Dr. Shlavinowitz

Dr. Shlavinowitz turns up as one of New New York's stable of background specialists, the kind of elderly professional the show wheels in whenever a character needs an office visit. He listens, offers deadpan advice with a thick old-world accent, and treats the absurdities of the 31st century as routine business.

Tress MacNeille gives him the unhurried cadence of a Catskills comic, which lands funnier the flatter the crisis gets. Futurama's gift for filling its edges with fully-voiced one-scene characters is on display here, and Shlavinowitz is a tiny, reliable dose of that background texture.