Futurama season 12 has just released another one of the show’s anthology episodes, and one of its storylines is made even stranger by the season’s highest-rated episode. Many Futurama seasons have featured anthology episodes, which put the various members of the Planet Express crew in bizarre non-canon storylines involving things like them being animals, toys, and cartoon characters. Futurama season 12’s anthology episode has some fairly wacky stories, but the framing device of the episode may be the strangest part.
Futurama season 12, episode 9, “The Futurama Mystery Liberry” follows the path of the more recent Futurama anthology episodes, with it picking a theme and telling stories that parody significant elements of that theme. This time, the Futurama cast appears in three different segments based on classic children’s stories such as Encyclopedia Brown and The Adventures of Tintin. Interestingly, each of these stories is actually told by a very special Futurama guest star.
Futurama Season 12’s Anthology Episode Is About Books (Despite Planet Express Destroying Them All In “The Temp”)
Continuing Futurama’s Anti-Book Gag
Rather than using the What-If machine or any of Futurama‘s other anthology episode framing devices, the framing device of “The Futurama Mystery Liberry” is all about books. The episode opens with viewers seeing a library that is floating in space, with Reading Rainbow‘s LeVar Burton being inside of it. Throughout the episode, Burton picks books off the shelf, throws them in the fire, and introduces TV episodes based on these books, with these episodes being the three Futurama segments.
LeVar Burton’s book-burning gag is hilarious, as it actually pays off a previous gag about books from Futurama season 12’s “The Temp.” In “The Temp,” the Planet Express crew rounds up a massive haul of unused library books from New New York and takes them to a garbage planet to dump them. Futurama season 12’s continued joke at the expense of books is hilarious, with “The Futurama Mystery Liberry” helping to continue this world-building.
Why LeVar Burton’s Futurama Cameo Is Perfect For Season 12’s Continued Book Gag
Perfectly Parodying Burton’s Reading Rainbow History
LeVar Burton’s Futurama season 12 cameo is one of the show’s best, as it perfectly plays into the continued book gag. While LeVar Burton is a famous actor who has appeared in all kinds of projects, he is in this Futurama episode due to him having been the host of the educational program Reading Rainbow. Reading Rainbow was designed to encourage reading skills in its child audience, which is why Futurama‘s spin on Burton’s role is perfect.
Rather than encouraging reading in Futurama, Burton is instead encouraging the destruction of books. Although Burton obviously does not actually believe in burning books, this spin on his guest appearance is a hilarious rug pull for longtime fans of Reading Rainbow and Futurama.
