"Silence of the Clamps" Shows the more "Comedy Central" side of Futurama

And of course by Comedy Central side, I mean that this episode seemed to have stretch the limits of where Futurama dared to go when it was on network television. With more "bleeps" than you could count on one hand, this week's episode sure has shown a side of Planet Express that we have never seen before.

The story is simple; the Planet Express crew makes a delivery to a robot mafia wedding, and who else but Bender, decides to sneak in and hit on the Don-bot's daughter, a new character that tantalizes Bender with her large, bell-sounding booty. Keeping in mind, Bender did have an affair with the Don-bot's wife, there is no reason already that he shouldn't have a bounty on his head with the robot mafia.

To make matters worse, Bender witnesses the horrible clamping of Calculon, by none other than Clamps, and there is nothing the Don-bot hates more than witnesses, and of course, robots who "attempt to duplicate his famous meatball recipe."

For fear of his life, Bender is leery of testifying of Calculon's brutal clamping, until he hears of a fifty dollar reward for any help with the crime. He soon goes to court and is put on Witness Protection to keep him safe of any harm from the robot mafia.

As Bender gets shipped out to some unknown area until he is yet again safe, a new robot must be hired to replace the lacking Planet Express crew.

*Stage Right*
*Enter Clamps*

Or as everyone knows him outside of the mafia: Francis X. Clampotso. Quick to gain Fry and the rest of the crew's friendship, Francis soon finds himself a new home. All of the crew except one that is; Doctor Zoidberg. Quickly he gains jealousy for Francis and his clamping/snipping/cutting ability, something he believes is already something he brings to the Planet Express table of attributes.

As the story unfolds, we meet another bending unit on the Moon who has the alias of Billy West, which, according to Fry, is a "stupid made up phoney name" (little does he know); an old Mexican shootout occurs against Clamps and Zoidberg; and the crew finds Bender in a place a little closer home than what they thought.

All in all, the episode was mediocre at best. I for sure didn't enjoy the stronger language in this episode. Heck, even Zoidberg drops an F-bomb... something his character, or even any of the crew haven't done. That is of course ignoring the rare couple times they were censored in the movies, but at least then, it added something to the story. This time however, it seemed that the writers decided to throw those in just to show us fans, "Hey look what we can do now that we are on cable."

Watch it if you are a hardcore fan, but this, unlike last week's episode, is not one that will be going down in to the best of the series.

~~Disc07