On Mars to visit Amy’s family, the team are introduced to the world of Buggalo fighting. Benderm, besotted by Marquite, a legendary Matadora, becomes a bug fighter.

This is a very weird season so far and this episode embodies very nearly everything it’s doing right and wrong. The sheer volume of jokes here is pitch perfect, from Marquita’s endless name (presented not as a way to mock her but a way to mock others which is very smartly done) to a sportscaster commenting from his car so he can beat traffic. It’s smart, grim and funny and the show still excels at doing those all at once. John DiMaggio is great too, and the Bender-centric nature of the episode gives him a lot to play with.

Outside these areas though, the episode struggles. Each character getting an episode in the spotlight hasn’t worked well, meaning the entire rest of the cast are often left twiddling their thumbs. That leads to Leela, who often gets the worst of this, reduced to a punchline here. She’s too lazy to save Fry, obsessed with bug meat to the point of trash diving and shrugs off the ethical horrors of bugfighting itself. She plays less like Leela and more like a character shaped and sounding like her. It’s a real shame, because the stuff here that works is very good. But this isn’t it.

Worst of all though, the episode sees a return of the season’s most insidious villain: the reset button. Instead of being an animal rights episode that embraces and explores the issue, it hits a reset button that feels neither earned nor well paced. Buggalo, it turns out, like to fight, so slaughtering them is completely fine. Roll end credits. It’s a weird, flat ending in a season that’s had too many of them already and it’s hard not to view endings like this as a cop out.

Verdict: It’s a fun episode, as all of this season so far has been. But it’s also a curiously flat episode, and one with yet another rushed ending. Fun, but could, and should, be much more. 7/10

Alasdair Stuart