Talking Futurama - Bend Her
Added 2023-11-13 05:00:02 +0000 UTCThe 3004 Olympics are here, and what's a male robot to do when the events are dominated by trained professionals? Bender's answer: change genders and dominate in the fembot games! But with his newfound persona, "Coilette," Bender risks humiliating Calculon with a sham marriage and being trapped between the already ill-defined robot sexes. Will Bender spare Calculon's feeling and return to his old self? And will this 2003 episode about gender offend 2023 sensibilities? Find out on Talking Futurama, a podcast we didn't make up!
Comments
As a 23 yr old zoomer, I’ve noticed a lot of people my age LOVE Futurama but don’t care at all about the Simpsons, and a lot of that is because of availability. When we were kids, Futurama reruns were on adult swim and then later Netflix, same with King of the Hill, Family Guy and American Dad. Simpsons was too valuable for cable reruns or Netflix streaming back in the day, so it skipped a lot of my generation; and all of the other fox animated shows filled in that gap.
Bryce Hope
2023-11-28 12:09:59 +0000 UTCWhen I saw this pop up on my patreon feed I shuddered. I've thought about this episode from time to time but it's been so long since I've seen it I wasn't sure just how bad it might be. All things considered it's not as bad as I remember. As a trans woman I am certainly familiar with all the cultural tropes that get made into jokes in this episode but I find it difficult to be offended by any of it. It doesn't feel actively hateful just uninformed. If this episode were made right now in the current political context I think it would be fair to judge it much more harshly but it wasn't and context really is everything here. I doubt anyone in that writer's room had any close trans friends. Ultimately this episode is just plain funny. Even as a trans person I actually felt some of the jokes here are fair game. "Playing with your new boobs until the novelty wears off", "Wild mood swings when you start HRT", and "Being a slut in your new gender" made me laugh because I could definitely relate. Good job Henry and Bob for covering the episode with your usual amount of grace and well-researched professionalism.
Saya Clarke
2023-11-17 22:43:19 +0000 UTCIt's a shame this episode gets into such problematic territory because the wedding scene is hilarious. This might be the ultimate Calculon episode, every appearance since this one has been underwhelming IMO. "Emotions are dumb and should be hated." is an underappreciated line.
PurpleComet
2023-11-16 06:39:02 +0000 UTCa few years ago I introduced all of the original run of Futurama to my wife, a first-time viewer. and this was definitely one of those episodes I remember being funny from the re-runs on Adult Swim in adolescence but through a modern lens, causes some collar-tugging, as you guys describe. This one definitely has some of the dated 'battle of the sexes' fodder of the era I was a little apprehensive to show her, but my wife loved Bender as Coilette and was laughing at the faux-relationship with Calculon and jokes like "will it work on my TV?" It helps that, as Bob put it "Bender is evil"
Blake R.
2023-11-15 14:48:47 +0000 UTC
