Episode: Futurama 6.08 – “That Darn Katz!”
Original Air Date: August 5, 2010
You know, while I was typing up my last Futurama review I was thinking that we hadn’t really seen Nibbler for a while now. Well, that problem has been solved. This episode is a very Nibbler- and Amy-heavy episode, an interesting combination necessary to save the world!
Amy has been hanging around being dippy and mostly useless for so long that I’d almost forgotten why she was there in the first place. In case you have too, she’s Professor Farnsworth’s grad student, and has been working on her thesis for the last twelve years. The professor tries to reassure the nervous Amy that she’s ready and encourages her to go out and do whatever young people do to relax. This lands everyone in a club drinking from glasses that refill themselves at the push of a button. I want to know where I can get one of those!
It’s so strange to see Nibbler talking to Leela without having to blank her memory later. He’s such a cute little thing when he coos like a baby, and then all of a sudden he’s got a deep manly voice and an advanced vocabulary. He’s tired of being treated like an infant or a pet and he wants Leela to treat him with some respect, though it would be difficult to do so when he wears nothing but a diaper and a cape. Leela agrees, though she isn’t happy about it and tells him no more purse rides. I have a feeling he’s going to regret that later. I think he secretly likes being babied.
Amy parties a little too hard and wakes up a mess, not to be confused with the mess Kiff left on her bedroom floor. Her alarm goes off late because it hooked up with Bender last night. Does that robot have no shame?
She shows up to her doctoral exam late and in her underwear, which isn’t helped by her allergy to cats, an irritating one of which is sitting on one of the examiner’s laps. Her doctorate is denied and somehow the white ball of fluff follows them home.
The cat effectively distracts the entire crew besides Amy and Nibbler. Amy of course hates it for contributing to the failure of her thesis (I’m with you, Amy! Cat allergies suck and I swear cats know who’s allergic to them and torture them purposely!) and Nibbler is just downright jealous. Leela is dressing up the cat in his cute little sailor suit and talking baby talk at it and suddenly he misses being the focus of her attention. Nibbler and Amy suspect it’s up to something and they watch the cat for a while. They are ready to give up when they suddenly see Leela acting strangely. The cat is evil!
It was absolutely hilarious when the cat called down its spaceship by meowing the Meow Mix tune! When Amy and Nibbler go to tell everyone about the cat’s nefarious actions, they find they’re too late. There’s a cat in every lap and the whole crew has saucer-like pupils, zombified by the kitties. They seem absolutely unreachable as they demand that Amy pet their cats.
The cat’s mothership lands in Planet Express and soon everyone is carrying boxes and taking things down to the basement, including a giant ball of yarn. Now even more suspicious, Nibbler and Amy head to Mars University to talk to Professor Katz, only to discover that he’s a puppet. They head back to Planet Express and sneak into the basement to find that the crew built the planetary ratchet Amy designed in her thesis.
Cue cat with explanation. Long story short, the cats’ planet stopped spinning, making it too hot and too cold. They set out to steal the rotational energy of Earth. They had the great pyramid at Giza built, but the worship of the Egyptian people caused cats to become fat and lazy, losing the technology to save their planet. Amy’s thesis, however, reminded them and now the plan is back on. They want to transfer the rotation of Earth to their planet, killing Earth in turn. Man, I hate cats.
Nibbler decides to try to counteract the hypnotic cuteness of the cats with his own but finds it too difficult. The cats succeed in their evil plan and the Earth stops spinning. Suddenly everyone wakes up as the cats leave. The crew tries to reverse it and get the planet spinning again, but it doesn’t work. Amy figures out how to resolve the problem, thankfully, saving everyone and while the planet now spins the wrong way, no one minds. It’s better than burning up or freezing anyway.
The episode ends with as Amy receives her PhD for saving the planet and Nibbler makes up with Leela. All is right with the world, well, besides the sun setting in the East and all. I could have gone my whole life without a Futurama episode so focused on cats, but it was still a great episode, despite my hatred for all things feline. I’m curious to see what excuse they’ll come up with for Amy to hang around now that she’s not Professor Farnsworth’s grad student.
Rating: 3.5 / 5 Stars
