Futurama to End This September
Let the waterworks commence. read more
Found in: TV, NewsFuturama: "31st Century Fox"/"Naturama" (6.12/6.13)
WIth that, another season of Futurama is finished, along with my conflicting feelings about this season—and all seasons since the show's return to Comedy Central. read more
Found in: TV, ReviewsFuturama: "Viva Mars Vegas" (7.12)
When Futurama is parodying a genre, it’s usually a mixed blessing. Its parodies are usually tight and pretty spot-on. The show’s writers almost always know how to make an exciting version of a genre, but that’s because they also stick pretty closely to formula, more intent on parodying the idea than in bringing something really revolutionary to it. In this, Futurama has replaced its forebear The Simpsons as the best spot for these things, playfully poking fun at movies and TV through reasonably good genre parodies that are good for quite a few laughs. But the downside of this is... read more
Found in: TV, ReviewsFuturama: "Near-Death Wish" (7.10)
When it comes to Futurama‘s cast, Bender is the guts, Leela the head and Fry the heart. Of course he’s more complex than that—which is a blessing considering that every successive season of The Simpsons or Family Guy flattens out their characters—but as the show’s gone on he’s transitioned away from being just a cipher for the 20/21st-century audience. It’s no coincidence that Fry’s involved in practically every episode of Futurama that has emotionally significant notes. He may be stupid, but he has real emotions.... read more
Found in: TV, ReviewsFuturama: "Free Will Hunting" (Episode 7.9)
What’s great about a show like Futurama, which isn’t beholden to any particular science-fiction ethos, is that it can encompass pretty much any contradictions it would like without anyone particularly caring about them. Setting up these contradictions actually serves to spur the show on to creativity, asking its writers to explain various phenomena that don’t seem to make sense together. “Free Will Hunting” takes one of these issues to task: that the show has allowed Bender to be as much of a random, surprising character as anyone else on the show, yet he’s also a robot who has to follow... read more
Found in: TV, ReviewsFuturama: "Fun on a Bun" (Episode 7.8)
The Comedy Central seasons of Futurama have been caught between the episodic nature the show was initially founded on and the heaping pile of continuity that’s been building into that show after more than 100 episodes. The show wants every episode to stand alone and to start and stop in the same place, in the typical sitcom manner. But the science fiction trappings of Futurama hate that and really want to build a universe for these characters to live in. “Fun on a Bun” is an episode that’s really caught between that conflict and does a good job making fun... read more
Found in: TV, ReviewsFuturama: "The Six Million Dollar Mon" (7.6)
A good episode of Futurama doesn’t have to have a good science fiction concept to work from, but it certainly helps. And to a certain extent, an interesting enough premise manages to redeem an episode that doesn’t have particularly big laughs, as with the case in this week’s episode, “The Six Million Dollar Mon.” Of course humor remains the most important part of Futurama, but the show’s ability to take any premise, regardless of how far-fetched it might be, remains one of its strengths—that an episode based on a character slowly transforming himself into a robot is relatively tame is... read more
Found in: TV, ReviewsFuturama: "The Butterjunk Effect" (7.6)
Futurama episodes don’t need to be completely out there and based on absurd science-fiction to be good… but it certainly helps. Partially it’s because after 120 episodes, the show has really covered a lot of the more mainstream sci-fi concepts. Plus, it being a Matt Groening show, it also has resistance to change, so that there are diminishing returns on episodes based upon character relationships—there’s only so many times that episodes based upon Fry courting Leela really work before it gets tiresome. “The Butterjunk Effect” doesn’t have those problems because it’s so different from pretty much everything, let alone previous... read more
Found in: TV, ReviewsFuturama: "Zapp Dingbat" (7.5)
Despite whatever cranks on the internet may claim, The Simpsons’ decline was gradual. A disappointing episode here and there became a bad episode practically every time out, until the show was practically unrecognizable. Even though the show still had ambitious episodes, they never really hit their marks. After a while, it felt like The Simpsons’ writers were just there for a job; the passion was long since missing, and every year the plotlines were worse and worse.... read more
Found in: TV, ReviewsFuturama: "The Thief of Baghead" (7.4)
The best thing about Futurama remains that its science fiction universe is flexible enough to always grow, adding new characters and concepts rather than sticking with what’s familiar. The death of The Simpsons came after years of fleshing the city out meant that every joke became a phoned-in, pre-prescribed Simpsons note, and every character someone we already knew or a celebrity guest. Luckily, Futurama can, when it remembers to do so, always feature more aliens and different kinds of robots and every other science fiction concept ever made, and what’s more it should.... read more
Found in: TV, Reviews
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