Futurama News after 6ACV26 (Reincarnation)

[Reply #280 on:]

To be fair, the Annies is a laughable sham of an awards ceremony so being snubbed (or ineligable as I suspect South Park might be - possibly something to do with unions) isn't that big a deal. Last year How To Train Your Dragon swept the Annies, beating Toy Story 3 in pretty much everything and a short while before that, Kung Fu Panda did the same thing to WALL-E.
And now this whole 10 nominations for best film thing is just... well, why even bother with the awards - it basically means that everything ever is getting nominated (except for Happy Feet Two).
So yeah...

I do however need to re-register my distaste for The Silence of the Clamps. The story is functional, well structured, etc, but it's also SO bland and the structure is so by the numbers that it just feels almost lazy.
But more importantly, it isn't funny. It's horrendously unfunny (by Futurama's standards). That's why I don't like it. A lot of the jokes are downright cringey. I don't hold this against Eric Rogers because Futurama - and particularly, the humour aspect of it, is so collaberative and the first segment of Anthology of Interest I was hilarious.

[Reply #281 on:]

I think the feud between Zoidberg and Clamps is what made it at least somewhat decent. Also, I quite liked the Billy West joke.

[Reply #282 on:]

I quite liked the feud between those characters but it wasn't enough to make up for the rest of the episode.

And honestly, I hated that Billy West joke. It's a perfect example of the jokes that made me cringe. I mean... a guy voiced by Billy West says Billy West is a dumb name? I wouldn't have minded it if the name Billy West had been worked into the story a bit more organically, but it wasn't. They just crow-barred it in for that joke's sake and that joke is horribly unfunny. Bleck.

[Reply #283 on:]

I thought the Billy West joke was a bit cheesy, actually, though I did have fun explaining it to my friends I was watching it with. But the rest of it I thought was pretty funny. Bender hiding from the mob, "who am I to argue with a man from the sky?", "John Fucking Zoidberg!"....it had some hilarious stuff in it. Overall it was pretty average Futurama, not something I'd necessarily nominate in lieu of certain other episodes, but also not something I wouldn't vote for, especially given the competition is a bunch of season 22 (I think?) Simpsons episodes. And not an episode I'd recommend as a starting point for someone new to the show, but also one I'll be perfectly happy watching a number of times on DVD and in reruns.

....also, Pixar being beat by Dreamworks (or whoever made some of those) is simply not okay. No just universe would allow that, regardless of the specific films being compared. Well, except for Cars 2.

[Reply #284 on:]

I think it's more worthy than the nominations it was up against, but that doesn't stop me thinking it was the least worthy episode of Futurama they could have possibly nominated.

Of course it had a handful of decent jokes - it's Futurama, but the ratio was skewered in the wrong way towards being crap - much moreso than an average episode.

[Reply #285 on:]

I think if I were to create a ranking of every episode ever made, Silence of the Clamps would fall somewhere in the middle.

President's Heads would be bottom five.

[Reply #286 on:]

If I were to rank every episode ever made, 'The Silence of the Clamps' would be my 6th least favourite episode.

[Reply #287 on:]

President's Heads was awful.  The only part I liked about it was the brief few shots of a Londonized New New York...

And then those awful awful attempts at English accents kicked in and made me want to scream.  I mean these are talented and professional actors, surely they've met a british person before?  It's kind of annoying when parts of the episode demonstrated a good knowledge of British culture (like the football shirt for example, and the Tube logo)

[Reply #288 on:]

Agreed on ATPH, the concept of the ep was flawed, most of it didn't make use of the future setting and it got boring fast. Later the English accent attempts came along with the usual stereotypical English jokes which sucked. The only appealing thing about it was the designs...

@cyber_turnip, nice one linking to that thread. I suggest everyone who hasn't already done so go forth and list away to your hearts content!...

[Reply #289 on:]

And then those awful awful attempts at English accents kicked in and made me want to scream.  I mean these are talented and professional actors, surely they've met a british person before? 

Considering a lot of the jokes were pretty goofy or based in stereotypes, it's possible the accents were also purposely stereotypical and bad. Though it's also possible the talented voice actors just couldn't do very good British accents. (Hey, it happens.)

I found the episode just funny enough to be watchable I guess, but the story was surprisingly poorly written. I didn't care that it was "unrealistic" (this is Futurama...) like some did, but it just lacked internal logic or consistency, the characters aren't given much character or purpose to their actions, and the main conflict does not even really arrive until act three. Just structurally speaking, crazy British New York really should have happened by the end of act one or beginning of act two, with the rest of the episode being about fixing the problem. Cramming that into the last minute ("welp, NOW we did everything correctly!") just felt lazy and made the whole episode sort of pointless.

