After being cancelled by Fox in 2003 and then revived for four feature length episodes by Comedy Central in 2008 and 2009, the future of Futurama was uncertain. But the strong DVD sales of the four feature length episodes (Bender’s Big Score, The Beast With A Billion Backs, Bender’s Game, and Into the Wild Green Yonder) convinced Comedy Central that Futurama may well be worth saving and so in 2012 Futurama was revived for two seasons with the promise of more if ratings were strong enough. Unfortunately, despite this promise and strong viewing figures, Comedy Central decided that it would not renew Futurama past this point and the show has laid dormant ever since, pending another revival later this year on Hulu. The Comedy Central run of the show is often overlooked and forgotten, not for any particular reason from what I can discern, but this is an era of Futurama that many tend to forget even exists.
Picking up immediately where Into the Wild Green Yonder ended, the crew of Planet Express ship have travelled through a wormhole only to end up back at earth. So, business as usual then? Fry (Billy West) and Leela (Katey Sagal) work on their rocky relationship. Bender (John DiMaggio) continues to get himself and the rest of the crew into all sorts of trouble. Professor Farnsworth (also Billy West) continues to invent crazy gadgets that will no doubt rip the fabric of time and space apart, Amy (Lauren Tom), and Hermes (Phil LaMarr) continue to do…whatever it is they do at the company, and everybody still hates Zoidberg (also Billy West). But a new decade presents new challenges for the crew, and Fry finds himself longing for his old life in the twentieth century.
Picking up immediately where Into the Wild Green Yonder ended, the crew of Planet Express ship have travelled through a wormhole only to end up back at earth. So, business as usual then? Fry (Billy West) and Leela (Katey Sagal) work on their rocky relationship. Bender (John DiMaggio) continues to get himself and the rest of the crew into all sorts of trouble. Professor Farnsworth (also Billy West) continues to invent crazy gadgets that will no doubt rip the fabric of time and space apart, Amy (Lauren Tom), and Hermes (Phil LaMarr) continue to do…whatever it is they do at the company, and everybody still hates Zoidberg (also Billy West). But a new decade presents new challenges for the crew, and Fry finds himself longing for his old life in the twentieth century.
I won’t lie in saying there’s definitely an adjustment period that I as the viewer went through whilst watching the Comedy Central revival of Futurama, in that following on from the feature length episodes, returning to a syndicated format where episodes are self-contained and rarely interlink with each other was not what I had hoped to see from Futurama in the 2010’s. It is still after all a sitcom, so I understand the desire to keep things simple and easy to jump in and out of, but the benefit of the films were that characters and plot were given so much extra depth because they were the length of four standard episodes, and now that’s been taken away again.
But that’s not to say the quality has dropped, in fact, it’s just as great as it always was. The opening episode, ‘Rebirth’, proves this with great effect, and just a few episodes later the revival gets its first emotional knockout with ‘The Late Philip J. Fry’. On the whole I think Season Seven is the stronger of the two seasons, only marginally, but a lot of that comes down to the show’s final episodes.
The last four episodes, ‘Game of Tones’, ‘Murder on the Planet Express’, ‘Stench and Stenchibility’, and ‘Meanwhile’, really exemplify just how fun and creative the show can be with its sci-fi premise, and they go out of their way in several respects to give characters satisfying conclusions, in particular the final two episodes. ‘Stench and Stenchibility’ sees Zoidberg finally achieve happiness with someone which despite the whole shtick of his character being that he’s lonely and hated simply because he exists works really well. It’s nice to give a character that was really only ever there to be kicked whilst he was down for laughs to be given a proper send-off and a shot at happiness. ‘Meanwhile’, similar to Season Four’s ‘The Devils Hands Are Idle Playthings’, is a perfect send-off for the show, as well as one of the best episodes across all seven seasons. It sees Fry and Leela confronted with an ultimatum on their relationship, and the way it plays out is hilarious and tear-jerkingly sad in equal measure, with the final lines of the show encouraging you, the viewer, into reliving the entire experience with them all over again.
But that’s not to say the quality has dropped, in fact, it’s just as great as it always was. The opening episode, ‘Rebirth’, proves this with great effect, and just a few episodes later the revival gets its first emotional knockout with ‘The Late Philip J. Fry’. On the whole I think Season Seven is the stronger of the two seasons, only marginally, but a lot of that comes down to the show’s final episodes.
The last four episodes, ‘Game of Tones’, ‘Murder on the Planet Express’, ‘Stench and Stenchibility’, and ‘Meanwhile’, really exemplify just how fun and creative the show can be with its sci-fi premise, and they go out of their way in several respects to give characters satisfying conclusions, in particular the final two episodes. ‘Stench and Stenchibility’ sees Zoidberg finally achieve happiness with someone which despite the whole shtick of his character being that he’s lonely and hated simply because he exists works really well. It’s nice to give a character that was really only ever there to be kicked whilst he was down for laughs to be given a proper send-off and a shot at happiness. ‘Meanwhile’, similar to Season Four’s ‘The Devils Hands Are Idle Playthings’, is a perfect send-off for the show, as well as one of the best episodes across all seven seasons. It sees Fry and Leela confronted with an ultimatum on their relationship, and the way it plays out is hilarious and tear-jerkingly sad in equal measure, with the final lines of the show encouraging you, the viewer, into reliving the entire experience with them all over again.
The aesthetic has remained largely the same, however with the advent of high-definition TV the show is now presented in a 16:9 aspect ratio and the picture quality is considerably smoother with brighter and more vivid colours. It really does feel like Matt Groening and co just picked up where they left off and it never feels outdated because of its incredibly kooky depiction of the thirty-first century. There are significantly more 3D elements now though, and this does give the show a lot more depth and versatility than it did in the early 00’s, with some really impressive ‘wow’ moments at times.
The bottom line is that if you liked Futurama in the early 00’s then you’ll like Futurama in the 2010’s. The show feels like it never went off the air and it retains that same high quality that gave the show its reputation for being the smartest adult cartoon on TV. There are a couple of dud episodes here and there, but in the grand scheme of things each episode tries something different, and if it’s not something new then it’s a spin on something the show has tried before but done in a different way. Plus with an ending like ‘Meanwhile’ it’s hard not to want to just go back around all over again because it’s a remarkably amazing ending to the show. It may lack the story depth afforded by the feature length episodes, but Seasons Six and Seven of Futurama are just as brilliant as any other era of the show, and I can’t wait to see what the creators have planned for Season Eight.
The bottom line is that if you liked Futurama in the early 00’s then you’ll like Futurama in the 2010’s. The show feels like it never went off the air and it retains that same high quality that gave the show its reputation for being the smartest adult cartoon on TV. There are a couple of dud episodes here and there, but in the grand scheme of things each episode tries something different, and if it’s not something new then it’s a spin on something the show has tried before but done in a different way. Plus with an ending like ‘Meanwhile’ it’s hard not to want to just go back around all over again because it’s a remarkably amazing ending to the show. It may lack the story depth afforded by the feature length episodes, but Seasons Six and Seven of Futurama are just as brilliant as any other era of the show, and I can’t wait to see what the creators have planned for Season Eight.