This review contains spoilers.
7.8 Fun On A Bun
"Wait 'til those judges get their hands on my mammoth sausage!"
Yup. It's a Bender ep. Well, not quite...
In a bid to get to know his crew better, the professor takes his crew over to Germany for Oktoberfest. But instead of "scantily class barmaids and beer and more beer and the smell of vomit," Fry is horrified to see that the festival has become a sophisticated display of German culture.
These Germans of the future like nothing better than to sip tiny tasters of bier whilst listening to orchestral versions of The Birdie Song, or Chicken Dance as everyone outside the UK seems to call it. (Note for pedants, it's actually a Swiss composition.)
Another cliched German trope, the sausage, features large in the titular bun - enter Bender. After bumping into his hero, celeb chef Elzar, he decides that his life-long ambition is/was to win a sausage competition. Whereas Fry indulges in some severe fun-making; getting hammered on booze and performing the aforementioned dance whilst wearing a chicken hat.
Leela, unimpressed, decides enough is enough and dumps the delivery boy (that's right, they were a couple). A distraught Fry trundles off with Bender in search of a frozen Mammoth for his sausage competition. After quickly finding one, the shiny assed-one sticks it in his Mammal Mulcher where the hairy beast is joined by Fry.
After discovering his remains in Bender's mammoth sausage, Leela decides that she cannot go on life without Fry, and so gets all Eternal Sunshine... and has her memories of him removed. The team's attempts not to mention Fry are hilarious, as the gang try not to trigger any unpleasantness for their colleague.
But, of course, Fry is not dead and the second half of the episode is not dissimilar to season two's The Cryonic Woman in feel as the clumsy quiffed-hair one finds himself frozen in ice and then hanging out with neanderthals. And if you think that's an odd turn to take, then the finale of a war between the technically superior homo-sapiens and their descendants (allegedly) will have your bizarre-o-meter spiking along with the laughs.
Writer Dan Vebber, the man behind this year's excellent The Thief of Baghead amongst many, many others, has packed a lot of story and a lot of gags into one little tale, whilst also reminding us that Fry and Leela, are indeed, a couple. But it's TV's Bender who, yet again in a matter of episodes, steals the show; still crazy after all these years.
Read Cameron's review of last week's episode, The Six Million Dollar Mon, here.
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