For the most part, I’ve been impressed with ‘Futurama’s‘ return to the airwaves. Some episodes have been a little rocky, but there’s always more than a few bumps when a show has to penetrate the thin layer of TV’s re-entry layer.
It feels like the old show did, but something has been missing from the last few episodes: a real sense of emotion. One of the great things about ‘Futurama’ and shows like it are its surprising ability to make you feel something other than laughter. The “Jurassic Bark” episode, the one in which Fry’s dog waits for Fry’s return long after he’s been frozen in the cryogenics lab, was the closest I ever came to crying at a TV show. Thank God for man’s inability to divert tears from flowing by sheer will, even though I had to use a pair of pliers and some loose thigh skin to take my mind off of the emotional pain.
Thankfully, it returned last night.
The episode had a nice mix of comedy and adventure, as did all good ‘Futurama’ episode since it’s main focus is as a space epic in a blue collar future. However, it’s biggest strength was its sense of heart. It not only made for a nice twist that fit together a little too nicely, but it also proved that ‘Futurama’ can be much more than just a simple comedy show about robots that drink and aliens with obvious skin conditions.
This time, Bender realizes that he is just as mortal as the meatbags he works with, thanks to a flaw in his initial design. So he and Hermes set out to find his initial inspector, the fabled “Inspector No. 5,” by infiltrating the never-ending maze of paperwork and fine print that is the Central Bureaucracy.
Episodes that center around this setting are always good because they give the show a “Douglas Adams” feeling that even high speed technology and storage information can make things even more convoluted and confusing. It also sets up for great bits like the giant Rubik’s Cube-like cubicle, complete with Billy West’s dead-on Paul Lynde workmate as the “center square.” The ‘Hollywood Squares’ joke felt like I was watching an episode of ‘Family Guy’ with better plot development (really any “plot development” would be a step up from ‘Family Guy.’)
The plot moves to its road-hopping adventure tangent pretty quickly as Bender and Hermes head to Mexico to find his inspector at the Mom factory where he was born/built. The bits work pretty well. Bender’s attempt to speak Spanish had me cackling, just because John DiMaggio’s thick New York/Brooklyn voice sounded like the farther dialect possible from a Mexican accent.
I still found myself wanting more out of the road trip aspect of the episode. These two are on an adventure and it felt like it ended rather quickly, before it had much of a chance to get started. That’s just a sacrifice to the cruel and heartless gods of time that only gave ‘Futurama’ 30 minutes to get a plot going, 23 if you count the commercials.
The ending where it’s revealed that Hermes was actually Bender’s original inspector and responsible for letting him live in spite of defect felt a little too tacked together, like it had been stapled around something that didn’t quite fit and causing it tear apart at its seams. But it had such a great sense of heart that the thought quickly left my mind. It didn’t beat the lesson over your head that life is always worth living no matter how short it is by sticking to the comedy that makes the show work, like the “Killbots’” ridiculous ability to mistake gun puns for orders.
This was no “Jurassic Bark,” but the ending had plenty of bite.
When Fry destroys the Professor’s precious Leonardo Da Vinci beard, he discovers a map leading to the inventor’s greatest invention. The gang looks at an old copy of The Last Supper and using a super powered x-ray, discover one of the apostles was a robot and Planet Express heads to Rome to investigate.
The gang soon meets the robot, Animatronio, who leads them to Da Vinci’s famed workshop where Fry and the Professor accidentally combined all the devices to create a spaceship that seneds them to Da Vinci’s planet, where the inventor is still alive.
It turns out Da Vinci was an alien, and actually the dumbest of his species and came to Earth where he could feel smart,
but soon got sick of being too smart. In the end he unveils his greatest invention… a Doomsday device he wants to use to get revenge on everyone that called him stupid. The Professor, who felt humiliated by also being dumb on that planet, encouraged Da Vinci, while Fry ends up stopping the machine.
