General Futurama Discussion - A New Thread

[Reply #120 on:]

A few years ago I ran through every episode, with the commentary track enabled. It's simply wonderful. My only disappointment was that Katey Segal didn't participate in any of them (to the best of my recollection).

Yeah, I've listened to every commentary track (except for the last production season, which I still sadly don't own on DVD yet). Neither Katey Segal nor Dave Herman were ever featured. Tress MacNeille was only included a couple times -- maybe only once.


Top of the Page Robot Devil

                                                    
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[Reply #121 on:]

I remember reading years ago that the writing staff suffered from budgetary restraints in the new run, as well. Whereas the old run, as with most shows, had a full staff of writers who would sit together in a writers' room and develop a story before assigning one of them to spend two weeks writing the script (and subsequently bringing it back to the writers' room for various edits), instead they could only hire just a few full-time writers for the writers' room. The other writers would be part-time or contractual -- they would take an assignment to write an episode but would not be a regular part of the writers' room. Obviously, having fewer people to brainstorm, collaborate, and edit is going to have a negative impact on the series, which is why I think the new run was a mixed bag.

Fair point, and I had thought of the reduced writing staff when I made my initial post. Still, though, with heavy-hitters like Ken Keeler and Patric Verrone and DXC on-board, it boggles my mind that the writing in the new run was so uneven.

I know so much of the show was room-written, but there was enough quality consistency in Keeler and Cohen's old-run output (if not Verrone's...though his only real stinker was "That's Lobstertainment!", and even that gets a lot of unnecessary flak (and don't talk to me about "A Leela of Her Own": that episode is good, goddamn it!)) that I'd like to believe at least some of that magic came from them, as individual writers. Maybe not, though, 'cause Keeler's new-run episodes are almost all disappointing-to-terrible and DXC is responsible for the abomination that is "Free Will Hunting."

Yeah, I've listened to every commentary track (except for the last production season, which I still sadly don't own on DVD yet). Neither Katey Segal nor Dave Herman were ever featured. Tress MacNeille was only included a couple times -- maybe only once.

If memory serves, Tress is definitely on the commentary for "Future Stock" (where she recites, in her normal speaking voice, the line "Jam a bastard in it, you crap"; it is delightful) and maybe also "The Day the Earth Stood Stupid" and "The 30% Iron Chef"? She's on the same commentaries Jeff Westbrook's on, and those latter two episodes were written by him and I think he serves as Aaron Ehasz's stand-in for the FS commentary. Yes, I have listened to the commentaries for the first four seasons 5 to 10 times each.

[Reply #122 on:]

This. I know it's "cool" or whatever that the movies and new run were in HD, and there have been plenty of interviews with DXC and Matt Groening where they've basically said this was a show that was always meant to be in HD--but I strongly, strongly disagree.

This is almost entirely my own silly, partly-nostalgia-fueled aesthetic preferences talking, but I liked the somewhat clunkier (maybe "thicker" would be a better word?) line-work and the darker color palette of the original run. Whether this look of the show was an actual artistic choice or just the result of technological limitations is irrelevant: old Futurama looked like Futurama to me, which is to say it looked different from other shows of the time (not just The Simpsons, but also pre-cancellation Family Guy and any number of other shows from the early 2000s). There was a visual sensibility I could point to and appreciate as unique to this particular show.

Sorry but.. this makes no sense to me. At worst, the crisper (crispier?) detail makes minor imperfections more noticeable but anything beyond that has gotta be nostalgia talking. I do kind of get how somebody might prefer a "vintage" look in certain scenarios but I only really like that for sentimental purposes. And if it's consistency that's the problem, even in the original 72 some episodes "looked" weirdly different from each other (namely season one. For some reason the colour pallet seems kind of washed-out).

And furthermore, if they released the movies and CC episodes in low-res, shitty-aspect-ratio form, it'd be hilariously outdated on arrival, and nobody would've taken it seriously.

