To the Year 3014 or Bust - General Futurama Discussion

[Reply #560 on:]

Watching Near Death Wish right now in the lead-up to the season premiere...

I've decided this episode has too much of The Professy sobbing uncontrollably. It happens several times, and I just find it to be out of character.

[Reply #561 on:]

Yeah, the Professor cried a little much for the episode, even for him. It would've made more sense for him to be angry for most of the episode instead of crying maniacally, even with his repressed childhood coming back to him.

[Reply #562 on:]

The professor just owns emotion. Imagine angry crying

[Reply #563 on:]

The professor just owns emotion. Imagine angry crying

In the Angry Dome? 

[Reply #564 on:]

If you haven't checked yet, 2-DB and FALBF are available on iTunes now. And judging by the cover on iTunes, Hypnotoad is going to be on the cover of the Volume 8 DVD.

[Reply #565 on:]

If Netflix does pick up a season 8, would they still release it on dvd? Don't have Netflix in my house.

[Reply #566 on:]

Neither do I, but I don't think they will... but don't ask me^^

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[Reply #567 on:]

They would almost certainly release it on DVD - just not for a while. Fox still owns Futurama and whatever deal they'd strike with Netflix would almost certainly involve them retaining the profits from DVD sales, meaning that they'd want to put DVDs out there.

Arrested Development's fourth season is due for a DVD release at some point, for instance.

[Reply #568 on:]

I know it's kind of pathetic to put much stock in the CGEF reviews, but I just took a look through the "2-D Blacktop" reviews and there's crap like this:

Mike Rowe... wow, what can I say.
He writes the worst episodes.. of anything!
His penis must be sooo tiny!

This is why there should be some kind of moderation.  Or at least more requirements to post a review.

[Reply #569 on:]

They might as well have people give reviews on all the writer's penises.

[Reply #570 on:]

Because a writers talent is somehow related to his penis size. Though if it actually is, I wonder whether we rate by width, length, or a scale of both. Then we also have to ask whether or not penis affects the writers style fully, or only in certain areas (and how are we supposed to measure girls exactly?). And finally I have to ask, who in the hell would actually want to look at one of the writers penises, let alone measure it?

[Reply #571 on:]

I know it's kind of pathetic to put much stock in the CGEF reviews, but I just took a look through the "2-D Blacktop" reviews and there's crap like this:

Mike Rowe... wow, what can I say.
He writes the worst episodes.. of anything!
His penis must be sooo tiny!

This is why there should be some kind of moderation.  Or at least more requirements to post a review.

I've also been browsing the reviews and I'm extremely annoyed by how at least 80% of them are badmouthing Rowe with no actual opinion on the episode that just aired. If an episode by Ken Keeler was to be of the same quality as "2-D Blacktop", the percentage difference would be extreme. People just seem to care about the writer and not the actual episode they have written.

[Reply #572 on:]

Futurama gets its snap and its heart back

[Reply #573 on:]

I've also been browsing the reviews and I'm extremely annoyed by how at least 80% of them are badmouthing Rowe with no actual opinion on the episode that just aired. If an episode by Ken Keeler was to be of the same quality as "2-D Blacktop", the percentage difference would be extreme. People just seem to care about the writer and not the actual episode they have written.

On top of this, people still don't seem to have figured out that this show is written completely collaboratively and that the individual writing credit doesn't actually matter tremendously.

[Reply #574 on:]

Look I'm just going to say it, if you think the show is going to be revived after this Summer, then maybe it is time to face reality. Besides the possibility of a movie, this is the end. No need to get your hopes up just for them to get crushed. So just enjoy the 10 episodes we have left.

[Reply #575 on:]

Look I'm just going to say it, if you think the show is going to be revived after this Summer, then maybe it is time to face reality.

You can't prove that. I bet so many people said that when the OR was cancelled. Or after ITWGY was released. You can't prove it won't come back again.

[Reply #576 on:]

Look I'm just going to say it, if you think the show is going to be revived after this Summer, then maybe it is time to face reality.

You can't prove that. I bet so many people said that when the OR was cancelled. Or after ITWGY was released. You can't prove it won't come back again.

That doesn't mean it will though. To put it in a perspective you might appreciate, you also can't prove that Fry isn't telepathically reaching out to Onuki from a parallel universe to re-assure him of their love which transcends reality and sanity.

