Futurama Season 11 Just Inverted The Plot Of A Classic Episode
This new "Futurama" season has been anything but shy about satirizing hot topics in 2020s culture. The latest one? "Cancelation," or powerful people being ostracized/held accountable for misuses of authority. The episode's title is blunt: "Zapp Gets Canceled."
Zapp Brannigan (Billy West) is a starship captain in the Democratic Order of Planets (DOOP). Befitting the "Star Trek" parody, the pitch for his character is, "What if William Shatner was captain of the USS Enterprise?" On top of being a glory hog, Zapp is lecherous, misogynistic, bloodthirsty, incompetent, pretentious, and abusive to his subordinates (West has noticed similarities between Zapp and a certain other blond narcissist).
If any character on "Futurama" was going to be canceled, then no one is more deserving of it than Zapp. In this episode, his mistreated second-in-command Kif Kroker (Maurice LaMarche) grows a backbone and gets Zapp court-martialed. Thus, he loses his captaincy while attending sensitivity training. In the meantime, Turanga Leela (Katey Sagal) takes over as captain of Zapp's ship the Nimbus, bringing Fry and Bender with her.
The Nimbus crew is relieved to not have Zapp leading them anymore. However, this isn't the first time he's lost his position. In fact, this already happened way back on his fourth appearance on the show, season 2's "Brannigan, Begin Again." In that episode, Zapp accidentally destroys the DOOP's new headquarters, located in the Neutral Zone (Zapp, for one, hates the "filthy Neutrals"). How, you ask? He uses the Nimbus' laser to cut the ribbon instead of the scissors that the Planet Express crew was delivering. He's initially found not guilty due to his years of service, but after testimony from Leela about his endless flaws, the verdict is reversed and both Zapp (and Kif) are dismissed.
Brannigan, Begin Again
After Zapp and Kif experience some "Midnight Cowboy"-style homelessness, they're hired at Planet Express by Professor Farnsworth. Not for their prestigious records, but because he needs a new distraction from the company's "horrendous safety record." Zapp eventually inspires Fry and Bender to mutiny against Leela, promising to be a less strict captain. So, they hijack the Planet Express ship to attack the Neutral Planet. When the pair learn it's a suicide attack (with Zapp fleeing in an escape pod), they free Leela and narrowly stop the ship from crashing. Afterward, Leela helps get Zapp reinstated to keep him as far away from her as possible.
So, while Zapp losing his job/facing consequences isn't new territory for "Futurama," the exact consequences are the opposite of each other. In "Brannigan Begin Again," Zapp takes Leela's job and shows why he's such a poor leader, no matter the extent of his power. In "Zapp Gets Canceled," Leela takes Zapp's job and proves to be better at it — unfortunately, she just has too much empathy to captain a "peacekeeping" ship like the Nimbus.
If you view other people as expendable, like Zapp does, it's easier to climb over them. As for him getting re-hired after being fired from his job not once but twice? It's a harsh reality that "cancellation" often comes with few material consequences, and that once you reach a certain level of power, you can only fail upward, not be dragged back down even by those with greater merit.
"Futurama" is streaming on Hulu — new episodes release on Mondays.