[Reply #123 on:]

I agree with Gorky's sentiments. The older episodes visually seem warmer and, in a way, more relaxed or subdued in a way that I can't quite put my finger on.

crisper (crispier?)

CRISPR

If memory serves, Tress is definitely on the commentary for "Future Stock" (where she recites, in her normal speaking voice, the line "Jam a bastard in it, you crap"; it is delightful)

Ohh, yes! Thank you for reminding me of the "Jam a bastard in it, you crap" commentary recital. I had completely forgotten about it. It was marvelous. The only instance of her being in a commentary that I remembered off the top of my head was her talking about some of her voice acting roles including doing some voices for car alerts. The others asked her for a sample and she said, "Door. Ajar."

Back when I was a mere lurker who was contemplating creating an account in PEEL, I wanted to create a Tress Macneille Appreciation Thread. However, I quickly wised up to the PEEL etiquette (especially of the time) and did not create a thread specifically for that. I think her voice work and talent is above par and doesn't get enough appreciation. Considering this you would think I would have remembered more of Tress' role in the commentaries. :/

Man, I need to watch this show (and its commentaries) again. I miss it.

[Reply #124 on:]

Why don't you guys just watch the HD episodes in standard definition?

Personally, I always found Futurama to be visually stunning. I think the use of colour was wonderful in the HD era and, whilst it definitely feels more digital than analogue when comparing the HD era to the SD era, I don't see it as a problem.

As for writing, they always make a big thing about how episode writing credits are meaningless on shows like this and how they're the products of the writers' room - a real group effort that can't really be attributed to any one specific person despite a need to dole out individual writing credits. That felt true of the original run. That doesn't feel nearly as true of the Comedy Central years. Ken Keeler episodes feel like Ken Keeler episodes. Eric Rogers episodes feel like Eric Rogers episodes. David X. Cohen episodes feel like David X. Cohen episodes. I'm sure the writers' room still worked to polish the individual scripts up as much as possible, but they feel much more like the work of one particular voice and, as a result, they're much more hit and miss.
I still love much of the newer run. I'll never quite understand what accounts for the dip in quality between seasons 6 and 7 because, from what I can gather, they were produced under more or less the same circumstances... perhaps 6 benefited from a glut of ideas that had been forming over the years spent off the air and they were out of steam by the time 7 began?

[Reply #125 on:]

I've not yet decided if this is the hill I want to die on, but I guess I can elaborate a bit on my initial post.

First off, I think some of my bias here comes from a general mistrust of the impact of automation and technology on animation as an art form. I have a clear, loud-'n'-proud prejudice for traditional, cel-based animation--and, yes, I know that's not what Futurama ever was--and feel far less connected to the CG stuff currently put out by Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks, and other animation studios. I like seeing the hand behind the art, and appreciate that sense that someone sat at a drawing table and painstakingly put together this beautiful, magical moving picture show; I have a fondness for the dirt and grit you sometimes see in certain frames of, say, a classic-era episode of The Simpsons.

The sleekness of contemporary animation strikes me as a soullnessness--or, to be a bit less dramatic, a lack of true artistic sensibility. New and shiny things look great because they are new and shiny, but that newness and shininess so easily distract viewers from the fact that the animation itself--the character designs, the way those characters move, the use of color--is bland, generic, lifeless. My fear is that, at least in TV animation, technical competence has replaced actual artistry.  The easier animation is to produce, with the aid of computers and the like, the lazier animators get.

(This is probably true of any art form. The convenience of Microsoft Word has made me a lazier writer. If I had to use a typewriter--or, heaven forbid, draft things out by hand--I would likely take greater care and be more fully engaged with my craft. It's not a perfect 1:1 relationship between writing and the visual arts, but I don't think I'm entirely wrong in extrapolating from the former to the latter.)