[Reply #290 on:]

Billy West was clearly struggling to do a British accent throughout the episode - but it felt as if most of the actors simply embraced a bad accent through a mixture of laziness and "what the hell, it'll be funny".

Still, I found most of the British jokes funny, myself. I would have preferred if they'd dug a little deeper, but I still enjoyed the obvious jabs like the one about our police not having guns.
I even enjoyed the plot a lot - I'm a sucker for time-travel, I suppose - but I'll admit that, whilst it has an excellent premise, the episode isn't executed brilliantly well.

[Reply #291 on:]

Most of the scenes in the British future are actually quite funny. The overall episode just felt so Saturday morning to me, though. I still find it passable, but probably the worst episode since the show was revived.

Of course, I'd still rather have it win than most of those nominees. Yikes.

[Reply #292 on:]

Phil LaMarr tweets:

Fun Futurama table read! But there was 1 empty chair (@vanessaragland)

Eric Rogers added:

truth! But phil tried to take my life with a fork!!

Also, deleted scene from Benderama that will be on the Season 6B DVD/Blu-Ray.

[Reply #293 on:]

Is it just me or did the outtake seem better than some of the stuff they left in? More like good old Futurama?

[Reply #294 on:]

"Let's just sit here and die with dignity."

Yeah, that whole outtake was high-quality writing.

[Reply #295 on:]

A couple of new episodes titles: "31ST CENTURY FOX", "NEAR-DEATH WISH". Source.

[Reply #296 on:]

I'm guessing "Near-Death Wish" is the one with the Professor's parents.

And I wouldn't be surprised if the 'fox' in "31st Century Fox" is referring to a sexy lady rather than the company.

[Reply #297 on:]

31st Century Fox, very interesting indeed...

Also, there are only 3 more episode titles for 7A to be revealed now...

(Well 4 technically, since Blue Munda is only a working title...)

[Reply #298 on:]

Has this been seen before? Deleted scene from Law and Oracle:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxDXRSJhq6A&feature=BFa&list=PL98DC9E371BB71A09&lf=plcp

[Reply #299 on:]

I have now!  Thanks DtB!!!

Yeah... the pacing on Silence of the Clamps felt somewhat sluggish, but the episode kept me entertained enough to generally keep watching enjoyably, and the showdown was funny.  I'd put the Billy West joke down there with the Susan Boyle joke... possibly worse due to the cheap meta overload.

I was generally upset by All the President's Heads because of the time travel episode.  I also don't mind the goofiness aspect, but the method in which they time traveled made absolutely no sense with the context of the show; it's been relatively established that time travel in the 31st century is all but impossible for Earthlings, and then they retconned the head jars and acted like nobody would have ever figured that out.  For me, that kind of thing detracts from the series as a whole.  As DotheBartman pointed out, after that it's ok for about an act, and then the pacing is garbage.  The events that occurred in the past were an engaging storyline in and of themselves, and the British changed future would have been a storyline by itself, but throwing it all together just smushed up the structure, especially at the end.  I also didn't enjoy the character design of the queen of england...  Other than the story being hodgepodged, the whole episode just seemed full of untapped potential all the way through; the first act, seeing Fry with a night job and the planex crew getting drunk at the head museum was fun up until the bad time travel bit.  This was also a really colorful episode, and I enjoyed a lot of the animation aspects to it, including all the extra character designs.  I don't know how exactly it could have been fixed betterer because there were serious aspects of each act that I enjoyed (British Hermes seeming pretty realistic to me), but a more reasonable method of time travel would have helped... hell random floating space-time vortex that materializes in the head museum would've been fine for me.

[Reply #300 on:]

So there's a truck or something going around LA that lets you pose with the Futurama characters...

Interesting...

[Reply #301 on:]

I agree with winna that their casual use of time travel really detracted from the brilliant time travel eps like Roswell and TLPJF. I thought President's Head was just cheap. Filler at best, something more sinister at worst. Although the character designs were nice.

Clamps was okay. Not great.

[Reply #302 on:]

I enjoyed ATPH. It had a decent plot, but humor filled the gaps. The only problem with it in my opinion was that at the end they disappeared and reappeared just like that. Besides that, I think it is underrated, and solid indeed.

[Reply #303 on:]

Inconsistency with past episodes didn't bother me so much...none of the previous methods were really all that consistent with each other (though easier to buy into), and I can accept a lot from this show. The idea that they could travel in time by licking that....substance was a little clumsy, but I could accept it and go along with it.

