Futurama: 10 Worst Episodes

3. The Futurama Holiday Spectacular

The Episode: Everyone loves a Christmas special, right? Wrong. There's always too much damned singing, for one thing.

Not content with destroying just one festive holiday, Futurama decided to take a swing at sci-fi versions of Christmas ("X-Mas"), Hanukah ("Robonica") and Kwanza all in one episode. First, an attempt to resurrect the extinct pine tree causes a global disaster when the trees grow out of control due to seed contamination. The second segment sees Bender lead the crew on a search for enough petroleum for two fembots to wrestle in for six weeks to celebrate his made up holiday. In the third and final segment, the Planet Express crew go in search of beeswax in order to create traditional Kwanza candles, only to end up at the mercy of giant space bees.

Why It Sucks: As a general rule, the Futurama Christmas episodes have became progressively weaker with each subsequent instalment. For the most part, Futurama gets away with being culturally insensitive simply because it makes fun of everyone indiscriminately. Even so, this episode went a bit far with its treatment of the middle Hanukah-themed story. The low point of the FHS, though, was the appearance of the Robot Santa. The character was great as a one-off concept, but really had nothing new to offer the show by his third Yuletide outing.

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With a (nearly) useless degree in English literature and a personal trainer qualification he's never used, Freddie spends his times writing things that he hopes will somehow pay the rent. He's also a former professional singer, and plays the saxophone and ukulele. He's not really used to talking about himself in the third person, and would like to stop now, thanks.