3ACV09: The Cyber House Rules First UK airing: Sky One, 8:30pm, 22-4-01 "But you're better than normal! You're ab-normal!" Digital TV -- better or worse than analogue? Not that it makes a difference, since in a few years analogue broadcasts will be terminated in the UK anyway, but tonight's broadcast of Futurama showed up some of its downsides. First of all, like a DVD, the more movement there is on screen the more data is needed to update the picture -- unfortunately, as I understand it digital TV doesn't have anything near the 10Mbit/sec maximum bandwidth of MPEG-2 since each channel has to be multiplexed with others, so lots of movement causes pixelisation every time there's a fast camera movement. Like, f'rinstance, during the opening credits of Futurama. Second of all, any transmission glitches cause total loss of picture and audio -- which happened five times during tonight's episode! A full hour of Simpsons without a single glitch, and then... Still, enough of my problems with 21st century technology. This was another good, if not awesome, episode, and was actually the first proper Leela episode for exactly a year (in production code terms, anyway), since we haven't seen any major emotional events in our favourite cyclops' life since 2ACV09. The subplot with Bender's new family was rather entertaining too, particularly the bit in O'Zorgnax's. (Hasn't the place gone downhill since Amy scored with Armando, though?) The moment with the baseball bat was just a masterpiece of comic timing, which would be impossible to do in live action. I did think the fact that everyone thought Leela only seemed normal (in the 'average' sense) with two eyes was a bit weird, since in plenty of past episodes it's been shown that most people think she's quite the babe -- until they notice the one giant eye, anyway. She seemed to fall for Adlai even faster than for Alkazar, too! No wonder Fry got so jealous. That makes Leela two for two when it comes to failed relationships with guys whose names begin with 'A'... guess that's me out, then. Although this wasn't one of the funniest episodes ever, Bender's child cruelty made me smile -- and the jokes would, if done in a live-action sitcom with a human 'father', probably have never got past the censors. Being a robot obviously lets you get away with a lot more (although not enough, as the banning of 'A Tale Of Two Santas', with Bender's Xmas rampage, showed). Leela's side of the story didn't have the same kind of emotional payoff as Fry's (oddly similar) odyssey of self-improvement in 'Parasites Lost', but it was still good to see her actually be happy for a while. Too bad that Adlai was as dull as a character as he was meant to be (if that makes sense) -- to make dullness work for a comedy character you really need somebody like Cliff from Cheers, but Adlai was like a human version of the people from the Neutral planet. Mind you, the Professor gawping like a moron and Zoidberg's ink pouch helped make up for it. Now, here's hoping for a glitch-free episode next week! Rating: