Love, Death & Yogurt
When it comes to short episodes, When The Yogurt Takes Over is one of the smallest in Love, Death & Robots’ episode list. At a run time of 6 minutes, this amusing episode imagines a future where a super-intelligent yogurt has taken over the world. The man who voiced both Brain in Pinky & The Brain and various robots in Futurama, Maurice LaMarche, lends his voice to this wacky episode. With no dialogue, save for a few words from the yogurt itself, the entire episode serves as an expository script as we’re told what’s happened to humanity. This all starts with the world standing on the brink of financial ruin and a super-intelligent hybrid yogurt promising a solution to the debt problem. After being laughed at, the yogurt ultimately shows its business prowess and winds up in charge of Ohio. This subsequently leads to the world being governed by yogurt before a collection of giant-sized pots fly off into the stars, leaving humankind behind alone to ponder over what it all meant and where they go from here. The episode touches on issues around humanity, our dependence on technology (or in this case, yogurt) and what happens when our reliance is ill-served. It’s an interesting idea and one that mirrors our growing reliance on computers and electronics. Unfortunately it’s not quite explored as thoroughly as it perhaps should be. Much like Pixar’s animated feature Up, When The Yogurt Takes Over uses a lot of squares and straight lines for its animation. The wide-eyed, blank stares and rigid facial expressions combine to really reinforce the inferiority of humankind in the face of this bowl of yogurt. Having said that, an odd bout of nudity crops up here too in one of the most jarring moments of the episode. In an otherwise tame 6 minutes, a woman exposes her breasts in the middle of a riot during the middle portion of the episode. It’s one of the most unnecessary bits of nudity here and its purpose does seem unclear as to whether it’s for shocks or comedy. Still, at 6 minutes long you can’t really have too many complaints with this one. When The Yogurt Takes Over doesn’t quite do enough with its themes and the passive tone of the episode fails to really pull you into the story. Still, the episode itself is intriguing and the concept should be enough for you to check this one out.