Which brings me to another small but important point: you can't prove or disprove anything. Ever. All you can do is collect a weight of experimental data which will act as evidence - when this accumulates a certain critical mass, the idea you were testing becomes accepted. But there's always a chance that something will come along to change our understanding. Proof (as an absolute, anyway) in a definitive one-or-zero sense is never possible. We live in a universe in which certainty is achieved on a macro scale only via sheer brute force (and this will always be true as long as entropy exists).

We can say that it is unlikely that Futurama will return, unless it can be shown to be profitable via a channel other than traditional broadcast television. We can accept this idea, and once it is accepted on a macro level (ie: by the majority of people), it's "proved" in so much as for all intents and purposes, it is true - but that at any time there is a chance, however small, that it might be revived. Since for all intents and purposes it would at that point be not coming back, that chance of revival can be thought of as negligable, and this can be taken as "proof" in as much as anything can ever be proved (see the previous paragraph if you're still unclear on this concept).

[Reply #577 on:]

I've also been browsing the reviews and I'm extremely annoyed by how at least 80% of them are badmouthing Rowe with no actual opinion on the episode that just aired. If an episode by Ken Keeler was to be of the same quality as "2-D Blacktop", the percentage difference would be extreme. People just seem to care about the writer and not the actual episode they have written.

On top of this, people still don't seem to have figured out that this show is written completely collaboratively and that the individual writing credit doesn't actually matter tremendously.

I'd disagree with that. The individual writer seems to make a pretty big difference in season 5, onwards, of the show (where there was a reduced writing staff).

For example, I'd say that all of Ken Keeler, David X. Cohen and Josh Weinstein's episodes have been pretty good, whereas the likes of Eric Rogers have produced uniformly terrible episodes.

I think the individual writers are pretty much the ones responsible for turning the basic plot into a fully-fledged storyline, so how well written an episode is, is largely down to them.
The gags within those episodes seem to be more where the show becomes written-by-committee.


As for the show coming back, I'd say that it feels less likely than it did in the past - certainly after Into the Wild Green Yonder where I felt it was pretty much a given.
I just don't think there's nearly as much support for the show as there once was because a lot of people, such as myself, aren't fond on the newest episodes and aren't even sure if we want to see it continued any more, whilst a lot of casual fans aren't even aware that the show was ever cancelled in the first place.

It could easily happen, what with venues like Kickstarter and Netflix to explore, but I think the show would likely be a tiny bit too expensive for Netflix given how eager people would be to watch the new season. It seems like less people would want to sign up to Netflix just to watch the new season in the way that they did with Arrested Development - seeing as lots of people just catch the show whenever and enjoy it that way.
It's an expensive show to produce.

Really, I think our best bet for a continuation right now, would be some sort of film to end the show for good. Personally, I'd love a theatrical feature, but I think a Kickstarter-funded straight-to-video finale is far more likely.

[Reply #578 on:]

I'd say that all of Ken Keeler, David X. Cohen and Josh Weinstein's episodes have been pretty good, whereas the likes of Eric Rogers have produced uniformly terrible episodes.

I'm going to have to disagree there. Keeler's work is mostly good, but he's written a few weaker episodes, Cohen is a terrible lead writer based on the episodes he's credited with, and it's the jokes that carry the plot when he's involved (for a really good episode, that's usually the other way around), and Rogers has had both ups and downs (slightly more ups, I think). Weinstein, I think, is the one here who has produced more episodes which have left a sour taste in the mouth (or just not been as good, for whatever reason). Which is not to say that he's bad - he's just ended up being credited for more of the episodes I didn't think were particularly great. Groening and Verrone are about as hit-and-miss as you can get (both of them have written a roughly equal number of episodes I dislike on the whole and episodes that I have thoroughly enjoyed), and the real stand-outs for me are Morton, Burns, and Horstead. Their stuff either fails spectacularly, or (more often) is absolutely brilliant.

With that said, each of these writers has been responsible for at least one episode I've really loved, and at least one I really haven't. If you go by the credits, anyway. The only regular writer whose name is attached to more misses than hits (for me anyway) is Mike Rowe. If one of the show's writers had to be sacrificed (let's say they're poached by The Simpsons), I think I'd prefer it to be Rowe.

