Hey folks, Harry here with the latest report from that darling of the aisles... Junior Mintz. Junior has been busy recently, her parents kicked her out of the house to fend for her own, the theater job has become tough on her since she's having to pay rent on her own. She's been making rumblings about finding a single male in Los Angeles to shack up with, but I'll let you know when her audition process begins you slobbering geeks. Till then read about the FUTURAMA episode you haven't and most likely will never see....
Hey Harry,
I really should have reported on this sooner, but I only now stumbled across this tape again, hidden since December beneath a pile of spare pillbox hats and used flashlight batteries.
This past Hanukkah one of the more unusual prizes contributed to the pot at my annual strip dreidel party (don't knock it if you haven't tried it) was a copy of last year's drop-dead hysterical FUTURAMA Xmas episode, "A Tale of Two Santas". Don't remember seeing the Xmas episode? That's right you don't because the squeemish folks at Fox pulled it just before the air date. Too bad, because it really is one of the funniest episodes produced so far this season. Maybe now that the holidays are over (and there's less chance of kids mistaking it for a happy Xmas special) Fox will show it sometime soon. Until then, here's my rundown. If ya don't want to know what happens, click out of here now.
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Once again New New York braces itself for the yuletide arrival of Robot Santa, or as he's also known, "That bloodthirsty cadaver junkie." If you saw last year's FUTURAMA holiday spectacular, you'll remember that the Santa of the 30th century has gone far beyond handing out lumps of coal to bad kids and now dispenses retribution with a machine gun. As pretty much everyone in the galaxy is on Santa's naughty list this year, Fry, Leela and Bender decide to take him down.
Infiltrating Santa's Death Fortress on Neptune, the heroes engage Santa in battle and succeed in trapping him in ice. They then set out to restore joy to Xmas by selecting a new Robot Santa who will deliever presents to good kids. Naturally Bender gets the job. This leads to a wonderfully twisted musical number wherein Fry, Leela and Bender put Santa's alien elf slaves back to work making toys at breakneck speed. A snippet of the elf song shows that this is not your typical Holly Jolly Xmas fare:
ELVES
(Sing, exhausted)
We are getting awfully tired and we can't work
any faster, and we're very, very sorry...
BENDER
(Sings, furious)
Why you selfish little bastards! Do you want the
kids to think that Santa's just a crummy,
empty-handed jerk?
(Kicks several elves in the groin)
Then shut your yaps and back to work!
Dressed as Santa, Bender takes the toys to Earth and tries to dispense them ("At very reasonable prices!") but the memory of the previous robot Santa's rampage is too fresh in everyones minds. Bender is violently shot or beaten everywhere he goes and is finally arrested and condemned to be pulled apart by giant magnets. Realizing they've made a mistake, Fry and Leela free the real Santa who arrives on Earth in time to save Bender. The two robots then go on a gleeful Xmas eve "slay" ride which reduces the entire city to flames.
This is a brilliantly funny black comedy episode (kudos to writer Bill Odenkirk for the great script) which is preceeded by a witty taped introduction from series co-creator David X. Cohen. In the intro. Cohen explains that Fox had not found the episode suitable for broadcast at 7:00 PM , or at any other time, for that matter. That's a real shame because violent or not, it's still a terrific episode. It's only a CARTOON, folks! Get over it and run the damn thing already!
Junior Mintz
