To the Year 3014 or Bust - General Futurama Discussion

[Reply #200 on:]

*bump*

Tonight's ep is the only one out of all 13 7A eps that has made me go "meh" from the previews, and I have a huge feeling a lot of shippers are gonna get either super pissed or super happy.

[Reply #201 on:]

True, but a lot of people thought that "Zapp Dingbat" would be a stinker, and instead it turned out to be quite good.  So I will be watching "Butterjunk Effect" with an open mind.

[Reply #202 on:]

Waiting for the new episode, Neutopia is on. I forgot how obnoxious the first act is with the 'men are better than women' plot. It's insulting to watch the men insult the women and the women to be stereotyped into stupid beliefs/sayings/cliches.

[Reply #203 on:]

It's insulting to watch the men insult the women...

Well you'll see the opposite in "The Butterjunk Effect". Enjoy .

[Reply #204 on:]

So, I've noticed the music cues are sounding a lot better this season.

But that music in the sunset shot of the PE building from 6ACV14 is brilliant...

[Reply #205 on:]

Just a general response, but I thought I'd say that I'm really enjoying this season. We're half way in and I'd say it's the half-season with the most consistant set of quality among episodes so far. It is a nice feeling. 

[Reply #206 on:]

Just thought of a cool idea for the plot of 'Near-Death Wish':

It turns out the Professor's parents were put in the Near-Death Star by some mistake, so they turn out to be much, much younger than him, but still treat him like a child/teenager, and they start hanging out with Fry and Leela and the others and make the Professor look bad/embarrass him in front of everyone.

[Reply #207 on:]

A premise that is somehow already incorporated via the Fry/Professor Uncle/Nephew link.
Yet, it has a certain appeal and quite humorous potential...

[Reply #208 on:]

Just a general response, but I thought I'd say that I'm really enjoying this season. We're half way in and I'd say it's the half-season with the most consistant set of quality among episodes so far. It is a nice feeling.  

Agreed. I have yet to encounter an episode that I full-on detest, which had already happened by this point in both 6A (with "Proposition Infinity") and 6B (with "Ghost in the Machines"); that's a good thing. Also good is that the highs this season are higher, and the lows still aren't as loathsome to me as the lows of the past two seasons.

Just for kicks, here are my current season seven rankings...

6. The Butterjunk Effect - 6/10
5. The Bots and the Bees - 7/10
4. Decision 3012 - 7/10
3. The Thief of Baghead 7/10
2. Zapp Dingbat - 9/10
1. A Farewell to Arms - 9/10

[Reply #209 on:]

Hmm. Why not.

6) The Butterjunk Effect- 6/10
5) The Thief of Baghead- 6/10
4) A Farewell to Arms- 7/10
3) The Bots and the Bees- 8/10
2) Decision 3012- 8/10
1) Zapp Dingbat -9/10

[Reply #210 on:]

Might as well add my ratings:

6) The Butterjunk Effect - 5/10
5) The Thief of Baghead - 7/10
4) Decision 3012 - 7/10
3) The Bots and the Bees - 8/10
2) A Farewell to Arms - 9/10
1) Zapp Dingbat - 9/10

The average rating so far is 7.5 out of 10, but with the most promising episodes of 7A still to come, I expect that number to rise.

[Reply #211 on:]

As will I.

6) The Butterjunk Effect - 6.5/10.
Could have been so much better. Still pretty funny and entertaining, but suffered from a poorly executed plot.

5) The Thief of Baghead - 7.5/10.
I found a lot of the modern pop culture references pretty forgivable because of the episode's overall premise, but it didn't tie up the loose ends as well as it could have.

4) The Bots and the Bees - 8/10
Solid. Good intro to the season.

3) Decision 3012 - 8/10
Really enjoyed this one. I love political satire.

2) A Farewell to Arms - 8.5/10
Great. Very funny, and well-rounded by the emotional aspect of Fry and Leela.

1) Zapp Dingbat - 9/10
Considerably exceeded my expectations. A few little problems here and there but a strong plot and very good character development on the parts of Munda, Morris, and Leela.

Other than "31st Century Fox" and "Naturama", which I have no idea of what to expect, the rest of the season sounds really cool.

[Reply #212 on:]

Other than "31st Century Fox" and "Naturama", which I have no idea of what to expect, the rest of the season sounds really cool.

Bender begins to protect robot foxes from hunters (guest starring Patrick Stewart as the leader of the hunters) and Naturama is a three-segmented episode (like AOI I & II, TFHS and Reincarnation) that parodies nature documentaries.

[Reply #213 on:]

Naturama is a three-segmented episode (like AOI I & II, TFHS and Reincarnation) that parodies nature documentaries.