A friend of mine who was also a big fan of the original ‘Futurama’ before Fox kicked it out of bed quicker than one of Tiger Woods’ mistresses didn’t have any very nice things to say about the new premiere episodes. I’d reprint them here if the childhood literacy rate wasn’t so, er, darn high.
In his defense, the first two didn’t have the feel of the original series, even if they were able to stand on their own for the most part. Last night’s hilarious adventure, however, could cause him to choke on those very words he used to describe the show’s creators’ digestive systems (don’t ask).
It had just about everything that made those original shows so much fun to watch: deep creativity, adventure, pathos and lots and lots of comedy. This actually felt like the first episode so far in the new season that belonged in the show’s original run. In other words, it was just good clean fun.
The writers seem to have gotten back into the swing of the original show by playing more the characters and what makes them work so well. This time, the characters weren’t just plot drivers that helped bring the story home. They drove the humor of the show as well from major plot devices (Prof. Farnsworth’s disgust with Fry’s ignorance) to even the tiniest joke (learning that Dr. Zoidberg has a PhD in art history). Most of all, the old Bender is finally back to his full, fabulous form. He stole every chance he got, cracked inappropriate jokes at inappropriate times and laid into other people’s misery with the force of a high school linebacker.
The plot, however, moved pretty fast. Ten minutes into the episode, it felt like they had traveled halfway around the world without giving the audience time to get over the jet lag. The episode had a lot of ground to cover in a half hour and it felt like there were a lot of bits and even whole plot points that had go on the film pyre for the sake of time (guess I’ll have something to look forward to on the DVD extras). It probably could have felt less contained if they split the whole thing into two episodes, just to give it more space and ground to cover.
However, the plot twists were very inventive and tied the whole episode together nicely without trying to force them together with an acetylene torch. The idea of making da Vinci the dumbest man on a planet of know-it-alls was a brilliant twist and the discovery of his lost machine as a doomsday device set up for a great climatic ending.
And I laughed throughout this thing. Not just little tiny snickers, but great big throat laughs. The kind of laughs you save for when a friend tries to pick up a model and ends up falling off the barstool as he tries to make his big move. The kind of laughs you only have during Slim Pickens’ scenes in ‘Blazing Saddles.’ The kind of laughs that suck your attention to whatever is causing it and won’t let you go until the endorphins in your brain have fizzled away like so much carbonation in a freshly poured soda.
It had funny lines, funny twists and (my all time favorite kind of funny) funny cartoon gags like Fry failing at sitting and da Vinci getting flattened by a giant cog. If you don’t find that stuff funny, I feel sorry for you and then I laugh at you.
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Hi to Futurama fans!
The day is not far, when you will enjoy the brand new Futurama episodes
on your TV screens. The show is created by the same person who is responsible for creating The Simpsons.
As the show is returning after a long time, let’s go back to some moments that we can’t even dream of forgetting.
Guys, do you remember an episode called ‘Jurassic Bark?’ That episode proved to be emotional and heartbreaking. When Fry found the remains of his dog Seymour in a museum, he decided to clone it.
Jurassic Bark
The story gets emotional when the scene goes into flashback, where Seymour dies waiting for him to come back.
If you don’t remember that scene, you can watch Futurama online to see the love between Fry and Seymour.
In an episode ‘Godfellas’, Benders meets God when he was moving in space. This episode is memorable as during Bender’s interstellar familiarity, the show dealt directly with the unnecessarily contentious idea that God can be powerful and kind without the unseen friend/cruel Old Testament fiend tags involved.
If you watch Futurama episodes title ‘Amazon Women in the Mood’, you will find that Fry and Zapp immediately spoil the holidays, when they get down to primitive Amazon culture.
They insulted the resident women. The scene became hilarious as they were ordered death by Snoo! You’re thinking, what’s so funny?! Well, the word ‘Snoo’ is used by the women of Amazon for sex!
There are many such moments, which are remembered by the fans of the show. Now, the show will air on Comedy Central, so let’s see how the show makes its impact on the fans of the previous shows!
