2ACV15: The Problem With Popplers First UK airing: Sky One, 7:00pm, 9-7-00 "They're great! They're like sex, except I'm having them!" Who would have thought it? Zapp actually came up with a plan that very nearly worked! Next week, Fry engages in a spot of particle physics. The energy level of Futurama seems to be tailing off a bit as we get near to the end of the season (and yes, I know there's another three episodes being held over to season 3). 'Popplers' wasn't bad, but it wasn't outstanding either. Like 'Bender Gets Made', though not nearly to the same extent, the amount of plot took a toll on the jokes. Even the best jokes (the billboard, "Oh, all right. Cottage cheese." and the whole 'eating a hippy' bit) were smilers rather than laughers, and there were a couple of clunkers. Bender's "tasteicles" gag was good, but Leela's follow-on joke was overplayed and overlong. And the bit where Leela told off Fry after he complained about waiting for destruction seemed as though it was missing a punchline. Although the way Sky's been cutting the show lately, maybe it was! If a show's going to have a plot, then it's only fair that people like moi pick holes in it. If the Planet Express gang wanted people to stop eating popplers, why didn't they just... stop supplying them? After all, as the song explained, they're the only people who know where to find them. And with a four-day round trip to the planet, even with a trailer, how did our heroes manage to bring back 198 billion popplers? Which, incidentally, would have netted the gang a grand total of $16.5 billion, probably putting Planet Express on a par with the Wong family business. A couple of weird observations -- the Empire State Building is still standing, despite pretty much everything else from Old New York having been destroyed by various alien attacks, and Leela, the hippy and Fishy Joe were all in front of appropriate backdrops during their interviews (the Planet Express ship, a bead curtain and a skyscraper office) -- but then they all turned out to be in the same studio! BTW, did anyone else spot that Hermes was using a 3001 version of an iBook? Even though I already knew Leela's real name (sometimes it's just impossible to avoid spoilers...) it was still funny to hear it for the first time -- and even funnier to hear Fry's first name actually spoken out loud for once. It only took two years -- and hey, it was Amy who said it. Well, I suppose you can't date someone for a while and never use their first name... Rating: