So, as most of you can probably guess, I love Futurama. It's my favorite show of all time, and one of the main inspirations for my particular brand of humor (and I don't just mean the many times I've accidentally ripped it off). When it was cancelled in 2003, it was the first time since Titus that I'd ever been legitimately upset by the cancellation of a show. As I went through college, though, I started to see its cancellation as a mixed blessing. This line of thought was brought on by shows like The Simpsons and
After I came to terms with this, the first movie, "Bender's Big Score," came out. It was awesome, and peaked my interest in the next three movies to come. "Beast With A Billion Backs" and "Bender's Game," on the other hand, I was less enthused about. While it had some funny moments, "Billion Backs" was much less polished, and quite frankly, the subject matter made me feel a little unclean by the end of it. And "Bender's Game," while a decent tribute to Gary Gygax, was about as convoluted and nonsensical as a bad episode of Star Trek. Then "Wild Green Yonder" came out, and redeemed the movies as a whole. By this point no one knew if Comedy Central was going to renew the series or not, so I regarded "Wild Green Yonder" as the last episode that would have aired on FOX if they weren't douche bags. It wrapped up the series nicely, and if this was the last Futurama I ever saw, I'd still remember the show fondly.
Then Comedy Central renewed the series. Fortunately, the writers have still got it.
Yes, overall, and much to my pleasant surprise, the newest season of Futurama is quite good.While it unfortunately produced my least favorite episode to date ("Proposition Infinity"), it also produced two of my new favorites ("The Late Phillip J. Fry" and "Lrrreconcilable Ndndifferences"), and managed to maintain the sense of humor and scope I love about the show, even if it took a few episodes to reestablish it.
It's worth noting that the season had a shaky start, and while the season opener "Rebirth" was great- the way Comedy Central transitioned to it directly from the end of "Wild Green Yonder" the night of its premiere was a nice touch- the next few episodes were relatively lackluster compared to the rest of the show. The biggest problem, I think, is that it seemed as though the writers were making up for lost time, satirizing things from the past few years that they weren't able to while the show was cancelled. This is most noticeable in "Attack of the Killer App," which satirized the iPhone a few years after it was hip to do so, and "The Duh-Vinci Code," which satirizes, obviously, the Da Vinci code. These episodes were still decent, and if they were able to come out in a more timely manner, they'd have been legendary. Unfortunately, they felt somewhat dated for coming out this year.
*NOTE: For the next few paragraphs, I'm going to discuss why I didn't like the episode "Proposition Infinity." The tl;dr version: while I agree with the show's message, I thought there was too much character derailment. If you don't feel like reading my big, geeky rant on this, or if you haven's seen either "Proposition Infinity" or "Lethal Inspection" and don't want them spoiled for you, feel free to skip to the next set of asterisks.*
This brings us to the episode from this season I liked the least, and, on my first viewing, the first episode of Futurama that I actually disliked: "Proposition Infinity." As long-suffering fans of Family Guy and
While I won't go into it too much here, I do agree with what the show was trying to convey. What I didn't like was that, other than the hilarious parody of the Proposition 8 gathering storm ad, there wasn't much in the way of humor. Worse for me, however, was that the characters were derailed to make a point. Kif's whininess and Amy's stupidity were both exaggerated for the sole purpose of breaking them up for an episode, freeing her to date Bender and get the robosexual plot rolling. Most of the other characters, who in a previous episode ("I Dated a Robot") were adamantly against Fry dating a robot, were all for Amy and Bender's relationship, and Bender himself made no effort to rob Amy, which, up until the credits, was where I thought the episode was going.
I'd also go into Professor Farnsworth being a straw villain in this episode, but he is actually more or less in character as a crotchety, petty old man that will ultimately do the right thing. And while the show's debate tactics are questionable- the two biggest detractors for robosexuality that we see, the Professor and the robotic reverend character, are both closet robosexuals themselves, which strikes me as kind of an immature implication- it's important to remember that this is a comedy. After all, there's already a program that makes reasoned political commentary. It's called The Daily Show, and it comes on right after this. It's not Futurama's job to debate maturely, so I can let it get away with this sort of thing. But only when it still keeps the humor, which I don't think this episode was entirely successful in doing.