As for Futurama itself:

And if it's consistency that's the problem, even in the original 72 some episodes "looked" weirdly different from each other (namely season one. For some reason the colour pallet seems kind of washed-out).

This is fair. I would say season two is when the show really hit its stride in terms of its overall look, from character design to color palette to quality of the animation itself. But whereas I can write off the relative "crappiness" of season one as the crew getting their bearings, and the marked improvement through seasons two, three, and four as artistic evolution, I cannot grant the same leniency to the new run.

My reasons here are multiple, but the main one is this: the look of the new run is horribly, horribly all-over-the-place. The character designs in certain episodes--especially in 6A, but really throughout the entire new run--are so off-model it pulls me right out of things (I recall "The Mutants Are Revolting" being a particularly heinous offender on this front). Those small little physical gestures and facial reactions from the characters I mentioned before--completely gone.

Perhaps I was wrong to blame my distaste for the visual style of the new run on the move to HD, but I will definitely still contend that the new run is not nearly as visually engaging or appealing to me as the old run. It just feels less careful to me, you know? Some of this is budgetary, sure, and some of it can be chalked up to new animators and inexperienced directors, but whatever the cause I do not enjoy it.

[Reply #126 on:]

Okay.

Edit:  Yeah, sure.  I have opinions on animation, but didn't consider I had any input to add.  What you said, I suspect, has a significant level of truth to it.  There were well animated things in the newer seasons that I liked.  The eyePhone episode wouldn't have been very pragmatic to pull off using traditional techniques (whether you like that episode or not for other reasons), and I really enjoyed the Late Phillip J. Fry from multiple artistic perspectives, not to say that that list is an exhaustive indictment and comparison.

The newer seasons, HD era I guess, felt a bit more wacky than the original run, much in the same way that Simpsons went around season 10 or whatevs.  A lot of that is the writing, but it also extends to the animation as more wacky elements get presented.  I can't elucidate upon what those wacky elements are, not into words anyways, just a more general feeling.  The only realistic grounding factor in the new seasons (vs old) seemed to be the new solidarity and consistency of Fry/Leela relationship, and I thought the gut judgement to make that a thing once and for all was rather bold and mature, even refreshing to a degree.  That's even considering I may not be a strict fan of that relationship.

It is what it is though, and I'm not particularly interested in shooting a gift horse in the mouth.
Those were all of the words I thought when I typed Okay anyways.  I just thought Okay sounded more elegant than typing all of that out.

[Reply #127 on:]

Thanks for humoring me, winna--and, more importantly, for creating a post-buffer so that I would not have a double-post to respond to this stuff from cyber_turnip:

As for writing, they always make a big thing about how episode writing credits are meaningless on shows like this and how they're the products of the writers' room - a real group effort that can't really be attributed to any one specific person despite a need to dole out individual writing credits. That felt true of the original run.

Really? I feel like I could point to particular things in Ken Keeler's style that are consistent across every episode--or nearly every episode--for which he is the credited writer. Ditto DXC: "Xmas Story" and "The Why of Fry" seem very much of a piece to me, in terms of theme (loneliness, isolation) and approach (a Big Bad Villain who forces the characters to make some important, selfless choice).

I don't want to overstate this, of course, but it seems fair to say that every writer has a unique artistic sensibility--whether that gets amplified, muted, or otherwise obscured by the writers' room itself is, I suppose, open for debate. But I feel comfortable saying that, based on the quality of the episodes for which he is the credited writer, Ken Keeler is my favorite writer of the old run. I find every episode that has his name on it to be of above-average to downright-brilliant quality, and I don't think this is just a coincidence.

That doesn't feel nearly as true of the Comedy Central years. Ken Keeler episodes feel like Ken Keeler episodes. Eric Rogers episodes feel like Eric Rogers episodes. David X. Cohen episodes feel like David X. Cohen episodes. I'm sure the writers' room still worked to polish the individual scripts up as much as possible, but they feel much more like the work of one particular voice and, as a result, they're much more hit and miss.

