Review by Andrew Bloom

Futurama: Season 4

4x09 Future Stock

[7.6/10] Ahhh, the 80s guy! This is such a quotable episode, that works as a nice send-up of the Wall Street set in the outsized Futurama environment. All the efforts to inject eighties-isms into the future make for good laughs, and there’s a solid vein of “Planet Express is generally incompetent” humor there too.

In keeping with the Wall Street parody, there’s a nice story of Fry losing sight of his friends and who he is in following his slick new mentor, only to turn around and try to make things right when he realizes that it’s disrupting the closest thing to a family he has in the future. But I appreciate the cynical Futurama twist that in the end, his co-workers don’t want him to thwart the takeover because it’ll make them rich, and everyone ends up grumpy when his heartfelt speech tanks the stock price. It’s an amusing twist on the stock lose-and-regain-your-soul narrative.

It’s also just a lot of fun. The stock market/earnings report based humor is great. The 80s guy is a tremendous guest character whose every line is a laugh. And there’s some superb Mom material here too.

Overall, the jabs at the eighties here are broad in places, but on the whole, this is a breezy episode that leaves you smiling throughout and quoting long after.

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