Now I specified earlier that I only disliked this episode after the first viewing. There was another episode this season, "Lethal Inspection," that, much like "Proposition Infinity," I didn't care for at first. It focused on Bender discovering that he's mortal, which is already at odds with a lot of previous events in the show. Thinking that it's a mechanical defect, he and Hermes go looking for the inspector that approved him so he can beat him up. After Bender gives up the search and decides to make the most of whatever time he has left, Hermes is revealed to be the inspector, and a montage of everything he did to protect Bender from being destroyed as a baby plays over a melancholic song, much like the ending montages in "Leela's Homeworld" and "Jurassic Bark."For me, this ultimately fell flat because the twist seemed to come right the hell out of nowhere, and Bender isn't nearly as sympathetic as Leela's parents or Fry's dog.
However, time and research for this review has caused me to think about these episodes a bit, and while they're still not my favorites, from a world-building and character development standpoint, I have a certain amount of respect for them. Watching the old episodes again, I've noticed that, before it's widely known that Mom is a villain, Hermes never joins the other characters when they talk about how nice she is. At first, I chalked this up to Hermes being absent when the characters discuss her. After all, the only times I can think of when they're both in the same scene are when she is either destroying the world with robots, or taking over Planet Express, both of which would easily earn Hermes's ire. "Lethal Inspection" adds a brand new dimension to this, as we learn that Hermes actually used to work for Mom, and quit because he didn't want to kill defective robots.
Let's take this knowledge and look at a specific scene in "Proposition Infinity." When Amy and Bender decide they're going to take to the streets and get robosexual marriage legalized, Hermes is the first one to give his support. Granted, they turn it into a pot joke a few seconds later, but that doesn't change the fact that Hermes was awfully eager to join the fight for robot equality.This all seemed at odds with his vehemence with Fry for dating a robot in "I Dated a Robot," but then I thought about it a little more, and I realized something. The robot Fry dated was basically a blank shell with the personality of Lucy Liu embedded into it, programmed solely to love Fry.Hermes wasn't mad because Fry was dating a robot. He was mad because Fry was keeping a robot as a sex slave. It's easy to interpret from this that, all along, Hermes has been a sort of covert champion for robot civil rights, using his job as a bureaucrat to aid in this however he can.This is especially helped by "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back", in which Hermes uses his sorting talents to save Bender's life for what turns out to be the second time.
This is just a theory, of course, and I admittedly wouldn't expect the writers to make too much of this even if it were true, given the screwball comedy nature of the show. However, keeping this thought in mind makes "Proposition Infinity" and "Lethal Inspection" a lot more watchable, and has gone a long way towards making Hermes my favorite Futurama character, which is something I never expected.
*RANT OVER*
The season as a whole really started to pick up for me with "The Late Phillip J. Fry." Along with the hilarious song when they travel through several eons at once as well as Farnsworth's misadventures in killing Hitler, it's the first episode of the new season since "Rebirth" to bring up the whole Fry/Leela thing, and does so in a nice, heartwarming way that didn't feel too angsty.This was the episode that pretty much assured me that Futurama is back, and still just as awesome today as it was in 2002.
However, my personal favorite episode this season, and I'll admit it's for somewhat arbitrary reasons, is "Lrrreconcilable Ndndifferences." First of all, the Omicronians are, by far, my favorite recurring villains. I was disappointed by their lack of representation in the movies, and was glad they got an episode in the new season. Second, Fry's "Deliveryboy Man" comic and the way it satirized problems lots of comics have today was brilliant in its subtlety. And there was something unfathomably hilarious about Bender cosplaying as Leela ("I have fruit-boobs!").
However, the ultimate reason this episode is my favorite is the War of the Worlds bit featuring the head of Orson Welles. True, it was a great reference to the infamous radio broadcast and a hilarious take on Welles's prima-donna nature, but there's another, more personal reason I liked this part. Orson Welles was voiced by veteran voice actor Maurice LaMarche, who usually plays Kif and various other characters on the show. However, there's a particularly famous role LaMarche played in a cartoon I watched when I was little. A character whose voice was remarkably similar to Orson Welles...
YES!
So yeah. This is the big reason that this episode's my favorite. It reminds me of Pinky and the Brain. It's like everything that inspired me to be a cartoonist has come around full-circle. If they had somehow worked Calvin and Hobbes into it, I probably would have started crying.
The season finale/100th episode was also fantastic, but bringing up the Brain feels like a good emotional climax, so I'll end the review here. Suffice to say, I'm enthusiastic about Futurama's return, and I'm looking forward to the next batch of new episodes.
Don't blow it, guys.