That sounds quite tantalizing. I hope that episode parodies beloved shows like "Animal Kingdom," "Nova," and "Planet Earth." And I fervently hope Leela doesn't have any lines about stomping cute polar bear cubs, or whatever out-of-character garbage she's been saying.

(Come to think of her puppy stomping remark, that reminds me that there's a sick fetish where people get turned on by helpless animals being tortured to death. Pretty disgusting. I hope the writers were not thinking of this when they wrote that bit of dialogue.)

On that note, Happy Monday, everyone!

[Reply #214 on:]

And I fervently hope Leela doesn't have any lines about stomping cute polar bear cubs, or whatever out-of-character garbage she's been saying.

I doubt it, the episode features much of the cast in the form of different animals. So far we've seen Fry, Leela, Zapp, Bender, Amy and Scruffy as fish, Zoidberg as a squid and the Professor and Mom as turtles having sex.

It'd be funny for Leela to go on about killing humans when in animal form instead. Or maybe she'll be violent and still want to kill the animals around her.

[Reply #215 on:]

I'd rather she try to kill humans instead! Those sweet, cuddly-wuddly, hepwess aminals....

Where are you seeing these previews? I am so out of the loop.

[Reply #216 on:]

Where are you seeing these previews? I am so out of the loop.

They were on a reel shown after a live Q&A session with some of the staff and VAs after 7ACV05 aired. I haven't seen the full thing (due to it not being available in the UK), but the clip is on YouTube (in shitty quality) here.

[Reply #217 on:]

Decided to give the missing EPs a chance:

The Butterjunk Effect: 2/10
Decision 3012: 4/10
The Thief of Baghead: 4/10
Zapp Dingbat: 5/10
The Bots and the Bees: 6/10
A Farewell to Arms: 6/10

(As stated before: That season somehow does not do it for me.. )

[Reply #218 on:]

Just for reference, how does these ones stack up compared to your unusual dislike for "Mobius Dick"?

[Reply #219 on:]

TBE is really close...nearly en par with "Möbius Dick".

I miss the sci fi as a driving force:

E.g. in "Zapp Dingbat": It was a rather ordinary couple breakup, and "doing something special to impress her and win her back", and it seemed more like a convenient coincidence that this impressive deed happened to be sci fi-y.

"The Butterjunk Effect" made imhO no sense. Doing drugs, getting increased strength, being unbale to cope with it turning into a bully is usually a theme to be explored by whimp characters. Those character have a credible motive. Which creates a conflict, an unusual situation, a paradox, something to cope with. But Fry and Kif were whimps to start with. Now they were bullied slightly more by their girlsfriends, but...well...only a change in quantity, not in quality. Nothing really new.The rest being the ordinary steroid jokes that could have played in the present with the addition of the obligatory double standards did not help too much either...
In fact -unless most other folks- the ending about TBE effect was the best part for me. Science Fiction elements started to get REALLY involved, started to become said driving force...yet, too little time was left for a propoer exploration. So, these themes were reduced to some "convenient last minute solution" again.

Well..the new episodes were just everyday stuff with a few sci fi gimmicks thrown in. "Time keeps on slipping" basically also featured just a normal Basketball game. but when I think of all the sci fi elements incorporated, how they drove and defined the plot...
Rebirth -though considered rather sappy by many folks- feaured the venerable classic theme "The machine that does not know it is one", even incorporation the two possible points of view (The audience KNOWING from the beginning that this individual is a machine, and a surprising relevation about this beings nature to the audience)

TSMDM might get more sci-fi-y (though running the danger of getting too close to plastic surgery), as well as FoaB, which seems to incorporate rather crazy sci fi aspects.

[Reply #220 on:]

Honestly, I feel like this is the point where the episodes get much better. All the remaining ones (other than maybe "Naturama") sound really good.

I think 7A is so far doing much better than 6A was at this point.

[Reply #221 on:]

Well..the new episodes were just everyday stuff with a few sci fi gimmicks thrown in.

To be fair, though, a lot of Futurama episodes take a commonplace, not-so-futuristic occurrence and just pile a bunch of sci fi zaniness on top of it to augment the hilarity and fully make use of the time and place in which the show is set. An episode like "Parasites Lost," for example, is primarily about a guy who likes a girl and wants to improve himself to earn her affections; however, since the show is set in the thirty-first century, the guy is indirectly improved by sentient parasites that his ragtag bunch of coworkers must defeat by taking a Fantastic Voyage-esque journey inside his body.

I know I'm oversimplifying, of course, and to some extent I agree with you that not many episodes thus far this season have made such profound use of the show's futuristic setting. But, then again, not every episode of the original run was chock-full of sci fi elements in the way "Parasites Lost" was. Think of "A Fishful of Dollars" or "Raging Bender" or "Insane in the Mainframe": those episodes benefited from the futuristic setting--anchovies have gone extinct since Fry was frozen, wrestling isn't just for humans anymore, robots can be locked in insane asylums--but did not rely on it for much beyond one or two plot points. And yet those are still considered perfectly enjoyable episodes by most people.

What I'm saying is, I don't get the sense that the six episodes we've seen so far started out as sort of boring, everyday stories that the writers added sci fi stuff to after the fact to justify the show still being called "Futurama." To me, the futuristic elements have felt organic to, and not imposed upon, season seven's stories. Time travel plays a key part in "Decision 3012" (which is, on its surface, a political satire about modern-day elections and smear campaigns); celebrity narcissism (and the public's complicity in, and consumption of, the glorification of actors) is at the core of "The Thief of Baghead"--but then there's the twist that Langdon Cobb is actually part of this parasitic race of creatures, that his ego is embodied as a big goopy fungus.

Even an episode like "Zapp Dingbat," which is primarily about domestic issues, makes a point of Munda wanting to go on space adventures; it may focus on the more banal aspects of living in the future (diplomacy among alien races), but sometimes that can be fun, I think, just seeing how life is lived in the year 3000-whatever. Every episode can't just be about some big sci fi concept, because that would get boring. You need some kind of balance between the lighter sci fi episodes (say, "Bend Her") and the huge sci fi episodes (say, "The Farnsworth Parabox"). This is a pattern that was present in the original run, and I don't think it's so problematic that season seven seems to be following a similar trend.

[Reply #222 on:]

"I've always been envious of fry he lives the perfect life with an awesome best friend in the future and has fucked every hot female on futurama including robot chicks" - Guy on 4chan's /co/.

[Reply #223 on:]

I'm looking forward to The Six Million Dollar Mon. In fact, the rest of 7A looks good to me. They've hopefully gotten the stinkers out of the way early on, leaving lots of strong episodes to carry the show.

[Reply #224 on:]

Since there is not (for now) a general thread pertaining to the quality of Futurama episodes over time, I'm putting this here:


You may remember my previous episode quality over time graphs. Well, this updated version accounts for all of S6 and the beginning of S7.

I'm working on one with a little more information. So far, I've got a dynamic average line (ie: an average rating as a snapshot at the point of each episode being aired).

It goes down on a more-or-less constant line after S2. Shallow, but a slope nontheless. S3's average is below it. Just about. S4's is above, and S6/S7 are very definitely below. This has made it a lot easier to identify individual episodes that rise above the average for the season (for S6, that would be 6ACV07, 6ACV10, 6ACV12, 6ACV14, 6ACV16, 6ACV18, 6ACV22, 6ACV24, 6ACV25 and 6ACV26. Just under half the season in total, but the average for the season is the lowest. Of those, not all of them are over the average for S1 or the show's average as a whole. Which is still pretty high, even with some crappy episodes like TCW and TFHS).

Here's the new graph so far:

[Reply #225 on:]

Since there is not (for now) a general thread pertaining to the quality of Futurama episodes over time, I'm putting this here:


You may remember my previous episode quality over time graphs. Well, this updated version accounts for all of S6 and the beginning of S7.

I'm working on one with a little more information. So far, I've got a dynamic average line (ie: an average rating as a snapshot at the point of each episode being aired).

It goes down on a more-or-less constant line after S2. Shallow, but a slope nontheless. S3's average is below it. Just about. S4's is above, and S6/S7 are very definitely below. This has made it a lot easier to identify individual episodes that rise above the average for the season (for S6, that would be 6ACV07, 6ACV10, 6ACV12, 6ACV14, 6ACV16, 6ACV18, 6ACV22, 6ACV24, 6ACV25 and 6ACV26. Just under half the season in total, but the average for the season is the lowest. Of those, not all of them are over the average for S1 or the show's average as a whole. Which is still pretty high, even with some crappy episodes like TCW and TFHS).

Here's the new graph so far:

Sad to say I'm agreeing with cyber_turnip, totalnerduk, and futurefreak this season.
Since there is not (for now) a general thread pertaining to the quality of Futurama episodes over time, I'm putting this here:


You may remember my previous episode quality over time graphs. Well, this updated version accounts for all of S6 and the beginning of S7.

I'm working on one with a little more information. So far, I've got a dynamic average line (ie: an average rating as a snapshot at the point of each episode being aired).

It goes down on a more-or-less constant line after S2. Shallow, but a slope nontheless. S3's average is below it. Just about. S4's is above, and S6/S7 are very definitely below. This has made it a lot easier to identify individual episodes that rise above the average for the season (for S6, that would be 6ACV07, 6ACV10, 6ACV12, 6ACV14, 6ACV16, 6ACV18, 6ACV22, 6ACV24, 6ACV25 and 6ACV26. Just under half the season in total, but the average for the season is the lowest. Of those, not all of them are over the average for S1 or the show's average as a whole. Which is still pretty high, even with some crappy episodes like TCW and TFHS).

