- Title: Futurama – Decision 3012
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The latest episode of Futurama tackles politics (and time travel) in a odd mix the Birther movement against of Barack Obama‘s election as President and The Terminator. When Richard Nixon (Billy West) runs for re-election as President of Earth Leela (Katey Sagal) decides to help a honest Senator with good ideas win the election.
Although far from subtle in terms of parodying the Fox “quote unquote” News, the ill-informed electorate, and the Birther movement, the episode produces several fun moments and a couple of nice twists as Leela discovers Senator Travers refuses to release his birth certificate because… he hasn’t been born yet! Travers has come back to the past to stop a robot apocalypse created by Nixon’s policies and led by none other than Bender (John Di Maggio).
It could be easy to dismiss “Election 3012” as a simple election year parody episode but the script is actually fairly clever, using Leela to dumb-down the smart politician’s message for the voters, and especially in its final twist as the writers took into account the full impact of Travers’ time travel.