Guys who have recently added themselves in the fan list of the show, let me tell them something about the show. Futurama full series aired earlier on Fox from 1999 to 2003. There are many characters in the show that play an important role. Turanga Leela, Bender Bending Rodríguez, Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth, Dr. John A. Zoidberg and many more.
The voice-over of these characters is given by Billy West, Katey Sagal, John DiMaggio, Lauren Tom, Phil LaMarr and many more.
So guys don’t miss Futurama with new and improved episodes, on the new network and with new changes. Enjoy!
Watch Sneak Peek of Futurama Season 6 Episode 5 The Duh-Vinci Code
Watch a sneak peek of the upcoming episode of Futurama Season 6 Episode 4 Proposition Infinity which air on Thursday, July 8 starting at 10:30pm on Comedy Central.
Synopsis: Futurama Season 6 Episode 4 Proposition Infinity – Bender leads a campaign to legalize robosexual marriage between humans and robots.
Description: “Futurama” follows the life of Philip J. Fry (Billy West), a pizza delivery boy who accidentally stumbles into a freezer on December 31, 1999 and wakes up a thousand years later. In his future home of New New York City, Fry goes to work for the Planet Express Intergalactic delivery company, where he befriends Bender (John DiMaggio), a booze-fueled robot, and sets his romantic sights on Leela (Katey Sagal), a sexy cyclops who enjoys beating him up.
Special guest stars this season include Chris Elliot, Craig Ferguson, George Takei, Sergio Aragones, Matt Groening, David X. Cohen, Katee Sackhoff and Mark Mothersbaugh.
‘Futurama‘ always works best, in my mind, when it tackles the pop tech world. When the show struggled to stay on Fox, no other show would even go near the subject in fear of alienating their cool audience by discussing things that only members of the high school audio-visual club could understand without their eyes bleeding.
Apple needed to be taken down a peg or two and that’s coming from someone who is pounding out this article on a dusty old MacBook, listening to an Elvis Costello compilation on an iPod and watching his stocks sink into the Earth’s core on his iPhone.
This time, the “EyePhone” gets the sharp end of Matt Groening and David X. Cohen’s very sharp pointing stick and it works … for the most part.
It’s really the perfect target for ‘Futurama‘ because it represents an unrelenting encroachment of technology on our lives and how society just drools at its awesome shininess while overlooking its obvious flaws. Nothing sums up that theme better than Fry’s encounter with a “Mom Store” employee who describes the “EyePhone” as a device that comes with only one service provider and get lousy reception, as dumb ol’ Fry screams: “Shut up and take my money!” The old saying, “It’s funny because it’s true,” is true.
I was also happy to see the little funny touches that the writers and animators wrote into the background for us to find, like those tiny comic strips in the margins of ‘MAD’ magazine. Things like the bird flying through the smoke stack and coming out as a skeleton not only make the show funny, but give me a reason to watch it again. I hoped I would see more of them in the earlier episodes … or did I just miss them?
Of course, the evil “Mom,” one of the most ingenious characters on the show, is behind all of this “EyePhone” infatuation and it turns into yet another plan for world domination with Bender and Fry in the middle. The two are in a “Twitcher” race to attract one million followers and the loser has to do a double somersault into a hot tub sundae of “Puke-Me-Poop-U” vomit/diarrhea, a lovely crude crack at the original ‘Doctor Dolittle’ and its Tibetan “Pushmi-Pullyu.” Mom plans to release a virus through one of the two in order to turn their followers into walking zombies. Then, it gets weird.
The whole episode takes a huge spin into “Druggachussettes” when Fry discovered the singing “boil” on Leela’s ass, a not-so-subtle crack at singing sensation and Internet heroine Susan Boyle. It’s certainly more creative than just turning one-eyed Leela into a surprisingly good singer (it also made a nice little trick as it lead up to that moment) but it goes so far over the top that it’s hard to find it really funny. Craig Ferguson’s surprise cameo as the voice of “Susan Boil,” however, was a riot.
It also gave me an excuse to stare at Leela’s ass for the last ten minutes of the show. (At least this time it was an integral part of the plot.)
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