The boys go to Infyrnofest, which is definitely not Fyre Fest. Leela gets a new friend who’s a chatbot and lots more new friends who aren’t. Probably.

The two plots here are individually strong, but oddly, make each other slightly weaker than they would be by themselves. The Infyrnofest stuff is great, and has the exact tone Futurama is so good at. ‘Two hundred bands on three hundred stages!’ is one of those jokes that goes past so quickly you notice it once it’s gone, and there’s a lot of those here. The payoff, with the book club, works well too and Billy West gets some great stuff to do involving Fry’s favourite books and when not to quote them.,

The Leela plot is just as good, has more dramatic potential and feels oddly underexplored. Leela’s stoical acceptance of being the only adult in the company has always been comedy gold and Katey Sagal is especially good at playing the ragged edge of it as she does here. The book club, which becomes a wine club, feels like a nice evolution for a lot of the show’s characters too and it would have been nice to have it stick around. It also leads to some magnificent pulp SF absurdity as Leela’s AI friend takes over the winery the wine club is staying at. The enormous robotic foot, that has to take its enormous robotic shoe off before it can crush grapes is especially good fun. Leela’s funeral tank top is also a lovely gag of the sort the show has always been very good at.

But the problem here is one most of this season so far has had. Everything’s back in the bottle at the end of the episode and the story stops more than it ends. It’s like being shown two very good, very funny scripts and having them taken away before they’re finished.

Verdict: Fun, but it could be so much more fun. 6/10

Alasdair Stuart