This is interesting to me, though I'm not sure I agree. At the very least, a Ken Keeler episode from the old run feels different to me from a Ken Keeler episode from the new run. The only one of his new-run episodes I'd describe as Classically Keeler-ish is "The Prisoner of Benda," though "Forty Percent Leadbelly" also has distinctly Keeler-ish shades.

Are you saying that, taken together, every episode penned by, say, Eric Rogers feels of a piece? Or just that "The Silence of the Clamps" feels different from an episode by another writer--for example, Eric Horsted's "Stench and Stenchibility"--but also feels different from "Zapp Dingbat" and "Fry and Leela's Big Fling"? Does every episode feel like it comes from some unique writerly perspective, or do groups of episodes written by the same writer feel like they come from the same perspective as each other but from a different perspective than all the episodes credited to another writer?

[Reply #128 on:]

Although I think the HD era has some really nice-looking art and animation, I kind of agree with Gorky re: the colour scheme of the original run. I noticed during this recent watch of mine that, in addition to being very nicely drawn, season 4 episodes in particular seem to have quite a beautiful warm colour palette which is different to that in all the subsequent episodes. But, ya know, the original run and the HD run were both coloured with computers so I don't know if it's necessarily a "digital vs analogue" thing.

[Reply #129 on:]

I got busy and forgot to respond to this thread in support of Gorky's argument.

Anyways, I've been re-watching the series again in what can only be described as a return from an excruciatingly long absence from the show. I still enjoy everything about it (as may be presumable of a member of a Futurama message board). Since I used to watch the series so frequently, the timing of events was sort of lost on me. Watching it in order after a long absence, however, makes some things much more noticeable. For example, I never noticed just how often the Professor's dream of engineering a team of mutant basketball players was mentioned before A Time Keeps On Slipping even aired. I also noticed that Fry mentioned "brains flying through space" in A Cryonic Woman, which airs a good season before the brain spawns' first appearance in The Day The Earth Stood Stupid.

As a Futurama enthusiast, I greatly appreciate these little details. It shows just how evolved their idea of the show was by the time they even started.

[Reply #130 on:]

You lot sound like good company to watch futurama with.

When I was in college, I tricked my best friend into doing what we called a futuramamathon.

The original run was already finished, and I had all four seasons on DVD, so we went to the community clubhouse and began watching the run in its entirety all 72 episodes of the way through.  At some point in the middle of season three we were requested to remove ourselves from the premises by a security patrolman, and so we wandered back to our apartment, and continued our adventure on a screen a fourth of the size of its predecessor.  Sometime in the morning the ordeal was finished.

To be honest though, as much of a success as it was to watch all 72 episodes back to back, my best friend and I cheated a bit.  We had blankets (one of the best items known to man to possess) and pillows, and we fell asleep several times during the experience.  I believe by season three or four, they had finally programmed an option to play all of the episodes on a disc in chronological order, and back at our apartment, after dozing off, I would wake up to a disc sitting on the menu after it had finished projecting its episodic content, and I would crawl over to perform the ceremonious task of switching the disc with the next.  In perditious fashion, continuing the descent into madness, viewing an episode I had probably watched 10 times previously only to slowly drift away back into slumber.

For me, it was mostly an act of principle perhaps quite the more so than passion.  I enjoy Futurama, but this was quite masochistic as I learned.  I had become obsessed with the idea of a futuramamathon and earnestly wished to put my theory into practice.

It was enjoyable in its own way, but I have not yearned to do a futuramamathon since, not at all dismissing the fact that the series has doubled in length since then.  Not that I would dismiss the new episodes of being worthy of such a glorious act, even if their average quality might be objectively lower.

It was a really enjoyable show, but hearing you all discuss it in that way, I wouldn't mind gathering with like minded friends, grabbing some blankets, 40 bottles of mountain dew, and pillows to enjoy a few short blocks of this cartoon, commentary or otherwise.

