User Reviews

IGN once ranked the top 25 episodes of Futurama but their list is flawed, I think, both because The Sting is significantly underrated on that list (it comes in at #24) and because Godfellas does not appear at all. Godfellas ranks just below The Sting and Roswell That Ends Well as one of the top 3 best episodes of Futurama in my opinion. The humour is good, although I've found you have to be in the right mood to watch it, or the episode will flop (but I've found the same thing with other episodes I love from other shows, like 30 Rock and The Simpsons). But I also enjoy this episode for its philosophical nature.

In it, Bender is accidentally shot into space while on the Planet Express ship. Fry and Leela try to rescue him, but Bender flies away too fast. Leela says Bender will be lost in space forever, which saddens Fry. While in space, an asteroid that hits Bender brings a tiny civilization of aliens who live on Bender's body and regard him as God. Bender tries to be a good lord, but it ends in tragedy- the little people destroy themselves. Bender eventually comes across an entity that might be the real God- or, as Bender theorizes, a computer that collided with God. After talking a bit, God sends Bender back to Earth.

Space is nicely animated in this episode, with the computer/God, in particular, looking beautiful. The episode mixes tragedy with comedy, as Fry is emotional about the loss of his friend and Bender's people suffer injury, pollution, crime and war. This likely won't make you cry like The Sting, Luck of the Fryish and Jurassic Bark, but it's nice to see Bender sympathetic- in A Pharaoh to Remember Bender is responsible for a few construction-related deaths and he doesn't seem to care. Bender's people's plight also allows for some dark comedy. Additionally, the psychic from The Honking is back, and here she's funnier because she's more fraudulent.

But the thoughtfulness of this episode is what makes it a classic. Religion plays a very small part in Futurama, with this episode and Hell is Other Robots being the two key exceptions. Here we have a few different takes on God- gods who intervene and gods who won't help anyone. The computer/God hears prayers, but isn't even certain that it is God, and doesn't know where Earth is. We have a god- Bender- who won't be with his followers in the afterlife. He tells his people that living on him is the "maximum level" of being with him. Then we have a monk who suggests love is God. The message of the episode, as the computer/God says, is that God can't intervene too much and can't do nothing. God must help, but not in a way in which people are certain that it has done anything. And in this way, by sending Bender back to Earth after figuring out which direction it is in, God indirectly saves some monks who Fry and Leela trapped in a closet. Fine work from writer Ken Keeler. 9.0/10

Disturbed by the noise when the Planet Express ship is waylaid by pirates Bender decides to find some peace and quiet by sleeping in one of the torpedo tubes... and is promptly launched into one of the attacking ships. He passes through it grabbing a bag of loot on the way but as he was launched when the ship was going at full speed they can never catch him. While contemplating eternity alone he passes through a meteor shower and one crashes into his chest; it turns out that it was inhabited by a race of tine people known as Shrimpkins. These Shrimpkins immediately assume that Bender is God! Happy to have some worshipers Bender has just one commandment: to make booze for him. This is where things start to go wrong; many of the Shrimpkins are injured in the production and it isn't long before organised crime starts amongst the people. Bender is moved by their plight but the single tear he sheds is enough to cause a flood! Over time they start asking for miracles but that only leads to more death; eventually Bender decides to stop getting involved... once again this ends badly as two different groups of Shrimpkins go to war. Upset about what happened he continues to drift until one day he meets an intelligence that might be God... or a computer that crashed into God; this intelligence gives him some tips on how to be a god, Mean while back on Earth Fry is missing Bender; nobody locally can help but he learns of a group of Monks in the Himalayas who are using a telescope to search for God; surely they will let him use it to look for his friend?!

This is a contender for the best episode of Futurama; normally I'm not too keep on the Bender centred episodes where he is away from the rest of the crew but here the story works perfectly. His turn as God provided both comedy and tragedy as he tried to be a benevolent god to his Shrimpkin followers. The Shrimpkins were fun characters and even though they weren't around for long by the time they died I'd grown to care about them as characters. The depiction of 'God' was done well; in a way that shouldn't offend people of faith or annoy non-believers. Fry's part of the story wasn't quite as strong but provided plenty of laughs and it was touching to see the lengths he would go to find his lost friend.

Does a God exist? And if he does, what traits define him?

Ever since we as a species were self aware enough to speculate that there might be unknown, omnipotent higher power, we have been equally able to speculate that there is not. Both are equally existentially horrifying. Trying to even conceptualize a God in any way is an impossible task. Not to mention trying to make a rendition of God that wouldn't offend any of the most populous monotheistic religions in the modern era. This episode gives one of the most uncomforting answers and couples it with possibly the most comforting.

Bender is a completely incompetent God. He's cruel, poor with planning, he fails at every turn. He eventually leads to the civilization nuking itself to extinction. The idea that God is neither malevolent nor benevolent, but selfish and bumbling is a scary one This episode would of been one of the most bleak pieces of television ever made if it ended on the note that there is no salvation. But it doesn't. We get to see the universes "true" God. Not the God of a small society, but a fully conceptualized iteration of what our God may be. A completely neutral being. They have no connections, they feel care and empathy for all living creatures but they understands their own role and knows what is necessary to keep everything functioning. This is the more comforting idea, this portrayal of God is something almost every monotheistic religion could be more than happy with being the true portrayal of an actual God in our universe. Even athiest could appreciate this iteration.

This episode confronts the seemingly unanswerable question and suggest multiple answers. Is there a God? On one hand there is bender. Bender is a kind of old testament christian God. Maybe there is a God and he doesn't really know what to do with his powers. On another, there is a God and he is a completely unbiased, neutral, ambiguous being that exist for abstract reasons but still does everything he does in a way that doesn't confirm to everyone that he exist out of fear of poor outcome. There is another option here however, and it's a kind of ambiguous answer to the question. There is a God but it doesn't matter. We should do everything to be better humans and cannot rely on a higher power. We should all do what we can and do it on our own because reliance on a God won't help.

Maybe there is something more out there. Maybe not. But why care? As long as you are a good person, there is no need for an interfering omnipotence. In some way, we are all God in that we have the power to make peoples lived better in our daily living, it just depends on what God you chose to be.