There’s a special place in every Elder Millennial’s heart for Futurama. We all grew up watching Matt Groening’s other show, The Simpsons, and when it really started to go downhill, Futurama was there to provide that hit of semi-dark satirical humor our bodies had grown to crave. It was The Simpsons in space (and the future) and it was great.
Then it got cancelled and picked up years later by Comedy Central, then canceled again and picked up again, this time by Hulu, where new episodes from season 12 are currently being released every week. And the episode released yesterday offers an alternative history of coffee.
Futurama is not new coffee-based humor. An episode from all the way back in 2003—the original run—titled “Three Hundred Big Boys” finds Fry with an extra $300 in his pocket thanks to a tax rebate from Earth’s president, the head of Richard Nixon (sometimes on Spiro Agnew’s body), which he proceeds to spend on 100 cups of $3 coffee. It culminates with Fry reaching a state of superhuman-like enlightenment upon consuming the 100th cup. (Having consumed what I assume to be at least 100 cups of coffee at Expo, let me just say that this depiction is wholly inaccurate to what your body goes through.)
The latest episode, titled “Planet Espresso” and written by Bob Odenkirk, finds Hermes Conrad inheriting a coffee farm in Jamaica after the passing of his father, and after a coffee-induced hallucination he learns that the history of the world’s favorite beverage is much older than once thought. It’s actually 5 million years old and brought to Earth by a two-tailed mermaid-like alien race from Planet Thermos, “a world of steaming brown beauty.” Coffee, it turns out, is responsible for pretty much all mankind’s greatest achievements (that much is probably true actually).
Hermes et al decide to change their delivery business to a coffee business, changing the name from Planet Express to Planet Espresso. But things aren’t as they seem, hilarity ensues. Pretty standard stuff from Futurama.
The episode is loaded with coffee references, some more overt than others. Kyle Maclachlin’s disembodied head makes a cameo to riff on his “damn fine coffee” line from Twin Peaks, there’s a Chemex in the background of a few scenes, the coffee shop workers go on strike, and there’s even a Chock Full O’Bugs cannister.
And while they play a little fast and loose with the known history of coffee, the premise honestly makes a lot of sense. There is something otherworldly about coffee. It can tell the future, it’s been used in religious rituals for centuries, and the more we learn about it, the more we discover how beneficial it is to our health. It certainly feels like a gift from… someone, God or aliens or whomever. So while I’m not saying that Futurama got is 100% right in their otherworldly reimagining of coffee’s ancestry, I’m just saying it makes about as much sense as a bunch of goats getting all jazzed up.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
