At its best, Futurama takes familiar science fiction ideas and turns them into wonderfully absurd episodes. The show can pick from a buffet of pop culture and make an episode that’s often greater than the sum of those parts. Last week’s episode “The One Amigo” seemed like a retread. “Quids Game” still keeps the show in comfortable territory but at least lets the characters drive the action with some great comedy.
Someone left the cake out in the rain
The episode centers around why Fry hates celebrating his birthday. Flashbacks reveal his traumatic eighth birthday party with the theme of “Game Night Afternoon”. What was intended as a fun afternoon, only leads to alienation from his childhood friends after he wins every game and they think he cheated. Having friends hate you is certainly a miserable birthday gift.
In the present, the crew throws Fry a surprise party, much to his disgust. When the ship crashes on a planet, they have to relive that same birthday party and the games played, thanks to three gambling godlike weirdos. And of course, the version of these children’s games are incredibly deadly.
Previous episodes on Fry’s past lead to some of the series’s best episodes, and a traumatic eighth birthday offers similar dramatic potential. “Quids Game” though doesn’t hit the same emotional levels of previous episodes tied to his past like “Luck of the Fryish” or “Jurassic Bark”. Those are two of the all time great episodes of the series (and arguably episodes of television).
The script by writer Cody Ziglar never really connects the trauma of that childhood birthday to the one Fry experiences in the present. A stronger script might introduce the cast of childhood friends as analogues of the cast we know hence why Fry is terrified to celebrate his birthday. Maybe it might raise the dramatic stakes in the present with Fry refusing to play because he doesn’t want accusations of cheating again thus potentially endangering everyone. Instead, both stories just end with punchlines undercutting any real emotional stakes in the episode.
There’s a twist!
Thankfully though Ziglar loads the episode with some truly inspired jokes (“This isn’t acid. It’s a highly concentrated alkali so you’ll dissolve twice as fast!”) and sight gags. One may never think of “Pop Goes the Weasel” and musical chairs in quite the same way again. He takes the basic premise of the pandemic hit Korean tv show Squid Game and warps it through Futurama’s particular brand of humor.
It’s funny enough seeing most of the series’s side cast (Scruffy the janitor! Elzar! Magda the robot fortune teller!) just show up for Fry’s birthday party. It’s even funnier seeing them get brutally massacred in the increasingly violent (and ridiculous) party games. If you’ve ever wanted to see Barbados Slim get his comeuppance, then this episode is for you. Throw in some excellent comic voice work from Maurice LaMarche, David Herman, and Tom Kenny as the antagonists and this episode at least makes you consistently laugh.
Final Verdict
Even if this isn’t one of the best dramatic episodes of Futurama, “Quids Game” is a really funny episode. There’s some great lines in this episode (“Now I can start that sex league!) and seeing most of the cast die absurdly (again, pop goes the weasel) is a lot of fun. It’s just disappointing that territory that’s provided fertile territory for previous episodes, Fry’s past, can’t do the same here.
New episodes of Futurama drop Mondays on Hulu.
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