The holy trinity of Futurama writers (according to me, at least. Your mileage may vary) based on the best episodes of the series overall, would be Keeler, Morton, and Burns. Rogers would be some kind of pope, and Groening would be the functional equivalent of a bishop. Which shows, I think, that he's more suited to input at level of character design, and the general overall ideas behind the show than the individual episodes (and this holds true for Cohen as well).

In any case, the commentaries and interviews I've seen/read seem to make it pretty clear that the writing of an episode is collaborative. I think that one of the writers said somewhere that if 50% of what they originally had is still there, they're happy with that. The rest will either be dropped entirely, or somebody else will improve upon it. So the finished episode may not be completely reliable as an indicator of the talent of the credited or lead writer.

[Reply #579 on:]

Cohen is a terrible lead writer based on the episodes he's credited with

Wait, you think "Xmas Story" and "The Why of Fry" are terrible? Or the "Raiders of the Lost Arcade" segment of AOI II?  I'll grant that "Free Will Hunting" was a huge disappointment, but the episodes from the original run that bear Cohen's name are among my favorites of the series.

Also, I'd say that Ken Keeler was undoubtedly the best writer in the original run; he did not write a single episode that I would rate below 8/10. Oh, and I think "Bender's Big Score" and "Into the Wild Green Yonder" are the best of the four movies, and "The Prisoner of Benda" is one of the best episodes of the new run. Everything Keeler's written since TPoB, though, has been hit-or-miss: decent ("Overclockwise") to downright awful ("The Tip of the Zoidberg" and "The Six Million Dollar Mon").

In any case, the commentaries and interviews I've seen/read seem to make it pretty clear that the writing of an episode is collaborative. I think that one of the writers said somewhere that if 50% of what they originally had is still there, they're happy with that. The rest will either be dropped entirely, or somebody else will improve upon it. So the finished episode may not be completely reliable as an indicator of the talent of the credited or lead writer.

True, but I do think writers tend to be assigned the type of episodes they're best at. The most obvious example here is how Keeler has written every could-be-series-finale, but it is also true that Mike Rowe often writes episodes based around sporting events ("Bend Her," "The Butterjunk Effect," "2-D Blacktop") and Eric Kaplan's episodes almost always involved the crew visiting particularly exotic locales (Zoidberg's home planet in "Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love?", the so-called cyclops home planet in "A Bicyclops Built for Two," Fry's scenic bowel in "Parasites Lost").

My point here is that certain writers have certain preoccupations, certain strengths, and certain quirks; to some extent, these things show up in the finished product. So, while it might not be completely fair to bash a writer based on the number of bad episodes that happen to be credited to him, it still doesn't seem entirely unwarranted.

[Reply #580 on:]

Cohen is a terrible lead writer based on the episodes he's credited with

Wait, you think "Xmas Story" and "The Why of Fry" are terrible? Or the "Raiders of the Lost Arcade" segment of AOI II?  I'll grant that "Free Will Hunting" was a huge disappointment, but the episodes from the original run that bear Cohen's name are among my favorites of the series.

The AOI II segment isn't one I particularly enjoyed. I don't know exactly how to explain, but it seems like a series of small thematically-related jokes that lead into one another, rather than a real narrative with a payoff.

Xmas Story and TWOF are two of my favourite episodes, and I think that they're Cohen's best. However, they're not without problems and I have quite a few criticisms of TWOF in particular. It's the story outline in both cases that I consider the weakest element of these episodes, and I feel that this is made up for by the rich detail, the humour, the characterisation, and the "heart" that are present. Obviously, this is a potent mix and can mean a weak storyline still forms the backbone of an awesome episode of Futurama.

I think that even though the story isn't necessarily strong, and the focus is more on jokes and packing in details, the characterisations in both episodes are wonderful - and this is Cohen's strength. More so than plotting a story. Free Will Hunting demonstrates this exceptionally well. The story's all over the place, really. But the characterisation and the exploration of character is strong. Cohen is a fine secondary writer, but does his best work when paired with somebody who can really tackle an episode idea with a strong and well crafted plotline. Like Keeler or Morton.

