"Futurama" Returns and Frees Us from The Tyranny of Gender. Expect Dick Jokes

Comedy Central's much-loved hit Futurama returned for part two of its sixth season last night, and had some fun with gender stereotypes.

"Neutopia" opens with the crew in a dilemma. Planet Express is facing foreclosure unless they can find a way to pay off the mortgage. What's the solution? The men suggest a pinup calendar of space babes, which leads to Leela, Amy, and LaBarbara taking one for the team.

Professor Farnsworth delivers the best line of the night when he view the results and scoffs, "No, no, this won't do! A three-month calendar? What is this, Mercury?"

It's decided that, in order to increase profits, Planet Express will become a commercial airline, which naturally leads to Fry (who's becoming increasingly more stupid as the seasons have gone on) and Hermes falling asleep at the controls, and crash landing on an unknown planet.

The crew and passengers (eight men and eight women) bicker about who should be in charge, until they realize they've interrupted the Voyage of a Rock Alien. The creature decides to help out, and begins a series of tests to decide which gender has the upper hand.

Once again, the Professor has the best line.

The Rock Alien splits the castaways into two teams - male and female, for the final test. Whichever teams survives being cooked alive when the planet's morning comes will ... win. Of course, the real test was to see if the men and women can actually work together, and when it's clear that everyone is about to die horribly because they can't along, the alien says to hell with it, and decides to solve the problem ... by removing everyone's genitalia.

The gender-less castaways find that not having twigs, berries, hoohas, and jigglies does help them get along. But they soon realize that something (beside the obvious) is missing.

The rock alien agrees to restore their genitalia, but accidentally chooses the wrong "zap," and they all end up ... the opposite gender.

Whoops!

Unfortunately for the gang, Zapp Brannigan was assigned to the rescue mission, and destroys the alien before it can fix its mistake (but how can you stay mad at someone with thighs like that?)

With the Rock Alien destroyed, the castaways are stuck in the opposite gender. Amy and Leela don't see the appeal of being men, but the guys seem to be taking their change in stride.

After living in the opposite sex for a while, everyone is eventually changed back, but all of them have learned a valuable lesson about ... well, actually no one learned anything.

This was pretty much a typical episode of Futurama for me. I smiled a few times, and laughed twice (both times because of the Professor), but I think they could have done more with the gender switching than just some dick and fart jokes.

I know we've got plenty of fans here. What did you think?