Here's the new graph so far:

I might be reading the graph wrong totalnerduk, but in Season 1 I don't think Hell Is Other Robots is rated almost 100%. Again, not sure.

Anyway, Season 7A has been rather iffy for me. I've still got The Thief Of Baghead and Zapp Dingbat to watch, but so far my favourite has surprisingly been Decision 3012. As for worst, well... I guess The Butterjunk Effect, but still can't say for sure.

The Bots And The Bees: 8/10
A Farewell To Arms: 7/10
Decision 3012: 8/10
The Butterjunk Effect: 6/10
The Six Million Dollar Mon: ?/10

[Reply #226 on:]

I might be reading the graph wrong totalnerduk, but in Season 1 I don't think Hell Is Other Robots is rated almost 100%. Again, not sure.

You're not reading it wrong. I have CGEF's rating as having been 98%... it must have dropped since I grabbed the original data. It's now at 90%. I've compared and corrected the data for the entire run. All ratings should be current now, meaning the next graph will look ever so slightly different in that area (it doesn't have much of an effect on anything but that one peak).

Hm. That was the only value that was different and it's gotten one five-star review since then. I think it was at 89 yesterday, my finger slipped and I entered 98. Then somebody reviewed it and the number became 90.

 

[Reply #227 on:]

Well, we're what, seven episodes in and so far there haven't been any of the extreme lows that really drag the mean down like in S6 by this point.  Combine that with the general consensus that most of the potential stinkers are out of the way for 7A by now, and it seems that this could be the start of a positive trend back towards S3/S4 glory.  Can't speak for much of 7B yet, but I've got a good feeling.

[Reply #228 on:]

Since there is not (for now) a general thread pertaining to the quality of Futurama episodes over time, I'm putting this here:

And now there is one.

[Reply #229 on:]

So what information do we have of the remaining 5 episodes of 7A? I'm personally most intrigued about "Near Death-Wish" - is there anything else we know about this episode other than the professor's parents still being alive?

[Reply #230 on:]

So what information do we have of the remaining 5 episodes of 7A? I'm personally most intrigued about "Near Death-Wish" - is there anything else we know about this episode other than the professor's parents still being alive?

Written By: Eric Horstead

"When the Professor learns that his parents are coming out of virtual retirement from the Near-Death Star, he becomes upset"






This is all we have on the episode at this particular time...

[Reply #231 on:]

So what information do we have of the remaining 5 episodes of 7A? I'm personally most intrigued about "Near Death-Wish" - is there anything else we know about this episode other than the professor's parents still being alive?

Written By: Eric Horstead

"When the Professor learns that his parents are coming out of virtual retirement from the Near-Death Star, he becomes upset"






This is all we have on the episode at this particular time...

Nice. Well I guess we'll learn more soon, only 2 weeks until it airs

[Reply #232 on:]

Hopefully the episode is closer in quality to "Lethal Inspection" and "The Mutants are Revolting" than the other episode he wrote, "Yo Leela Leela"

[Reply #233 on:]

Has anything been revealed about the plot of "Free Will Hunting"?  I assume that there is some connection to the movie "Good Will Hunting", which is about a janitor who has a gift for mathematics.  Scruffy joins the Globetrotters?  Sounds like a stretch (no pun intended).

edit -- Never mind, I see that this has been revealed already: "As a robot, Bender lacks free will so he embarks on a quest for the meaning of life."

[Reply #234 on:]

I've just been reading some of the review threads for Season 6 episodes. I'm surprised at the popularity of "Ghost in the Machines".

And on another note, I was greatly amused by this on page 6 of the Neutopia thread:

I'm so sorry you had to read that, Danny.

You don't have to apologise Unmentionable, but thank you anyway.

Seeing Danny being nice to Unmentionable is something we'll probably never see again. 

[Reply #235 on:]

Oh God, I don't even remember that.

I do vaguely remember him being a nice poster, until Season 7 began, and the obsessive Fry raging appeared.

[Reply #236 on:]

*bump*

Things Season 7 has lacked:

*No Cubert or Nibbler. (Yet. 2 opportunities left.)
*No cool upgrades/alterations/alternative appearances of the PE ship.

[Reply #237 on:]

2 opportunities left?  There are 15 more for season 7.

[Reply #238 on:]

2 opportunities left?  There are 15 more for season 7.

I think everyone knows what he meant.

[Reply #239 on:]

I did, but seeing as he is the one who loves to point out minor inaccuracies as well, I thought it was appropriate.  Come to think of it, we are all pedantic around here.