I'd love to see how it would turn out to give all character exploration within a hypothetical movie to Cohen - his remit would be to script and plot character arcs, dialogue, and growth for the cast. At the same time, Keeler/Groening would be in overall charge of plotting out the film, and Morton would be in charge of taking this plot, and figuring out how those characters move from one point within it to the next. Then they'd get around a table to discuss it with Kaplan, flesh out locations, and possibly pass it across to Burns/Rogers to look at it and give feedback, before finally taking it to the rest of the writing crew to try and fill it with those small details, callbacks, and finishing touches that mark all of the best episodes.

I mean, that's how I'd imagine the best possible Futurama movie would be written. I could be entirely wrong. I'm entirely in agreement that different writers have different strengths, and I think that these should be exploited simultaneously, so that they can be seamlessly blended into something that contains as little as possible of any of their weaknesses.

[Reply #581 on:]

I gotta say, I'm quite fond of everything Eric Rogers has written, even if some of them carry some weighty flaws (ZD, for example). I love TSOTC and thought FALBF was great.

And barring "The Tip of the Zoidberg", Ken Keeler is consistently excellent (though his two most recent episodes aren't quite as outstanding).

The few episodes that DXC has written have mostly been great, which is why I was surprised at "Free Will Hunting" being so infuriatingly mediocre.

I've liked most of Dan Vebber's episodes from the new run as well. A shame he's only got one more...

[Reply #582 on:]

"Free Will Hunting" wasn't amazing, but it was one of the few episodes from season 7A that didn't make me cringe at how awful it was, along with "Fun on a Bun" and "Viva Mars Vegas".

Eric Rogers' full-length episodes are all among the worst episodes in the series' entire run, as far as I'm concerned - though, somehow, I quite enjoy his segments in "Anthology of Interest I" and "Naturama".

[Reply #583 on:]

To me, I think Ken Keeler, Dan Vebber and Lewis Morton are my favorite writers of the new run. They never really disappointed us during the past 2 seasons. It's a shame that Lewis Morton hasn't written any more new eps since "The Late Phillip J. Fry". I'm looking forward to the episodes he wrote this year though.

Also, "Free Will Hunting" was a pretty good episode in my opinion, nothing amazing, but had a great message behind it all. It's the only Futurama episode of it's kind, really.

[Reply #584 on:]

Eric Rogers' full-length episodes are all among the worst episodes in the series' entire run, as far as I'm concerned - though, somehow, I quite enjoy his segments in "Anthology of Interest I" and "Naturama".

F&LBF was fantastic. It's one of Rogers' scripts. Nothing he's written stands out as awful, except maybe TSOTC, depending on what your opinion of that episode is. I know some hate it (personally, I think it's alright). I think that had the show continued, Rogers could have become a firm favourite with quite a few fans. It doesn't hurt that he's also extremely tolerant and patient with fans, and hasn't tried to have PEEL shut down after the fiasco in the Walking Dead thread, and is even sort-of-friends with our own DannyJC13.

Just for the sake of demonstration, let's look at him alongside a writer you don't seem to have an irrational hate-boner for.

I'd say that all of Ken Keeler, David X. Cohen and Josh Weinstein's episodes have been pretty good

I've already said how I think Cohen shouldn't be plotting episodes, instead he should focus on characterisation, and I don't think you'll find anybody disagreeing with you on Ken Keeler being pretty damn good. But Weinstein?

TDK, VMV, ATPH, AFTA, and TTT were all Weinstein episodes. Personally, I dislike the endings to all of them, despite promising setups. I'm going to say that Weinstein is weak at endings, and it's a weak ending that tends to ruin an episode (for me, anyway). I'd say that Rogers' episodes tend to have much stronger endings, with the conclusion feeling satisfying rather than cheap (compare the ending of F&LBF to the ending of AFTA, for example).

I think that Weinstein and Rogers are of comparable strengths. Rogers is good at crafting a satisfying conclusion, Weinstein is good at setting up an episode, and providing a scenario that needs resolution. I think that giving them an episode to write together might have turned out pretty well.

[Reply #585 on:]

I hate "The Silence of the Clamps". I think it's one of the show's very worst episodes.

I hate "Zapp Dingbat" and I think it's a perfect example of how much the show faltered once it entered season 7.