[Reply #131 on:]

Wow! All 72 episodes back-to-back-to-back?!? That's mighty impressive, mon! (Even with the naps in there.) Assuming an average playtime of 22-and-a-half minutes, that's a solid 27 hours of viewing (and sleeping).

As it happens, I just finished the 72nd episode tonight. It doesn't matter how many times I've seen each of these episodes and how many times I've watched the entire series all the way through, I truly love this show and it will always make me happy to see it.

I'm currently debating if I should jump straight into the movies and the Comedy Central seasons, or if I should go back to Space Pilot 3000 and watch the commentaries. I'm quite split on this decision, I tell you.

[Reply #132 on:]

Flip a coin, and jump straight in if it lands heads. Unless you're in Universe 1. In that case, just switch the viewing order, eh?

[Reply #133 on:]

I think I might be in Universe 1. I hit a patch of wind earlier that felt pretty evil.

[Reply #134 on:]

And did said wind knock you into a puddle that was both evil and shallow?

For serious, though: I'd hold off on listening to the commentaries until you work your way through the entire series, warts (that is, new run) and all. Just as the show itself has a continuity worth preserving, there is a distinct feel and energy to the commentaries--in both the old and new run--that it'd be a shame to disrupt. Plus, it'll be nice to finish up with less-than-amazing "Meanwhile" and immediately return to the comforts of the pilot as commented-upon by the bright-'n'-fresh voices of DXC et al.

[Reply #135 on:]

For serious, though: I'd hold off on listening to the commentaries until you work your way through the entire series, warts (that is, new run) and all. Just as the show itself has a continuity worth preserving, there is a distinct feel and energy to the commentaries...

^
 This!

Watch 'em all, then again, but with commentary.

[Reply #136 on:]

Then it's settled! I will watch the full series first before watching a full run of the series with commentaries. The last time I watched the commentaries was before seasons 7A and 7B were released on DVD. Regardless, I watched the each episode twice in a row, once without commentary and then again with commentary. This will also give me more time to buy the DVDs for seasons 7A and 7B, anyhow.

[Reply #137 on:]

I don't think I've heard all the commentaries for the later seasons.

[Reply #138 on:]

I haven't watched any of the original 72 for a long time now, perhaps for the longest period I've been away from the show. One day I will watch them all again though, and probably enjoy them all the more for it. If only they would re-release them all on Blu-Ray.

[Reply #139 on:]

Other than the convenience of having them on fewer discs, is there really any advantage to having the earlier seasons on blu-ray?

[Reply #140 on:]

Probably not, but Bender's Big Score and The Beast with a Billion Backs would be nice to get released in HD.

[Reply #141 on:]

Here's a depressing piece of trivia. When Futurama got cancelled in 2003, it was four years, three months and 17 days before Bender's Big Score's release to DVD. We are now up to four years, six months and 12 days without any new animated Futurama. This is the longest stretch no new Futurama has been produced since its inception.

[Reply #142 on:]

We are now up to four years, six months and 12 days without any new animated Futurama. This is the longest stretch no new Futurama has been produced since its inception.

What about the opening cutscene to the Worlds of Tomorrow app?

[Reply #143 on:]

It's not the same but we had that podcast... thing as well.

[Reply #144 on:]

Is Worlds of Tomorrow any good? I was under the impression that is was full of freeimum bullshit so I didn't bother checking it out.

[Reply #145 on:]

I downloaded Worlds of Tomorrow when it first came out, played it for maybe a day, and quickly got bored of the gameplay and deleted the app. My impression of it is that it is indeed a bit of a money-grab, but there are a few folks on PEEL who seem to have stuck with it, and it enjoys a robust following on Reddit. I may try it again some time soon, just to get my new Futurama-adjacent content fix; I probably dismissed it too quickly the first time.

