Last night ’s Futurama was short on laughs but big on ideas and admiration , weaving a Leonardo - themed conspiracy that featured rat - powered robots , sixteenth century spaceships , the saucy major planet in the cosmos , and so , so many clockwork appliance .
There ’s something a bit … off about “ The Duh Vinci Code . ” I ’m not sure if it was the pacing was just a hair too slow , the staging of the jokes was n’t as crisp as usual , or the general want of marking hook the instalment of some of its push , but I ’ve watched the episode twice and still ca n’t quite get into it . A lot of the jokes were really quite skilful , although it seemed as though the show was prove to stretch 80 % of an above - mean episode into regular length , and as such the material felt stretched very thin and consequently , not as curious .
But I ’m going to allow for that by , because I do n’t feel like chicane about an sequence with such tremendous ideas at its core . confessedly , a warm - over Da Vinci Code takeoff does n’t seem all that inspiring , and Futurama ’s attempts to push Dan Brown ’s nonsensical conspiracy and unlikely leaps of logic into even more absurd territory did n’t quite work , if only because the reservoir material is pretty much self - takeoff anyway .
The thing is , the installment clearly did n’t really worry about making playfulness of The Da Vinci Code so much as invent an whole different and much more fascinating Leonardo conspiracy . ( Those hoping to discover the Space Pope ’s dark , twisted mystery must have been sorely disappoint . ) You see , Leonardo was actually a distance alien from the planet Vinci , a world of scholarly super - geniuses who live for centuries . Leonardo , however , was the dumbest valet on Vinci , so he live on to Earth to become the smartest individual and greatest inventor in the world , even if it was just some lousy backwater planet .
And what incredible inventions he left behind ! There ’s the rodent - powered golem Animitronio , with gems for eyes and wooden stakes for legs . Disguised as an apostle in The Last Supper , he ’s a delightfully eccentric and only more or less murderous robot , with one of the silliest Italian accent ever and a predilection for throwing skeleton in quite a little . But the veridical highlight is Leonardo ’s clockwork - ride , wing - power interstellar starship . The uniting of several different inventions , it ’s one of the most beautiful things I ’ve ever seen on Futurama , and a marvelous court to the sorts of freakish gismo that drink down up in pre-19th one C proto - scifi .
After the conspicuous lack of Fry in last calendar week ’s first appearance , I was beaming to see him take centerstage in this episode , although it would have been dainty if Leela had come along for the ride . ( They ’re understandably not dating , but Leela was quite nonchalantly up for having sex in the catacomb . What the hell is their family relationship correctly now , and do the writer hump or care ? And if they do n’t should we ? But I digress . ) Instead , Fry was couple off with the Professor , and I ’ll admit I revel the results . It ’s wanton to forget that Fry is the Professor ’s highly distant ancestor , and the cheeseparing thing to family either one has . The show has never really see how the mad but clearly smart as a whip Professor can even relate to someone who is quite possibly the dumbest person in the macrocosm .
The solvent : he ca n’t , at least not without Fry attest his economic value by selflessly and unintentionally give himself into the gear of Leonardo ’s doomsday car , saving the mega - geniuses of the satellite Vinci . ( Like I say , this installment has some perfectly amazing ideas . ) There ’s a meek theme here about the peril of intellectual superiority , something summed up by the Professor with what had to be the line of the episode : “ They care for me like I ’m stupid than them just because they ’re smarter than me ! ” The remnant of the sequence feature a meeting of the creative thinker on board Leonardo ’s crazy spaceship and was almost heartwarming , a charming reminder about having a good affectionateness and making the best of what you get . That ’s an admirable object lesson , I presuppose , even if you ’re so obtuse that you in reality utilise a nail to forge in other nails .
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