Who's the best couple?

[Reply #160 on:]

See also: Bender's undying love for Bender.

Assie Come Home also elucidates his strong emotional attachment to his shiny metal crotchplate.

[Reply #161 on:]

See also: Bender's undying love for Bender.

This is pretty true. Who knows how long and how hard the multiple copies of Bender in BBS loved one another and themselves in the limestone caverns beneath the PX building?

A case could be made for Bender being in a lifelong committed relationship with himself, where all others are merely secondary partners who are by definition as fleeting as the breeze.

[Reply #162 on:]

My favorites have been:

Amy & Fry
Scruffy & Washbucket
Fry & Leela (season whatever was after the movies)

[Reply #163 on:]

Scruffy & Washbucket

If there were ever a romantic comedy spinoff to Futurama, these two would probably be the focus couple for it.

[Reply #164 on:]

Fry and Leela, although they are always on and off again and again which sucks.    on a side note i do like the Amy and Kif relationship so those couples are definitely my favorites.   

[Reply #165 on:]

Fry and Leela, although they are always on and off again and again which sucks.    on a side note i do like the Amy and Kif relationship so those couples are definitely my favorites.   

The last season had them as an established couple, on a "Let's mention the relationship only when it matters, otherwise, business as usual".

[Reply #166 on:]

Exactly the way it should be.

Show spoiler

Although I do actually prefer the original run's insistence on Fry being a poor schlump pining over an unrequited love, but at least their relationship wasn't inconsistent episode-to-episode in season 7. Finally.

[Reply #167 on:]

yes, I agree.

[Reply #168 on:]

I ship Scruffy x Wash Bucket so hard, you guys. You don't even.

Actually, my favorite couple would have to be the Conrads, at least until the writers decided to turn Hermes and LaBarbara into a walking stoner joke and a blatant adulterer, respectively (admittedly, the novelty made it funny the first couple of times, but not when the writers continued hitting you over the head with it.)

But I digress. I love their banter. I love how LaBarbara is not afraid to call Hermes out on his nonsense, yet stays by his side (at least before the writers decided she'd cheat on him with Barbados Slim). I love how they both genuinely want the best for Dwight. I love how Hermes is able to shed his professional anal-retentive bureaucrat personality and turn into a family man at home. The Conrads are awesome. Or were awesome before the writers decided to take certain creative liberties with their characters. :P

[Reply #169 on:]

The best thing about the Hermes/LaBarbara pair is how they refer to each other as "wife" and "husband". Or various meat products such as "bacon" and "hotdog".

[Reply #170 on:]

I enjoy Quabby and Stephen Hawking.

[Reply #171 on:]

I enjoy Quabby and Stephen Hawking.

Me too.

I was thinking about Fry and Leela and why their relationship was so on and off and why it took them so long to really settle down together and I came up with a few reasons, and I just thought maybe I should share them.

  Leela probably thought she could do a lot better than Fry. Fry was lazy, irresponsible, slobbish. Leela was hard-working, responsible and neat. She probably wanted someone who could get things done and provide for her, which she probably thought Fry couldn't do. Leela has obvious trust issues. I'm sure the idea of having a long term partner scared her. She may have found it genuinely hard to believe that Fry's feelings for her were honest and real. She was screwed over by a lot of guys in the past, and she also, due to her mutations, probably has low self esteem and finds it hard to believe anyone could care about her as much as Fry did.

[Reply #172 on:]

That was what the writers were initially going for - well, that and the fact that Fry needed to mature first in order to earn Leela's affections - but it became pretty obvious during the Comedy Central era that they (the writers) didn't feel like defining it any further, and so Fry and Leela's relationship just became "whatever the episode called for." At least they finally got their shit together for the back half of season 7 on that front.

[Reply #173 on:]

Yeah, the inconsistency there was really jarring, especially in 6A.

[Reply #174 on:]

Fry needed to mature first in order to earn Leela's affections

I feel like I've rambled about this elsewhere on PEEL, but I find the whole "Leela thinks Fry is beneath her" thing to be really contrived. A number of my favorite episodes from the first two seasons - "A Flight to Remember," "Xmas Story," "Put Your Head on My Shoulders," and "War is the H-Word" - have moments in which Leela demonstrates a definite interest in Fry, even if it's not explicitly romantic. Specifically (and respectively): She gets jealous of Fry's fake (and much less meaningful!) relationship with Amy, and almost kisses him; has no objection to being "lonely together" with Fry on Xmas Eve and again entertains the notion of kissing him; bails Fry out of that awful date on Valentine's Day, which Bender later takes credit for as some Grand Romantic Scheme on his part; and (in the guise of Lee Lemon) is pleased to hear that Fry has a thing not for a blonde or a Chinese coworker, but rather a cyclops. The first two seasons sort of treat Fry and Leela as a foregone conclusion, subtle though the hints may be - and despite Fry's well-established immaturity.

