'Future Man' Season 3 features literary gags reminiscent of ‘Fifty Shades’ and ‘Moby Dick’
The best part about 'Future Man' is how it uses tropes to their best comedic effect. In the relatively saner first half of the series, two literary gags stand out in particular.
After the voice in Josh Futturman's (Josh Hutcherson) ear helps him, Tiger (Eliza Coupe) and Wolf (Derek Wilson)escape the "Die-cathalon", they use their stolen time device to go from medieval France to Japan's Shogun period to 1915 Russia during WWI to "new France" or 1500s Canada.
As they travel through Time and Space, Wolf can't help making his "mark on history" -- from inventing sliced bread 700 years before its time, or killing off a whole lineage of just and righteous Shogun warriors because one of them said he had steeped the tea too long.
But his funniest "mark on history" is courtesy his interactions with the Russian woman Dasha, who has her "humanity set aflame" after Wolf shtups her in inventive ways over the course of one night.
Wolf is Dasha's muse the moment he sets foot on her farm, where she spends "long and lonely nights" pining for her husband who is away in the trenches of World War 1. Tiger is so starved for some violence in her life that Josh's descriptions of the World War inspire her to go off and fight, leaving Josh and Wolf behind (temporarily) at the farm.
Wolf, who has slept on rocks and fire, however, can't deal with the prickly hay they have to sleep on in the barn. To secure the comfort of a bed, Wolf, who has already seen how Dasha loves sniffing his sweat-drenched handkerchief, turns on his charm to an 11. He starts chopping firewood manfully outside her window and then drinks water straight from the jug, the water trickling down his chest.
Dasha is overwhelmed and after being made love to which involves a bit of a*"-licking and erotic play with beets, she composes a work of literature titled 'Let the Morning Never Come' that is so good that people are still reading it in 3491. The work is the Russian 'Fifty Shades of Grey' only better written. The book's enduring appeal, that suddenly pops up in the timeline, is what alerts those hunting them from the future to locate the trio.
Josh is yanked out of his idyllic farm life as the voice, that Josh thinks is "god", tells him how to use the "time-traveling device" or TTD to come find him. This time, they end up in Canada or "New France" of the 1500s. It is here that we get the second literary reference of the season, with Tiger becoming obsessed with killing "Whitey", the killer albino bear that trappers tell stories of around the campfire.
It has to be said that till this point, Tiger has been having a rough time of it because no matter where they travel in history, she has to kill someone, either because they laughed at her or tried to rape her. Exasperated, she finally wears a fake mustache and beard to go hunting. She asks Josh, "boy, why did you have to bring us to another time where women are treated like garbage", to which Josh replies, "well I'm sorry, it is called all of History!"
Tiger's hunt for the albino bear might reference Captain Ahab's Moby Dick -- but its a lot more fun and condensed -- as she mucks around with bear poo and issues challenges to the bear. At one point, after her traps have been left hanging on trees by the bear, she screams, "you wanna dance, let's dance... the lindy hop!"
When she finally bags Whitey the bear, its tongue lolling out on the dirt, while she stands triumphantly on it, she rips off her beard and mustache to the shocked exclamations, "A woman killed a bear." Maybe all Captain Ahan really needed was a woman like Tiger by his side.
'Future Man' Season 3 dropped all its eight episodes on April 3 on Hulu.