Episode 8 starts with the Planet Express crew observing the skies, with Farnsworth complaining we don’t know enough about the ocean. He then makes some modifications to the ship and turns it into a cruise ship becoming a sitcom called The Laff Boat. Some celebrities also climb aboard, like the comedian Florp and the famous magician The Great Revealo, who Leela starts crushing on.
Zoidberg accidentally knocks Florp off the ship, and takes the opportunity to try and be the comedian for the night. Zoidberg hires Bender to be the laugh track for his comedy act, and Calculon and his old fling Monique get back together. Fry then does some magic on Leela to get her attention back, which ends up working as he makes her levitate. She then asks Fry how he managed to do it, and he reveals that he used the electromagnets in the ship’s radar.
This causes the ship to go off course to the Antarctic, which makes it crash into an iceberg, causing a rare ice fire, making the sea levels rise, which made all land virtually underwater. Now the crew is surviving on a sailboat. After fighting off some pillagers, Fry accidentally knocks all of the food into the ocean, and then Bender finds a beer bottle in the water. He retrieves it and finds a message in the bottle. Leela reads it, and it turns out to be from Mom, who is coming over for dinner.
While Farnsworth is napping face down in the water, he gets the idea to descend to the ruins of the old world to find some canned food. He creates a bathysphere out of Bender, and Fry and Farnsworth head down to the old Planet Express building to get food. Just as Mom arrives, Fry, Bender, and Farnsworth surface with a can of onions. Hermes then cooks it up, and serves it to Mom, who ends up croaking from the old onions. Bender’s hose (which is still leaking gas) then knocks a lit candelabra into the ocean, which lights oil on fire, blows up mom’s ship, and trails to another ship, blowing that up. This makes Leela Chief Warlord, so she says to go to a tiny speck of land that still exists.
The crew then crashes onto the island and get amnesia. Things then become Gilligan’s island, everyone eats Zoidberg, and Farnsworth makes a radio using Bender to send a message for help, which is received by Zapp Brannigan. Zapp then comes to the rescue and holds a beauty contest to see who to save. Zapp tries to save Kif but has to come back because there is nowhere to land. All hope is lost, but the world starts to be rebuilt, Zoidberg regenerates, and everyone knows a bit more about the ocean.
This was a weird episode. It’s kind of funny that they were doing little parodies of the shows like The Love Boat and stuff, but it felt like this might have been one of the weaker ones this season. Was it bad? No, and it had some little moments, but it overall just didn’t feel that great. It doesn’t have as much rewatchability factor as some of the other episodes, but it isn’t a skip either.
Rating: 7/10