The shiny new adaptation of The three-body problemof the guys who did Game of Thrones, may be the biggest show on Netflix right now, but it’s not the only adaptation worth watching. Of course, there’s also the longer, more thorough, and more faithful Chinese version of the series, but that’s not the one we’re talking about either. No, instead the best adaptation of this story comes straight from the animated sitcom Bob’s Burgers.
Season 9, episode 9 of Bob’s Burgers is called “UFO No You Didn’t”, and while the name doesn’t offer any such clues, it’s actually more or less an adaptation/parody of Cixin Liu’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past series.
The episode starts with Tina being paired with her classmate Susmita for a science fair project. Despite Tina’s best efforts to do nothing, Susmita insists that they try to send a radio signal into space to contact aliens. When their classmate Henry hears this plan, he immediately says that this is a bad idea, and then succinctly explains a slightly modified version of the Dark Forest theory. That theory, which takes its name from the second book of Liu’s series, posits that we haven’t discovered aliens because they’re all hiding from something stronger than themselves. Of course, that doesn’t stop Tina and Susmita from sending the message anyway. But anticipating their blatant lack of fear of the potential of more advanced alien races, Henry intercepts their signal and sends them a similar, albeit funnier, version of the message Ye receives. The three-body problemstarting with ‘Dear idiots of the earth’, followed by a warning not to send more messages.
Photo: Ed Miller/Netflix
It’s a great premise for an episode and an even better sneaky parody. It stands alone fine, with enough internal logic to make it all believable, but if you’re familiar with Liu’s series, you’ll understand the game straight away. And by the time you get to the fact the “alien message” comes in Bob’s Burgers was sent by Gene, it’s a fantastic punchline that actually hilariously echoes his own Three-body problem counterpart.
In other words, Bob’s Burgers in fact, manages to condense the broad outlines of the first two books of the series into one entertaining 23-minute installment. It’s far from the most entertaining episode of the show, but its clarity in elucidating some of the novel’s complex ideas and theories, such as the Dark Forest or alien communications and translation, is truly impressive and even makes it a nice addition to both the book and the Netflix series.
Of course in accordance with Bob’s BurgersWith the usual tone and relentless optimism, the ending of the episode is a little different from the books. Instead of humanity’s impending death at the hands of aliens, everyone is convinced by Tina’s speech about love and the hope that aliens would be friendly rather than paranoid world destroyers. It’s a funny little speech, but it also provides a stark contrast to the book in a way that makes both versions of the story more effective. That everyone agrees with Tina’s blind optimism is cute in a way that underlines how and why the threat in Liu’s novels is so terrifying: Tina plays it as a metaphor for dating, where the risk is dismissed, not eradicated. The reality of the books is much more serious, stating that helping another civilization only risks having them overwhelm you later, so helping at all would be a big risk in itself. And perhaps even more dangerously, if Tina Belcher is convinced of anything, it’s probably a good indication that no other intelligent being in any galaxy came to the same conclusion. And that is why she is one of a kind.
Bob’s Burgers is streaming on Hulu.