Season 2 episode S02E20: "Anthology of Interest 1"

This review starts off with a really, really bad introduction (not this introduction; this is the introduction to the introduction), followed by a bunch of useless, uncorroborated facts. In order to save you time, and get you off to the next diary where you might read about someone's exciting clash with dinner, I've highlighted the important sentence in bold. Feel free to skip right to it! This message brought to you by the Ad Council.

This episode of Futurama is great, and behind every great episode of Futurama there exists (maybe) an intriguing story about how that episode, once a mere tadpole, metamorphosed into a giant frog that leaped out of your TV set, through your eye sockets, and into the meaty aquarium of your mind hole! There the frog sang to you, belting out illustrious tunes that sent tingles down your psyche's spine. But what if there were no story of intrigue? What if you were wearing safety goggles when the frog leaped from the TV screen, deflecting it to the ground where it asphyxiated on the irrespirable, toxic human air. No one wants to hear that story. But interactive DVD doesn't care what you want to hear! If you're looking for a quickly paced cerebral activity, go ride a bike through a library. This is DVD commentary, where only the strong-willed survive!

The commentary for this episode is mostly boring. It features Matt Groening, David X. Cohen (writer/producer/director), Billy West (voice of Fry and over ten-thousand other Futurama characters), John DiMaggio (voice of Bender), and up to 10 other people who all sound the same but it doesn't matter because they hardly say anything. Following the introductions, the commentary gets off to a good start, with some explanation about how the three stories that comprise the episode (this episode is in a format similar to the Simpsons's Treehouse of Horror Halloween specials) had to be heavily edited in order to fit in the allotted time, and as a result the stories make only barely enough sense. Then there's a long spell of silence, and you're essentially watching the episode with no commentary at all. Think about it like this though: the magic of DVD has transported you from your living room into the recording studio with the creators of Futurama, where you get to watch an episode wedged inbetween Matt Groening and David X. Cohen! The commentary picks up after a while and there's some laughter, and awkward moments where someone tells a joke and no one laughs, and you feel pretty bad for the guy so you let out a little sympathy chuckle. Soon, though, you'll be privy to Futurama factoids that even the show's creators aren't certain about; for instance, this episode possibly features the first talking appearance of Planet Express's janitor (Scruffy?)!

The last few minutes is where the real meat of this commentary resides. David Cohen has a great story about how surreal it was to record Al Gore at his house for the episode. For the scene where everyone is pulled into the vortex when the universe collapses into itself Al Gore had to scream, and he really got into it by falling off the couch and grasping on to it as he pretended that he was being ripped away. Only in commentary tracks, folks! They didn't mention Al Gore's daughter, who worked on Futurama in some capacity, so it may have been before she started with them. By the way, it's genuinely sad the way all the commentaries talk about the show as if it was still in production, since at the time it was, but the DVDs weren't released in the US until after the cancellation (they were released in the UK, however, while the series was still alive). If you didn't watch the credits for this episode, then prepare to be shocked by the revelation that Stephen Hawkings (along with Gary Gygax and Nichelle Nichols) really did provide his own voice for this episode. All those times they had him on the Simpsons I thought the joke was that they were just using a computer to generate his lines and then claiming they had a world renowned physicist(?) on the show. But the joke was on me! Plus, now I'm an asshole because I thought it was cool to make fun of Stephen Hawkings's robot voice because the Simpsons was doing it. But they weren't! So this commentary track wasn't all boring, and it really delivers in the last 2 minutes. For additional entertainment jump straight to the next episode ("War is the 'H' Word) without commentary; it's really funny.

Stay tuned for my next entry, where I review the operating manual for a paper towel dispenser!