Nixon Always Wins!

[vovat]

I've never really been all that keen on Futurama referencing current events all that much. Obviously they have to do a certain amount of that to make the satire effective, but the references to Obama and the Birther conspiracy in the most recent episode seemed a bit overdone. It was still funny, though, and I liked the Terminator-style twist at the end. There was even a direct callback to Bender's Big Score and its time travel code. I also thought the cartoonish animal gags in the Kenya sequence worked. That "zebra entrance" bit was essentially right out of The Far Side, wasn't it? I was hoping they'd say something about how Nixon can continue to run after serving two terms as a full human and three more as a head, but no such luck. It's not like they couldn't have just covered this with one line about he has the Supreme Court on his side or something. SamuraiFrog recently wrote about how the show is too eager to return to the status quo, which I blame partially on the lack of any real plan for the show these days. When it started, there were ongoing subplots like Leela seeking her family and Nibbler's role in sending Fry to the future, but they resolved those quickly when the show was canceled. Which is fine, but it doesn't look like they've replaced them with anything else. Anyway, I think Nixon being President of Earth has become part of the status quo, and they're reluctant to change that even though he could still be a character even if he's not President. Anyway, if Nixon is re-elected, does that mean the robot uprising is still going to happen? My guess is that, with Nixon running unopposed, he didn't need to use the fence around the solar system to get voters on his side, hence the events that Chris Travers narrated wouldn't happen even with Tricky Dick still in charge. It was, after all, a paradox-free time code that Travers used. Oh, by the way, is the Thundercratic Party a new name for the Tastycrats, or a different party altogether?