through

season's been so limp aside from law & oracle what's going on

[Muskrat]

Despite not being all that funny, I really liked it. The plot was interesting and I was actually okay with the quick ending.

[Dark Homer]

plot felt like it came out of one of the comic books

I was kinda hoping the whole episode would just be them partying with the president heads

[DotheBartman]

Not as negative on this as others are (I laughed enough and generally enjoyed myself), but yeah this was definitely on the mediocre side.

It just felt...really aimless. Even more so than with "Duh Vinci Code" I kept wondering why the characters other than the Professor really cared that much about altering (and then fixing) history. Why does Bender or Leela give a shit if Farnsworth manages to improve his family tree? Why are they just blindly following around? It needed a lot more actual character, since they just felt like props meandering through a meandering story. And it had some of that uncomfortable Bender's Game/children's show feeling to it, even though it wasn't technically them playing dress up as other people or whatever. The anti-climactic ending was funny, but it did sort of feel like they just ran out of time and didn't have a good-enough structure or story in general to be able to resolve it in a more interesting way.

But I mean, I still laughed enough and thought it was basically okay. Modern Simpsons this ain't. The British New York scenes in particular were quite funny. But easily the weakest time-travel show and maybe the weakest of season 6 (In a Gadda Da Leela is the main competition).

[Gatorgod]

Where was Nixon? .. oh, thats right, he got sprung from that joint.. would have been nice to see him tho, didnt matter anyways.

[Dark Homer]

was obama there? I was looking but couldn't spot him. I saw walter mondale though

[Mr. Krikt]

Very boring, magical episode with a terribly lazy ending. Not good.

[Ryan]

Jims has been taunting me for awhile at claiming that time travel Futurama always equals greatness, thus why this episode will deliver...

...and yeah it didn't. At all. The best part was the beginning portion with the party, but as soon as the time-travelling started, things got so messy. Eventually it all crumbled in British New New York, which was obviously crunched for time. It's laughable how they even try to establish conflict within Farnsworth and quickly toss it away because "hey we're running out of time!"

Jokes worked here and there, but mostly in the first act. It's kinda depressing considering that the show was improving steadily in quality during last year's run.

2/5

[Postmaster]

I'm hoping it's just a bad patch we're going through but yeah that was pretty weak, it's as if they thought Josh Weinstein would be so happy and adept at writing an old-timey historical episode with lots of Farnsworth dialogue that they wouldn't have to bother doing any re-writing on this one; it really felt like an early draft. I can see why it's fun for them to do these ancient British stereotypes, but it's so absurd that 30th century New York would be like a modernized Mary Poppins style Britain, the idea doesn't really stand up to much scrutiny. It was fine really, but you'd expect this to be a concept they'd do so much more with.

[Tomacco]

I enjoyed it, though I see where lots of you are coming from. After last week's, this one looked pretty good to me though.

[jordan]

that's so strange to me, because the writing last week was so funny and had a lot of classic Futurama gags and one liners. i agree the plot was whatever but i laughed a lot, even when watching it again before this episode. man this episode did not have like one funny part.

[Postmaster]

I was kind of enjoying the story, then I realized halfway through that I hadn't really laughed at anything yet.

[Gatorgod]

The U.S.Grant puking in the Bush's joke got a howl out of me!

I would've liked more presidential in jokes for us history buffs, even at the expense of alienating a lot of the audience. JFK jokes would've been nice, but the surviving kennedy clan still make trouble for media folks to this day, so i can see why futurama writers/editors might dance around that. Would've been fun to see Jefferson and his rival Adams trying to one up each other constantly, for best burn, competing for Leela's attention, ect. Teaming up the the Adams and the Bush's for the only father/son president couple. (sorry Robert Taft, if Ike hadnt ran that time, you would've been a shoo-in for your daddies job also). If anybody would care to jest about how Andrew Johnson was as great at being terrible, as Lincoln was awesome, i wouldnt mind.

[Tomacco]

With all these negative sentiments, why don' the poll results reflect them? I voted 4/5, which was generous. I think 3/5 better represents how I felt about the episode.

[D DEBBS]

M-E-H

[Oh, that's raspberry!]

With all these negative sentiments, why don' the poll results reflect them? I voted 4/5, which was generous. I think 3/5 better represents how I felt about the episode.

Hey I did my part

My favorite joke was the New Jersey line, but not even that got a laugh out of me. Although I did a double take when I noticed the weapon Franklin gave Bender was actually a mini-shark attached to a stick. That also got a big grin outta me, but mostly for the randomness/absurdity of it.

[Jims]

Jims has been taunting me for awhile at claiming that time travel Futurama always equals greatness, thus why this episode will deliver...

Whaaaaaaa? That's the exact opposite of what I said. Earlier, you said that the show has a really good track record with time travel (therefore greatness approaching), whereas I voiced concerns about them continuing to go to the time travel well for plot ideas.

Don't make me look wrong in front of the board, when I'm so clearly right.