For what it's worth, though the writing is kind of garbage and it's just a Candy Crush knockoff, I've been playing Game of Drones since its release two years ago and I find it a nice diversion. I've only just now gotten to Hard Mode because for the first 18 months of playing the game I was trying to get three-star scores on every level, until I finally said fuck it somewhere around level 400.

Anyway, the story itself is a jumble, but it's about on-par with an issue of the Futurama comics (appropriate, as the cutscenes are presented in comic form) and is a perfectly serviceable means of killing some time and/or procrastinating on important projects, which is what I tend to use it for. The in-app purchases aren't pushed too hard and aren't really necessary to enjoy the game, but it does have a finite story line (750 levels' worth), which I imagine is not the case with Worlds of Tomorrow.

[Reply #146 on:]

Just giving a shoutout to the writing in Worlds of Tomorrow, which consistently makes me laugh-out-loud.

The Cornwood Ascending event going on right now is pretty cool, it's extremely easy to get the costumes available in week one (Titanius Anglesmith Bender & Gynecaladriel Amy). You can also get a Sir Calculon costume for, well, Calculon, but I believe it requires pizza (premium currency).

[Reply #147 on:]

For serious, though: I'd hold off on listening to the commentaries until you work your way through the entire series, warts (that is, new run) and all. Just as the show itself has a continuity worth preserving, there is a distinct feel and energy to the commentaries...

^
 This!

Watch 'em all, then again, but with commentary.

Then it's settled! I will watch the full series first before watching a full run of the series with commentaries.

So here's a fun fact:

As per our sacred agreement quoted above, I started watching through Futurama again mid-December. This continued until, oh, mid-January or mid-Febrauary or something. Normally, I was watching each episode without looking at the episode title, so that each viewing was at least a bit of a surprise.

This continued until I got drunk one night and decided to order a pizza. The pizza arrived (I still have some of the pepper flake packets, if anyone's interested), and I watched the next episode. Then the one after that. The episodes in question? Zapp Dingbat and The Butterjunk Effect.

I was sober enough to remember a lot from the episodes, but not everything. And since I didn't remember everything, I didn't consider these viewings to be in earnest.

So I decided I would have to rewatch them. It was a week or two before I could bring myself to rewatch Zapp Dingbat. This was a long time consider that I had been watching at least one or two episodes per night. And, in the few months since, I still haven't brought myself to rewatch The Butterjunk Effect. That episode is so far below the bottom of the barrel for me that I would much highly prefer generally panned drivel such as The Futurama Holiday Spectacular over this.

It doesn't help that I can easily choose YouTube, Netflix, or whatever else over The Butterjunk Effect.

I got through 118 of 140 episodes before these two. That's over 84% of the series on a nightly basis. But I still can't choose to watch The Butterjunk Effect.

I finally, reluctantly restarted The Butterjunk Effect last week when my internet crapped out while I was Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee on Netflix. I noticed the internet came back when I was only a minute or two into the episode, however, and quickly jumped back into Seinfeld's conversations.

[Reply #148 on:]

Heh, it's interesting to me that "The Butterjunk Effect" was the one that did you in. There is a lot about that episode that I do not love, but I recall it being laugh-out-loud funny more often than not, to such a degree that I was willing to overlook its gross mishandling of the Fry/Leela and Kif/Amy relationships and basically enjoy myself.

For what it's worth, the next episode in production order--"The Six Million Dollar Mon"--is probably the episode that would've killed my Futurama boner good 'n' dead. Really, if you just stopped here, there are only a few decent-to-good episodes you'd miss out on ("Fun on a Bun," "Forty Percent Leadbelly," "Fry and Leela's Big Fling," "Game of Tones," "Murder on the Planet Express," and maybe "Meanwhile"--in my likely flawed opinion), so, while it would be a shame to crap out so close to the finish line, you'd receive no judgment from me if you just looped back around and started with the commentaries. Godspeed, good sir, no matter what you decide!