I didn't outright hate "Fry and Leela's Big Fling", but it was far from good. It's sort of standard-for-season-7, which isn't very good, if you ask me. It was very bland and dull among other issues that I had with it.

I've felt that Weinstein's episodes - whilst not classics - have maintained a good amount of quality in season 7. I don't hate any of his pre-season 7 episodes, "Viva Mars Vegas" is one of the only season 7 episodes I do like, and "A Farewell to Arms" is great up until it ruins itself with a terrible ending, so he nearly got it right there, too.


I think that Rogers seems to be perfectly adequate at writing the bare bones of a story structure. "The Silence of the Clamps" was very well structured, though his other episodes are neither amazingly or particularly badly structured. But the characterisation in his episodes often seems off and the humour is always incredibly-weak-to-cringey. I know that that's largely a team-effort, but it seems strange that so many of the jokes in his episodes are offensively bad on my count. The correlation would suggest that it's something that he's doing.

[Reply #586 on:]

"The Silence of the Clamps" was very well structured, though his other episodes are neither amazingly or particularly badly structured. But the characterisation in his episodes often seems off and the humour is always incredibly-weak-to-cringey.

He's like an inverse Cohen then. Well, if it comes back, he should be Cohen's writing partner, and hopefully they can each lend their own strengths to the episodes they work on. Honestly, I don't get the hate, but I do agree that his episodes aren't very laugh-heavy. I can see why you don't like his work if that's the most important aspect of the show to you.

[Reply #587 on:]

Regarding the "Rogers writes good endings" thing, I think it's necessary to point out the the original ending of "Zapp Dingbat" before it was changed was worse than Hitler himself. Granted, I'm not sure who's idea that actually was, but thankfully Groening stepped in and cut out all the shitty singing. Otherwise, I agree with tnuk that his episodes tend to have really good endings, and now that it's been brought to my attention, Weinstein's endings are almost always awful (barring VMV and possibly TTT).

I also agree with cyber turnip (it felt so wrong typing that) about Rogers' characterisation being a bit off at times (ZD is a good example).

[Reply #588 on:]

So who's gonna add the Futurama reference to the Methusalah wikipedia page?

[Reply #589 on:]

You know, I kinda wish the Finale Episode could have been written by somebody else for a change. I mean, you never know how Dan Vebber could pull it off, or Patric. M Verrone. Maybe even Lewis Morton could write a good finale as well. As long as you got Peter Avanzino directing the episode, it should do fine. He's a good director, considering how he pulled off "Reincarnation", "The Late Phillip J. Fry", and should I mention "Parasites Lost"?

Nothing against Ken Keeler, but I think he's running low on steam when it comes to these Finale Episodes, just by looking at "Overclockwise". Wasn't a bad episode, but I don't think it would fit as a very well deserved Series Finale. Still a good episode though, I gotta admit that. Hopefully, Ken will prove me wrong on "Meanwhile".

[Reply #590 on:]

Right here I'm going to predict the average fan reaction from the remaining episodes of the season. Expect me to quote myself and gloat when I'm inevitably correct.

"The Inhuman Torch" seems to be one of the episodes with very neutral hype, so I'm expecting scores to average between 6/10 and 8/10.

"Saturday Morning Fun Pit" is a segmented episode, so by default opinions will be mixed as hell. I expect something between 4/10 and 10/10 for that. You really can't tell if these episodes will be good until they actually come.

Expectations toward "Calculon 2.0" seem to be pretty high, so I'll say 8/10 to 10/10 for that.

By contrast, I've not seen anyone really caring for "Assie Come Home". 4/10 to 6/10 for that. I've got a feeling it'll be the worst episode of 7B based on what we've seen so far.

"Leela and the Genestalk" sounds promising, and any episode with Mom is bound to create happiness. 7/10 to 9/10.

"Game of Tones" sounds like it could be one of the best episodes of the show, but I don't expect there to be too many people agreeing with all the anti-Mike Rowe bias around the place. 7/10 to 9/10

"Murder on the Planet Express" sounds awesome, and it looks like a lot of people are anticipating it. 8/10 to 10/10 for that.

"Stench and Stenchability" is another episode with somewhat neutral hype, so I'm unsure of this one. 5/10 to 8/10 here.

