10 Worst Futurama Episodes

If you're a country singer, then you'd better look away now, as this episode takes some pretty big digs at the music genre with seemingly no purpose.

Seeing Bender obsessed with trivial things is often an excellent means for episode narratives. Still, in this case, it not only felt like more of the same but spontaneously revived something that fans had long since forgotten.

"Forty Percent Leadbelly" shows as Bender 3D prints a guitar from the universe's greatest folk singer, Silicon Red. He tries to use this instrument to achieve his lifelong dream of becoming a famous folk singer but finds that he has precious little to sing about. However, that soon changes as the song he's writing begins to come to life.

The episode ends with Bender saving himself by selling out his "artistic integrity" and joining up with Silicon Red to sell out. This is an evident metaphor for the episode's failure, as it clearly doesn't care for the genre that it's satirising and fails to get any decent laughs along the way.

Bender's spontaneous desire to become a famous singer was previously alluded to but pushed to the side to develop other passions like cooking. Therefore, this outing explores something the show had moved past and made Bender out to be more unlikeable than normal.