Defeated yet again by Ogden Wernstrom, despite solving death and giving Cara Delevigne several new limbs, the professor quits science to follow his first real dream… FASHION!

Almost every problem I’ve had with the season so far is solved here. It’s a team show from the jump this week and the shift into pulp science fashionista for the Professor is explored with a lot of depth and some truly fantastic gags, none of which are at the expense of the characters. There’s some particularly great Zoidberg material which directly addresses his costume which I absolutely loved and some really strong Bender support gags. His increasingly apathetic responses to Zoidberg’s apparent suicide attempt is a standout, and works a couple of different ways, one of which is actually much kinder than Bender likes to admit to..

Best of all, the episode gets guest stars more correct than the show has in a long time. The cameos are fun but Cara Delevigne understands every inch of the assignment and is an asset to every scene she’s in. Chirpy, articulate, stitched together from multiple corpses and just a little manic, she’s the episode’s breakout star. Bonus points too for doing a story dealing with fashion and body image that expressly puts a supermodel on top of a very large body and makes not one single joke about size.

The premise also, almost, hits the sweet spot of comedy gold and science fiction invention that the show is so good at. The idea of the fast fashion itself is great, the wormhole it’s disposed of through is even better and the image of the planet of clothes is one of the show’s best visual gags. It leads to a frenzied final set of gags too which lift more than one cast member and set up what feels like a great ending.

It’s so frustrating then that, yet again, at the last possible instant, the reset button is pushed. The twist ending, which you’ll guess, isn’t the reset button we’ve had so many times before this season but honestly may be worse. It sacrifices the story for a punchline and one that we know will be rolled back next week. Again.

Verdict: Up until that moment ‘Attack of the Clothes’ is the best episode of the season to date and it’s great to see the show start to find its rhythm again. But it’s still not quite there. 8/10

Alasdair Stuart