"Meanwhile", being the final episode, is bound to get a lot of love. 8/10 to 10/10 yet again.

And there it is. The legendary unreal predictions of 2013.

* UnrealLegend slinks back into the shadows

[Reply #591 on:]

I've also been browsing the reviews and I'm extremely annoyed by how at least 80% of them are badmouthing Rowe with no actual opinion on the episode that just aired. If an episode by Ken Keeler was to be of the same quality as "2-D Blacktop", the percentage difference would be extreme. People just seem to care about the writer and not the actual episode they have written.

On top of this, people still don't seem to have figured out that this show is written completely collaboratively and that the individual writing credit doesn't actually matter tremendously.

I'd disagree with that. The individual writer seems to make a pretty big difference in season 5, onwards, of the show (where there was a reduced writing staff).

For example, I'd say that all of Ken Keeler, David X. Cohen and Josh Weinstein's episodes have been pretty good, whereas the likes of Eric Rogers have produced uniformly terrible episodes.

I think the individual writers are pretty much the ones responsible for turning the basic plot into a fully-fledged storyline, so how well written an episode is, is largely down to them.
The gags within those episodes seem to be more where the show becomes written-by-committee.

But sitcoms in general (and especially animated ones like Futurama) are pretty much written by committee. The few that are really different are the ones where the creators do most of the writing themselves, e.g. South Park. The story is usually hashed out in large part by the group of writers; it's not just the gags (which mostly come from the story) being written by committee afterward. This is just the way TV shows like this are written. Period.

It may be that certain writers have had more good or bad episodes credited to them purely by coincidence, or that there may be a correlation for other reasons (for instance, a writer who has been on the show for a shorter period of time and is therefore "not trusted" as much might be given more of the story lines that the staff already knows it is going to rewrite more heavily, or write more by committee, in order to put less responsibility on an inexperienced writer). I'm not even saying that the credited writer means nothing. But it just doesn't mean nearly as much as people who say "oh it's a Mike Rowe episode, that means it's going to be good/bad" seem to think it does. If nothing else, it's just not a reliable indicator; you can make some possible inferences, but you can pretty much never make assumptions because (failing revelations in the commentaries or interviews) you just never know who actually pitched that joke or plot point you loved/hated. I would bet you there are any number of episodes of Futurama (there are certainly plenty on The Simpsons) where the credited writer got no more than a line or two into the final draft, and may not have even pitched the original story! The credits themselves are basically (not exclusively, but definitely in large, large part) a legal/union-mandated thing designed to make sure each writer gets a proportional amount of money from initial airings and repeats.


Also, the David Cohen discussion is especially silly. He's the head writer. The showrunner. Most of the show is ultimately his responsibility, whether you like an episode or not! He, and to some extent Matt Groening, are probably the only people you can reliably, 100% praise or blame for the quality of any given episode in the whole series, because they're the ones approving everything that the rest of the writers pitch to them.

[Reply #592 on:]

Hey UnrealLegend, I think I'll join you with the episode predicting;

"The Inhuman Torch", may probably get around a 8/10-9/10 area, considering Dan Vebber hasn't written any stinkers since the new run. And the plot sounds pretty good as well.

"Saturday Morning Funpit" sounds like it may be an average episode, maybe striking around the 7/10-9/10 area. The problem with Naturama was that it was written by people who NEVER even worked on the show before, or at least never written for the show before (With the exception of Eric Rogers, who was pretty good). And the Holiday Craptacular was written by Micheal Rowe.....So maybe this one will actually turn out to be pretty good, since Patric M. Verrone is writing this one.

"Calculon 2.0" sounds like it'll be a good episode, considering what David has said about it in interviews, and also how it was written by Lewis Morton, the same guy who wrote THE LATE PHILLIP J FRY, and he hasn't written for the show since then! So I think this one might go up to around the 8/10-9/10 area. The plot doesn't seem like it will work very well, but knowing how Lewis Morton hasn't written an episode in a while, I think he'll pull through with this pretty well.

"Assie Come Home" might be another stinker of the season. Maiya Williams is writing the episode, and I'd very much like to call her a rookie, since she only wrote one episode, which was actually really good. The whole plot of the episode throws me off. So I'm guessing the episode might have a rating around 7/10-9/10. Maybe even a 6/10, who knows.

