The Leela story and the Zapp story will finally intersect in an sudden manner, permitting Zapp to emerge as a hero.
Zapp is, after the episode’s climax, restored to his previous place, just about off the hook for his years of abusive, gauche conduct. Zapp learns nothing. DOOP even begins to notice that Zapp’s lack of sensitivity is a energy. DOOP famous that “with PC tradition,” you get nothing however “weak captains too cowardly to shoot the helpless.” Zapp, in being prepared to be abusive and vulgar and an egomaniac, supplies DOOP with all its energy.
However then, you’ll be able to see the joke, proper? Zapp’s lack of progress — and DOOP’s basic wickedness as a company — is the central punchline of the episode. The universe of “Futurama,” followers will be capable of inform you, is simply as petty, nonsensical, and shallow as the current, if no more so. DOOP is a corrupt group that feints within the route of sensitivity, however actually simply handles a type of organized army plunder. As a lot as audiences in 2023 want to see Zapp be punished, he clearly lives in a world the place his horrid conduct is a profit. Zapp is sort of evil, however then, so is the world he lives in. Corruption begets the corrupt and protects the corrupted. It is solely gentleness, private consolation, and honesty that might be censured right here.
So the satire of cancel tradition in “Zapp Will get Canceled” is in the end deeply cynical. We can not rid the world of corrupt individuals if there are corrupt techniques that enable them to thrive. Zapp Brannigan learns that he was proper, and that being an ass is the easiest way to dwell. For “Futurama,” that is darkly becoming.