TV Review: FUTURAMA - "Overclockwise"
Overclockwise has a great premise and wonderful potiental, which leads to a really excellent first act. Then there’s the other two…
Sorry to kill und run, but I really must be Goering!Overclockwise has a great premise and wonderful potential, which leads to a really excellent first act. Then theres the other two Our story starts with Fry, Cubert and Bender sitting around playing a video game called World of World War III 3. They quickly get it handed to them because Benderswell, not the best player in the world. He constantly cocks his gun and runs into walls and basically is kind of like me when playing any online FPS. It turns out that the problem is caused by Bender being twelve years old. His systems are out of date and need to be upgraded. You cant even keep up with me! says Fry. And Im some Stone Age throwback. This leads to Cuberts idea to overclock Bender and clean out his system; a process which includes removing twelve terabytes of outdated catchphrases, much to Benders disappointment. The overclocking is successful, though of course it results in Bender heating up. Its so successful that the three easily beat their nemeses in their video game. Even launching a V2 against Bender doesnt do any good, as he easily destroys it while saying Its my brains against your von Braun! Unfortunately, their enemies are the three sons of Mom. She looks to see who beat her boys and finds out about Benders overclocking. This, it turns out, violates his terms of service, so she sends out some minions to destroy him and arrest both the Professor and Cubert. Bender easily defeats the minions, but the Professor and Cubert are brought up on charges. While they await trial, Bender overclocks himself some more, which leads to him needing more cooling, and adding more overclocking and more cooling, and you get the idea. From there we go to a trial, shots of Bender being vaguely godlike and a very out of nowhere subplot that involves Fry and Leelas relationship. Theres a lot of good comedy here, but as I said, all of it is pretty much concentrated in the first act. Some of the scenes of the trial are enjoyable enough, and the commentary on terms of service agreements is welcome, even if its not terribly original. I also really loved the overall feel of the Bender-as-God concept, which calls back to the earlier episode, Godfellas. But the Fry/Leela story really seemed sudden and out of place, though I must say I loved the resolution to it. Still, the first act was really great, and the other two were at least decent enough. This wasnt the best episode of this season, but its quite far from the worst.