EDIT: From re-reading, I now see that you said I was taunting you "at" (your) claiming. Deceptive wording, I say!

Just watched it, review later.

[Ryan]

Haha yeah I meant the latter. I'm eating crow, easily.

[irvine_11]

4/5... more interesting than funny.

[Captain Squid]

It's about time they expanded on the head jars! I was waiting for an episode that shed more light on a pre-cancellation element of the series.

Not a time bending episode, but still enjoyable. 4/5!

[Mira]

This episode lacked anything really special or hilarious. I really loved the idea of them explaining how the heads in the jars stay alive; I always wondered how that worked and enjoy Futurama when it sticks to it's own universe and the inner workings of it. This is why I actually didn't like it too much once they made the episode about american history rather than focusing on the crystal chemical. Any show can make an episode like this; but not quite one like law and oracle or the mutants are revolting. Really nothing awful though, so I'd give it about a 3/5.

[Jims]

As for the real review...

It was pretty okay. It's probably the most definitive 3/5 Futurama episode in the series, that's how okay it was.

First of all, let's talk about time travel.

Despite what people like Ryan would suggest, time travel does not automatically make for a great episode. Futurama has tended to stick to time travel episodes that fit with the general mythos of the show, like Fry being his own grandfather in the Roswell episode, Fry going back to stop himself in "The Why of Fry", or discussing the Leela/Fry relationship in "The Late Philip J Fry" (and that's completely ignoring the first movie). You would think, or at least people like Ryan would think, that this episode would go along the same route.

But nope, not really. It's more of just a huge wacky 18th century adventure that has barely anything to do with the main cast at all. You could pretty much do this exact same plot with any TV show, with the only think needing adjustment being the Farnsworth angle. And even he would be substitutable. They do attempt to add to the Futurama mythos a little with the magic opal MacGuffin they introduce as an explanation for the time-travel. But it still feels a bit shallow, arbitrary and non-sciency. In fact, one of the funnier jokes in the episode is where they basically admit that they don't know how it works. Such blatant honesty is kind of refreshing in a funny way. In the previous episodes that people like Ryan advocate, they usually try to make some scientific-like explanation.

Here, they're just doing magic. That's it. It's not science fiction, it's magic. I can't wait for next episode where they find the Forbidden Dohickey of Teleportation. Hey, they haven't talked about quartz's properties yet, right? Quartz is an interesting word. Let's use quartz!

So, since the episode has nothing to do with Futurama, it solely rests on the quality of the historical satire. And there's not that much we haven't seen before in terms of American Revolution humor. You've got your typical jokes about our pervy founding fathers and numerous anachronistic references and whatever. There were a couple funny turns on a couple characters, though, so it wasn't a complete waste. I liked how they portrayed Paul Revere as that guy who almost ruined the whole operation (before ruining it anyway). And the running joke with Bender's misidentification were amusing as well.

(But why oh why did they have to explain the Ben Franklin debauchery joke? Just have Fry say "I don't get it" to point out that there WAS a joke, and leave it alone. Stop pointing out how clever you are, writers. We already think you're clever.)

The British Future stuff was the same way as the 1770s stuff, except even more generalized and stereotypical in the jokes (if that's possible). Now we're just doing you typical "Oh, those wacky British" jokes, complete with cockney accents and double-deckers. I will admit that this section is saved a little by the novelty of it, particularly Bender's cockney accent was a delight to listen to. There's also the absurd aspect of it... That the future is like Victorian England instead of modern England of today. Still, it was all pretty typical stuff.

In fact, even the Presidential humor was very typical, paint-by-numbers kinds of jokes. It seemed like this episode went from one set of overdone jokes to another. In those episodes that people like Ryan advocate, they also fall into this kind of joke-writing (like the old-timey stuff in Roswell). But those episodes are at least supported by a connection to the main cast so we'll actually care about what happens to Fry's original grandfather. This one just amounts to "Farnsworth hates that guy".

Didn't really mind them fixing the plot off-screen because what the hell did they need to show us anyway? Just them putting the lanterns back. So unless there was a joke there that would be worthwhile (eh, you might be able to do one), it's not really necessary. In fact, it kind of summarizes how much the regular plot was on auto-pilot in this episode. So, maybe it's brilliant?

So yeah, pretty average overall. Which, considering how much this episode was hyped by people like Ryan, it's also pretty disappointing overall.

3/5.

[Dark Homer]

JFK jokes would've been nice, but the surviving kennedy clan still make trouble for media folks to this day, so i can see why futurama writers/editors might dance around that.

say what? jfk is like the #4 go-to president for comedy shows

[jordan]

Jims, the problem is they seemed to be setting us up for another grand wonderful poetic and hilarious time travel adventure, what with the mention of Lars, and a fairly solid first act that started to explain a very long mysterious Futurama element (head in jars)....It really implied it was setting up some amazing thing. And then...who gave a shit. The woman calling Fry "Lars" seemed to almost be a cue to the audience - "this will be as complex and interesting and important an episode as that previous story was."