The sincerity of Zoidberg’s pain over something that’s fairly meaningless is hilarious. Zoidberg’s genuine horror at Fry having to pay ten entire dollars for something he didn’t do makes sense because that really is a lot of money to Zoidberg, and Fry’s cheerful paying of the money makes sense because he’s both stupid enough to not remember not breaking something and goodnatured enough to pay for it anyway. It really puts into perspective what I was saying about Bender’s A-plot because it locks perfectly into a straightforward “Tell-Tale Heart” story, but twisted to its most absurd expression and in a way that feels true to all the characters involved. On the other hand, it also has the ridiculous and wonderful high of what might be the only really good Zoidberg main plot. I suppose the idea of being a great chef is interesting, but I also suppose this might be a situation where the writers don’t know enough about cooking to be able to joke about it effectively the way they can make jokes about astronomy or environmentalism or hating hippies. It never quite locks into one or two really good ideas the way all the great episodes do. But it never hits a hot streak the way, say, “A Big Piece Of Garbage” does. It uses the structure of a training plot – seen in things ranging from ancient Chinese fairy tales to Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back to The Karate Kid – and it finds some funny spins on that I particularly like Elzar pointing out that, if anything, Bender is responsible for his master’s death. You can also compare it to his obsession with being a folk singer, because it makes more sense to me that he’d completely forget about it right up until it’s right in front of his face, in which case he becomes consumed by it.Īs an individual episode, it doesn’t really spark to life either, although it never gets actively painful. Bender’s obsession with cooking… kinda makes sense? I suppose? But it has no reason to come up in the plot ever. Only targets.”), with the distinctions being that a) the Professor’s lack of business expertise has both reason to come up in the plot and reason not to come up in the plot all the time and b) his treatment of it is exactly in character – the same lazy contempt he does every other thing that’s not superscience. I like the joke of Bender technically being the chef of Planet Express but they never really managed to get it to work all that well you can compare it to the jokes of how technically the Professor is a business owner and watching him poorly throw about business terms (“Who’s your target market?” / “There is no target market. Man, the high we’ve been riding for so long feels like it went forever! This is a step down – it’s another one of those episodes where the premise is inherently not that interesting which tends to lead one to forget that it’s still funny as hell. DN’s Ranking: Bad / NONESSENTIAL / Essential
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