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Talking Futurama - Leela's Homeworld (Patreon)

Published:
2022-12-12 05:00:06
Imported:
2026-06
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Since 1999, all of America was trying to solve the mystery of Leela's parents. Then they found out they were mutants. (Cough.) And while the secret's been out for 20 years, this episode still provides some choice emotional moments as well as a chance for Katey Sagal to stretch her legs as a voice actor. Listen in as we discuss the TV-writer-daughters of notable Vice Presidents, the unfortunate aftertaste of toxic waste, and just what's hiding under Leela's arm thingie. It's all happening on Talking Futurama: the podcast that's more useful than a Little Italy spittoon!

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Comments

beapeabear

Rewatching this episode after other ones like Jurassic Bark and Lethal Inspection made the formula of “21 minutes of comedy followed by a 1 minute montage of sweet moments to sappy music” all the more apparent. Though maybe I’m simplifying too much.

Animals in Motion

It's hard not to get a little bitter in the "entertainment industry" – I'm a writer and at least wannabe director, and even here in Sweden, so I can only imagine how it is in Hollywood and USA, EVERY god damned producer I've ever worked with is a child of the media or cultural aristocracy here. It's insane. It never fails. And I'm not even saying they've been bad producers, it's just that every chair of institutional culture and media (i.e. where the money is) has the ass of a scion of the insular cultural elite in Sweden in it. It's almost laughable. I've worked with four producers now, and it never fails. Just google their name and find out that their father was like the boss at the Swedish Film institute or something. Since there's so little money in Swedish art/entertainment (a small language with little international distribution), it's hard not to get bitter.

Andrew Giachetti

Hey guys, I want to offer a small correction of the photographic memory discussion. I don’t have it but I do have a masters in cognitive psychology and neuroscience so I have a bit of knowledge in this area. The way most people use “photographic memory” which seems to be how you were using it, they typically mean “really good, error proof memory” but that’s not actually what it is. The episode doesn’t make it fully clear (the security camera joke in insane in the mainframe is actually a better version of the joke) but photographic (and related Eidetic memory) is more about how Individuals recall memories. In photographic memory, the reason people have a high recall ability is because they are literally recalling memories as photographs, which can be scanned in their working memory the same way you or I may scan a physical image in our working memories. So instead of memorizing lines for a script, you are literally reading the lines off the page in your minds eye. So in the discussion about having to treat people nice because of how you would remember it, photographic memory actually doesn’t suggest that your recall for emotions would be strong and it kind of suggests that it would really be worse without a physical display of emotion. there’s still a lot of debate and controversy about whether photographic memory actually exists but from what I recall when I was more actively studying this type of stuff I tend to think that it’s probably real or some thing like it probably exists in some form. All of this is to say that for people with photographic memory they’re going to have a really really strong recall in very very specific ways but they’re actually more than likely going to have very poor recall for other types of information that can’t be expressed in imagery. Have to use my masters for something… thanks for hearing me out. I’ve had to learn to let this go but psychology, especially memory, is really a field in media and conversation that gets misconstrued and misrepresented a lot because change one small trivial detail and it actually changes the entire concept. Media also thinks psychology hasn’t changed since the 60s. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidetic_memory

Blake R.

the sappy music third act reveal I absolutely drew the line at was the Comedy Central revival era where we find out Hermes saved Bender from the chopping block on the manufacturing line. Just did absolutely nothing for me and felt like at that point they were cribbing off All The Hits to generate an emotional resonancy.

That1WelderGuy

Didn’t think talking about the ending of the episode would make me tear up damn

Krystal

This episode has always hit harder for me emotionally than something like Jurassic Bark, mostly because Bender’s horrible behavior throughout (even at the end) undercuts the sweetness of the Leela revelation. A top 5 episode in my opinion for sure, especially because it affects the continuity (again, unlike Jurassic Bark).