What bothered me was the lack of internal consistency within the episode. I think it was at least pointed out to me that the presidents the characters licked were at least of the same time periods as the times they went to (I couldn't remember for sure, but I think that was the case), but where they went had no real logic behind it. First they end up at Andy Warhol and a bootlegging bar...then they actually end up somewhere relevant to the president that was licked? It just didn't make any sense, or at least wasn't explained in a satisfactory way. And it seemed like the Professor was able to "choose" where and when exactly they ended up, whereas before it seemed to be completely random. (Even the "when" is iffy...I believe the first couple of them they went back to the time of the given president's actual presidency, but they go back to before George Washington's presidency after that.)

I recall that on the "Back to the Future" DVDs the creators talked about how they didn't like time travel stories where the characters not only travel back in time but to a completely unrelated location; e.g. a character wishing to travel back in time, and ending up in ancient China rather than their own country. They thought it was just easier to buy into if they traveled through time but landed in the same place, as well as of course having a "vehicle" or machine of some kind that made it seem a little more plausible (in particular, "The Late Philip J. Fry" actually followed these rules brilliantly). I would probably tend to agree with them.

And also, I just didn't have any reason to care. I don't really care if the Professor clears his family name; I potentially care if the crew is able to fix the British-ized future, but that entire dilemma is crammed into about 30 seconds of airtime. (I also just would have liked to see more of the British future, since it was a lot funnier and more interesting than the colonial stuff, which felt too much like a Saturday morning cartoon trying to be educational.)

In the end it's not a big deal; it's just a weaker-than-average episode of a TV show, and I don't care about previous continuity to the point that I feel they unraveled the show's universe or anything. And it was still passable and had some good stuff in it; the British scenes really were quite funny to me, and I'm a sucker for the Hall of President's too, having been a Political Science major. But the internal consistency and pacing problems, coupled with a relatively laughless middle act, definitely made it one of the more forgettable Futurama episodes. It's probably my least favorite 6ACV episode. But, hey, if I was watching TV with a friend or something and it came on, I'd still watch it again.

....also, while writing all that I checked out the Infosphere page, and I totally had not previously caught the fact that Inara from "Firefly" makes a cameo in the Head Museum. That's pretty awesome.

[Reply #304 on:]

I enjoyed the humor of TPH, but I do agree, it was a little bit crappy for how the timetravel was done. I still believe it was solid however, because good laughs make up for most things. My least favorite episode of 6B was Yo Leela Leela, which wasn't to good.

[Reply #305 on:]

Here's a theory that explains the crappy time-travel:  The head-licking was inconsistent with all other methods of time-travel in Futurama because it wasn't supposed to be there in the first place.  What we saw in the episode itself was just a small part of a much larger evil plot by time-traveling, head-impersonating alien impostors from another dimension that never should have connected with the Futurama-verse at all.  The Planet Express crew were actually unknowingly aiding The Doctor, who was working behind the scenes to foil the plot and save the Universe from horrible enslavement.  That's why we saw him and his TARDIS during the episode in such close proximity to the Planet Express building.

[Reply #306 on:]

Besides the cons of season 6B to the public eye, the pros outdid them. The second half was amazing in my opinion, especially with the boost we so needed after YLL with the amazing Mobius Dick (masterpiece 10/10). Followed by CW, FATEM, OCW (I know some people didn't like it, and I respect that, but a lot of people enjoyed it), Reincarnation, and TTOTZ. It made the on and off episodes from before worth it. If writing goes to extreme levels next season, then maybe there will be less hate.    

[Reply #307 on:]

Inconsistency with past episodes didn't bother me so much...none of the previous methods were really all that consistent with each other.

Now that's where you're wrong.

Previously used methods of time-travel actually work without contradicting each other (or actually changing the past). ATPH threw it all out of the window. Which was sad.

[Reply #308 on:]

I'm going to have to agree with you there, Totalnerduk. If they used a better form of time-travel, perhaps it could've been better.

[Reply #309 on:]

I have to third that ATPH had a horrible contrived method of time-travel. What made it even worse was that not only the method sucked, but the time-travel itself sucked too...

[Reply #310 on:]

Inconsistency with past episodes didn't bother me so much...none of the previous methods were really all that consistent with each other.

Now that's where you're wrong.

Previously used methods of time-travel actually work without contradicting each other (or actually changing the past). ATPH threw it all out of the window. Which was sad.

I didn't feel the others contradicted each other per se, but then neither did this one necessarily (plus, this is a show with ghosts and superpower creams and drinking robots, so...I just don't really care, honestly). I just thought the method itself felt a little cheap and wasn't used well. They finally used time travel one too many times.