"Leela and the Genestalk" seems like a very interesting episode, that might actually be very good. Although much isn't known about it, I'm going to guess a rating around 8/10-10/10.

"Game of Tones".......Is a very mixed opinion episode. I like the concept of them going into Fry's dreams, but knowing Seymour is going to sound like Bryan, and Micheal Rowe writing this, I can't exactly imagine that this will be a great episode. But it most definitely can't be a bad episode, either, considering it's one of the final ones. With a good idea, it might turn out to be pretty good, looking at how well Mike Rowe pulled off "Fry Am The Eggman", another Fry kinda episode. So I'm going to guess the rating for this ep might be around a 7/10-10/10 area.

"Murder on the Planet Express" sounds like it will be an epic episode. Nothing to it. Lewis Morton writing it sounds very awesome, and the plot sounds really good too. Judging by some clips we've seen from the trailer, I have a feeling this episode will be pretty well-recieved, and will probably have a rating around 8/10-10/10.

"Stench and Stenchibility" is part one of a two partner season finale. Now considering this is a Season Finale, I think that this episode may or may not play out very good. Zoidberg actually dating someone, never really happened before (I don't really count Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love, because Zoidberg never got to the tentacle action on that episode). I imagine that it might play out like "The Tip of The Zoidberg". And maybe there will be a B-Plot that begins the serving role of "Meanwhile". So my guess-rate would have to be around the 7/10-9/10 area.

"Meanwhile" is the second part of the two partner, and sounds like it may be a good season finale. If Cohen's saying it's their best one yet, it's gotta be for a reason....  . Although we don't know much about the episode, I think it will probably be extremely well-recieved, since

Show spoiler

Fry and Leela finally get married

, and might play out similar to "Time Keeps on Slipping". Which is always a treat for everybody. So I'm going to guess that this episode will be rated around a 9/10-10/10 area.

So yeah, that is pretty much what I am expecting from the Final Season. Hopefully I am proven wrong with some of these, and I hope the season really picks itself up after these 2 mediocre episodes. If it does, I'll call Leadbelly-2D Blacktop the "Naturama section" of the season, where not so many good episodes are made until "Fry and Leela's Fling".

[Reply #593 on:]

I'm pretty certain "Stench and Stenchibility" and "Meanwhile" aren't connected.

[Reply #594 on:]

I'm pretty certain "Stench and Stenchibility" and "Meanwhile" aren't connected.

Well, I pretty much checked in with the infosphere, and it said that "Stench and Stenchibility" is part one of a two-parter season finale. So somehow, they gotta be connected. Also, I do remember reading an interview with David Cohen (or maybe Matt Groening) that confirmed it was a two-parter.....

[Reply #595 on:]

The Infosphere can be edited by anyone, it isn't exactly reliable.

Also, if you look, there's no source. It says [citation needed].

[Reply #596 on:]

In that case it could be one or the other, but my gut sense is telling me that maybe they aren't related episodes, or at least not directly connected.

[Reply #597 on:]

True, true. I still could have swore that it was mentioned in an interview or something somewhere.......

Oh well, it doesn't matter now. It should begin to matter in a month and a half.

[Reply #598 on:]

I think it was during that Futurama Live! thing, DXC mentioned something about the final 2 episodes, and he either meant that they are both connected, or just that they'll be airing on the same day.

*edit*

The 25 Best Things About the Future According To "Futurama"

[Reply #599 on:]

I'm pretty certain "Stench and Stenchibility" and "Meanwhile" aren't connected.

Well, I pretty much checked in with the infosphere, and it said that "Stench and Stenchibility" is part one of a two-parter season finale. So somehow, they gotta be connected. Also, I do remember reading an interview with David Cohen (or maybe Matt Groening) that confirmed it was a two-parter.....

The Infosphere can be edited by anyone, it isn't exactly reliable.

Also, if you look, there's no source. It says [citation needed].

I'm almost certain Danny's right, and they're unrelated since both the Infosphere and Wikipedia say "Meanwhile" airs a week later than "Stench and Stenchibility." I guess they could still be related, but I'm guessing they will be loosely tied together if that is the case.
When I first heard "two-part episode" I assumed that meant "Meanwhile" would be an hour long, but I suppose I was probably wrong about that.