Dylan (batmanboy11) Freitag

The Futurama writing staff's record on women is... horrendous, even more so for its Comedy Central years. Like, I figured it wasn't great, at least in the original run, because of episodes surrounding "war of the sexes" stuff that feel extremely dated, but come on. -- In any case, this isn't one of my TOP episodes, but I always enjoy a good Leela story and I think this is pretty good one! It's emotional in a way that feels more or less earned, not because of the mutant stuff, but because of Leela's angst about being an orphan and not knowing where she came from peppering itself throughout the show up to this point, so having that comforting knowledge and knowing that her parents DID care, and have tried to be there for her just feels really nice. It gets to be a happy ending without a joke that shits on it without feeling too saccharine, and I really admire that.

Matt LS

Thank you for another great Talking Futurama! On the topic of hooded freaks, while it could definitely be an Omega Man reference, I think based on precedent it may be more connected to the 1970 follow up to the Planet of the Apes; Beneath the Planet of the Apes. In the second season episode "I Second That Emotion," when we are introduced to the sewer mutants we learn that they worship an unexploded nuclear warhead (but mostly just for the holidays), definitely an allusion to Beneath the Planet of the Apes. In that entry we learn about a telepathic race of subterranean humans who are the mutated descendants of the survivors of an earlier nuclear war. They also wear cloaks and hide their faces. I think that, for whatever reason, the 1970s was just a golden age for hooded mutants as symbol for Cold War anxieties.

Joe Hodgson

I am in total agreement with Ebert (and Bob) on what creates a more impactful emotional response for me as I age. Sadness is sad, but joy or is more likely to move me to tears. And with this episode, the final montage works to a point, but it's never hit as hard as other episodes for me. I prefer Jurassic Bark to this one for the same reason Bob prefers Luck of the Fryrish to this one and it's that the episode leading up to the impactful moment is just more entertaining. This one is a little easier to see coming when both of the other tear-jerkers caught me off-guard with the initial viewing and that original response is going to color how I feel about them even 20 years later. I also echo the sentiment shared by others that the show did return to the well too often in the Comedy Central episodes by copying this format with the hope of making people cry in the end. I haven't re-watched the Comedy Central years enough to even declare if any of them work. The only ones I remember are the Hermes/Bender episode and The Late Philip J Fry, which while an interesting episode, didn't really move me via its reveal of Leela in the cave.

SilkiePJ

Hearing that the Futurama writers originally had this caste system idea in place for the mutants makes the decisions made by Leela's parents way more understandable. I also liked this episode and the emotions got to me, but it always felt so extreme that Leela's parents were willing to die to keep Leela's origin a mystery. Maybe it's because going over this series has shown so much more how Leela's life is kind of sad and lonely does make me often wonder if she just would have been happier as a mutant. Though considering how Futurama can be iffy when it comes to greater social issues, maybe the caste system staying buried is a good thing.

littleterr0r

I've not only been to the Hachiko statue, but I've also been to his grave! RIP to a good boy.

J.T.

Although I liked this episode at the time for revealing Leela's origin, what also made it stand out for me was hearing that Pizzicato Five song. I'd already become a fan as well, and was pleasantly surprised to hear them on North American TV! Since Henry mentioned being a Pizzicato Five fan and their Shibuya-Kei style (and I think Bob as well, to some degree), I wanted to share a recentish discovery you may also like: the band Fujin Club, who have an album on iTunes. They're in the same style, and a lot of jubilant fun.

PurpleComet

I think the episode goes too far in the climax and it detracts from the emotion of the final montage. In a span of seconds Leela goes from "these weirdos have been stalking me my entire life" to accusing them of murdering her parents. She also seems bigoted towards mutants right up to the moment she learns she is one. And she doesn't even take time to contend with not being mutated by her fall in the sewers. Leela has been told she's an alien all her life so it's believable that she'd hold onto that narrative, but the leap from "I have stalkers" to "these freaks killed my parents and now I'm going to kill THEM" is a stretch.