David X. Cohen Pinpoints A Biblical Futurama Episode That 'Didn't Age Well'
When you're making a show that lasts over 25 years, there will inevitably be some material from early seasons that don't age as well as expected. Comedy is the quickest to age and the quickest to age poorly, they say, so we should probably go easy on older sitcoms when they can't fully escape being products of their time. While early "Futurama" has aged better than most sitcoms from 1999 — thanks to how most of the woes it satirizes are still around today, but worse — there are plenty of moments that the creators regret. Case in point: "In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela," the 2010 episode where Leela and Zapp find themselves alone, naked, in an unknown planet.
"That one didn't age well," co-creator David X. Cohen said in a 2023 interview. "But we failed to avoid it. I would say it's a better description than that we didn't avoid it." He doesn't clarify exactly what "it" is here, but it seems safe to say he's referring to Zapp's over-the-top creepy behavior throughout the episode, which escalates past his usual sleaziness and skids right into "this is a crime" territory. He deceives Leela into thinking the Earth's been destroyed and they're the only people left in humanity, and that it's their moral responsibility now to repopulate the Earth themselves.
It almost works, but Leela discovers the ruse and responds by kicking him in the face. However, the episode ends with the terrifying death sphere V-GINY forcing them to have sex anyway to save the universe. "Well, if it's to save Earth, I guess I could take one for the team," Leela says, and so they hook up. Adding onto the dubious consent issues is the episode's final punchline where a devastated Fry is forced to watch. It all feels a bit too mean-spirited.
Not Futurama's finest hour
There are a lot of beloved episodes of the show's first full season back from cancellation, but "In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela" wasn't one of them. It's often ranked among the worst "Futurama" episodes, mainly because of how casually it treats Zapp's disturbing behavior. Zapp's always been a creep, but usually he gets far more of a comeuppance for it, not a reward. The other fan complaint is that Leela comes across as too much of a pushover. She falls for Zapp's lies more easily than the Leela we know would, and even before the Earth's supposed destruction she's still putting up with far more abuse from him than usual.
Likewise, Leela's lack of concern towards Fry throughout all this feels inconsistent. Throughout the Fox era of the show, Leela went back and forth between liking Fry or not, often to the point where it seemed like they were dating in one episode and mere acquaintances in the next. This was the understandable result of Fox messing around with the episode's airing order, but for Comedy Central there was no such excuse. Why was the audience expected to laugh at Fry's heartbreak after it's been so clearly established by now that the two love each other? Why give us this storyline right after they left off the previous episode on such good terms?
Luckily, "In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela" was a low point in an otherwise strong season, rather than a harbinger of things to come. Not only did season 7 give us all-time great episodes like "Lethal Inspection" and "The Late Philip J. Fry," but it generally stayed away from any flippant jokes about Leela being sexually harassed. David X. Cohen pointed to this episode as a mistake, but at least they seemed to learn from it afterward.