[Reply #311 on:]

I agree with the general sentiments expressed by all of you that this method of time-travel was cheap. Whether the fact that this time-travel was cheapened by its contradiction of previous methods is debatable, obviously. I think tnuk summed it up by implying that this method just wasn't well-thought-put, whereas the methods shown in TLPJF and Roswell were clever about addressing the inherent paradoxes.

[Reply #312 on:]

Inconsistency with past episodes didn't bother me so much...none of the previous methods were really all that consistent with each other.

Now that's where you're wrong.

Previously used methods of time-travel actually work without contradicting each other (or actually changing the past). ATPH threw it all out of the window. Which was sad.

I didn't feel the others contradicted each other per se, but then neither did this one necessarily (plus, this is a show with ghosts and superpower creams and drinking robots, so...I just don't really care, honestly).

Whether or not you feel this one contradicted others (which did not contradict each other), the fact is that it breaks rules established by previous canonical depictions of time travel. I'm not going to go into detail here. I've done that in other threads about time travel and the various methods used in other episodes. Have a search if you care.

ATPH was, as spira says, poorly thought through (lazy) and cheap on its own merits. Even if time travel had not been introduced previously, it would still have been a lazy and cheap way to use it. ATPH does have redeeming features though. The pan-across of the alternative NNY was absolutely fantastic.

[Reply #313 on:]

I don't think they'd ever established that there was only one way of traveling through time. Discounting an actual line of dialogue of overt statement on the subject, any assumptions we fans make on it are just theoretical. It was definitely the one method that was most unlike the others, and seemed further removed from actual "scientific" (or scientific-seeming) concepts than the others, but it wasn't anything I couldn't basically accept, especially in a series like this that really only takes itself so seriously and has tons of cartoony jokes where the unrealism and absurdity is essentially the joke. There's been more egregious continuity errors (Bender's formative years, Star Trek being mentioned without punishment, French being used, only one parallel universe existing), and I would say they were all moments of continuity worth breaking for the sake of the newer stories/jokes that could only be made by breaking them. I wouldn't trade away The Farnsworth Parabox or Where No Fan Has Gone Before just because they technically overwrote previous "canon."

I just didn't like the method because it felt cheap and had no internal logic, or at least wasn't structured or explained well enough and in a way that I could really give much of a crap about it. I would have accepted The Late Philip J. Fry fine even if I felt it was somehow inconsistent with Roswell or Bender's Big Score, but it was also just a better-written story than ATPH.

[Reply #314 on:]

I don't think they'd ever established that there was only one way of traveling through time.

Nobody said they had. There have been several, but none of the others actually made for any problems with each other. They were all viable if you accepted the initial premise, within the same universe. Then you get to ATPH, in which once you've accepted the initial premise, there are problems with other time travel methods shown in the series. Or there are problems with the method shown in ATPH, if you take it as being the sole anomaly. Either way, it's a continuity-breaker.

[Reply #315 on:]

One thing I'd add: I just generally care more about good stories and the integrity of the characters than I do about strict continuity or canon. One of my bigger issues with that episode, in fact, was that I felt like the rest of the crew was just sort of blindly following the Professor around without really questioning why they should care or be doing it (I know it's their job, sorta...but it just felt like they weren't written with much character). A couple other episodes have had this problem recently, most notably Duh-Vinci Code. It didn't destroy the episodes, but it did make them a lot weaker than they could have been.

The Office (U.S. version) takes itself more seriously than Futurama, generally speaking, and it's still had a few notable continuity errors. And those didn't really bug me, but what does is that the currently airing season has been frequently violating the characters for the sake of (increasingly mediocre) jokes. Same principle, though thankfully Futurama has maintained character integrity much better than that thus far.

[Reply #316 on:]

Well the office isn't a cartoon. There's a huge difference. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZAJL3c569Y&context=C3400d2eADOEgsToPDskL4XKstRUeyi0xdH6tUvfh7 Check out my Inception Futurama Trailer and My Titanic one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sr8oX5dm78&context=C3ddb4c0ADOEgsToPDskLLxBTMy7ukoBu9uNM5wcxG

[Reply #317 on:]

Not really.  They're both sitcoms.  Being animated or not doesn't make a huge difference when it comes to things like world building, character development and arcs, story telling and consistency. 

[Reply #318 on:]

True, but cartoons have less limitations.

[Reply #319 on:]

...surely that argues a case against the point you're trying to make?

Also, it's pretty irrelevant.