And then "Parasites Lost" comes along, and it establishes the formula that the remainder of the original run (not to mention the first movie) will follow: Fry pursues Leela, Leela rejects Fry. While this principle is the driving force behind some of my all-time favorite episodes of the series ("Time Keeps on Slippin'," "The Why of Fry," "The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings"), and provides Fry with some nice opportunities for character growth, it also makes Leela come off as kind of a snob. Though her insecurities about men in general and concerns about Fry in particular are certainly understandable, given her history - and, to the show's credit, it attempts to contextualize some of her bitchier behavior by exploring the feelings of inadequacy and abandonment that come from being an orphan - they render her actions in the first two seasons a bit contradictory when viewed in light of the series as a whole.

I guess what I'm saying is that, though the new run definitely did a poor job with the whole Fry/Leela thing (at least until 7B, as has been noted), the original run also had some trouble keeping things emotionally consistent - at least on Leela's end. I love those first four seasons dearly, of course, but I do think the Fry/Leela relationship could have been handled a bit more deftly.

[Reply #175 on:]

The first two seasons sort of treat Fry and Leela as a foregone conclusion...

It's kinda-sorta-almost set up from the very first episode. Subtly, like you said. But when that groundwork is then built upon episode by episode, it almost seems as though it was a foregone conclusion up until somebody changed their minds as to the direction that they were going to take with Fry and Leela, during Season Three.

Perhaps this was done to pace things so that their relationship and any secret reveals that were planned at that point ("the other?) could be given at the appropriate time, after Fry's origin arc had already played out. Or possibly the writers just decided to give the FOX executives a relationship dynamic that they knew the execs would understand, having seen it on other shows.

All I know is that the tone of the Fry and Leela relationship shifted noticeably as Season Three began, and Season Three also saw some major payoffs in terms of the Fry's origin arc, and Leela's character, backstory, emotional vulnerability, and strength as a person being explored.

Which isn't conclusive, but would seem to support the idea that the relationship dynamic shifted at least partially as a delaying tactic until events had played out so as to give the planned finalisation a little more depth. So yeah, I guess I'm agreeing with you about the writers having done a poor job with the way they handled the relationship. Especially from Bender's Big Score up until the last half-season of episodes. During that period, the dynamic between them oscillated pretty wildly, and it's one of the major criticisms I have of the post-FOX run in particular. The FOX run might not have handled the 'ship brilliantly, but most of the post-FOX run handled it outright badly.

[Reply #176 on:]

Another thing that's been on my mind is that Leela doesn't seem to show a whole lot of gratitude towards Fry after all the incredibly selfless things he does. For instance, she seems to forget that Fry helped her not only find her parents, but stopped her from murdering them. That was like, her lifelong dream and she barely acknowledges that Fry played a vital role in fulfilling that.

Granted, that was at the very end of "Leela's Homeworld" so it's possible that they did it off-screen or something but it still makes Leela come across as a selfish twig in my opinion.

[Reply #177 on:]

The running time for each episode is 22 minutes.  They like to pretend like they end on heavy emotional notes, but if you started crying for that damned dog, then you were just fooled by television.

That said, Leela pretty much is a selfish twig.  Her base personality traits actually come to light very well in The Day the Earth Stood Stupid: "Is there Mrs. Queequag?"  I don't know how to spell that name.  Leela is the atypical American female who believes she's independent, is constantly vying for attention she feels justified to have but doesn't get, and is constantly trying to control things around her despite the fact that she lacks reasonable judgement (like most women) and she generally can't follow through with the responsibility of control (like most women), and this is all despite the fact that she knows martial arts (often applying them incorrectly or inappropriately) and that she can fly a spaceship with only one eye (of course why you'd need to see what's outside the ship is beyond me, the damned thing should be able to fly itself, or else the technology in it would be seemingly obsolete at that time period, hell I'm pretty sure Fry could fly the ship too if he actually cared to, not that he does because he's oblivious to most of the things around him, as an aside, his anecdote about the octopus and the grasshopper rings particularly true, as in the anecdote with real life, if you're the octopus you generally get to eat the grasshopper after if works itself into a frenzy for the approaching winter, then you get all of his stuff, and as an extra reward, you usually get a racecar on top of that).  Ultimately, I'd say that it's most likely Leela would end up with Fry.  She's spent several years working with him (technically like a decade, right?), and he generally does what she wants.  She'd feel like she was settling, and they'd probably have a cacophonous union for the rest of their lives, but that's probably where Leela's will would take her.  Fry doesn't sweep her off her feet, yet he's loyal and won't actually leave.  Plus he has the backbone of a jellyfish, so she'll feel like she can nag and control him.  Pretty unfortunate there for Fry though; he's actually a pretty decent guy, when the writers aren't being jack-offs and portraying him in very very immature ridiculously absurd ways (Fry would never sit around being an omicronian's pet, that's just dumb).  It's crass for its own sake.  Fry would actually be more compatible with Amy, but I'll share my dissertation on that at a later date.

[Reply #178 on:]

I agree with most of your post winna, but I don't think that quote from "The Day the Earth Stood Stupid" is a great indicator of Leela's personality. She (and everyone else on Earth) were idiots at the time, incapable of rational thought.

[Reply #179 on:]

Just like people right now, in 2015, right?