[Reply #149 on:]

It really makes no sense for me to stop here. I love some of the later episodes too much to stop before them. I just need to eventually get over this big, ugly wart is all.

I think we could all agree that the original series is pretty consistently great. Yes, there are some less-favorable episodes, and some people will prefer certain seasons over others, but overall it is pretty consistently great.

As for the new run, in my loud and brash opinion:

6A: Pretty bad. There are some good episodes and good jokes, but these are weighed down by some poor writing and cringe-worthy jokes. The Late Philip J. Fry is the obvious exception here.
6B: A marked improvement. Not old-run quality, but still highly enjoyable.
7A: Pretty bad again, though not as bad as 6A overall. This is where cringefests like Zapp Dingbat and The Butterjunk Effect lie, though.
7B: Pretty great. They finally hit their stride, right before being cancelled... again... I wish we had more seasons of this quality and caliber.

So the point is that I have an exceptional half-season to get to!

[Reply #150 on:]

I essentially agree with you on the quality of 7B: there's not an egregious stinker in the bunch (with the possible exception of the godawful "2-D Blacktop")...but there are no real dazzlers, either, and therein (to me) lies the problem. "Fry and Leela's Big Fling" is probably my favorite of the season, with "Murder on the Planet Express" coming in at a close second, but pretty much every other episode falls on a scale of "inoffensive" to "enjoyably decent." I recall having a good time with 7B while it was airing, but no single episode really knocked my socks off in the way that, say, "The Late Philip J. Fry" or "Reincarnation" did. Nothing really stuck with me too much after the fact.

To be fair, the same could be said of 7A. It's a season full of B-range episodes, at best, with maybe one A+ ("Decision 3012") and one A- ("A Farewell to Arms"). (On an intellectual level, I can appreciate the craft behind "Fun on a Bun," and its ambition; personally, though, it's never done much to thrill me.) 7A is also the season that unleashed the horrors of "The Six Million Dollar Mon" and "Free Will Hunting" upon us, and I'm still pretty pissed about it.

I think I've posted sentiments like this before, maybe when season seven was still airing, but I think I'd rather have a season like 6A, where the highs ("Lethal Inspection," "The Late Philip J. Fry," and "The Prisoner of Benda") are classic-era highs--even when the lows (and, as you note, there are a lot of them) are really fucking low. Taken as a whole, 6B is probably the better season in terms of a baseline of quality; however, the only truly brilliant episode of the bunch is "Reincarnation," and in a way I think it counts a little less because it's a non-canon free-for-all.

Don't get me wrong, "Reincarnation" is delightful...but, like, I wish the same could be said for good-but-not-great canon episodes like "Cold Warriors" or "Overclockwise" that are actually attempting to teach us new things about the characters and tug at the ol' heartstrings. Those two episodes feel perfunctory, falling into the well-worn categories of "episodes about Fry's past" and "episodes about Leela and Fry's relationship" without doing anything especially innovative or compelling. In other words, it feels a bit like the writers shot their creative load with "Reincarnation," and even though that single episode turned out wonderfully, I'm still not sure it's good enough to make up for the lackluster quality of the preceding 12 episodes.

[Reply #151 on:]

Burning the midnight oil and surfing YouTube today and it appears the SYFY network just started streaming FUTURAMA authorized episode clips.  Been watching Dexter's Laboratory doing the same thing recently.  What does this mean?

[Reply #152 on:]

Armageddon is nigh?

Thanks fir the tip, Meister!

[Reply #153 on:]

As for the new run, in my loud and brash opinion:

6A: Pretty bad. There are some good episodes and good jokes, but these are weighed down by some poor writing and cringe-worthy jokes. The Late Philip J. Fry is the obvious exception here.
6B: A marked improvement. Not old-run quality, but still highly enjoyable.
7A: Pretty bad again, though not as bad as 6A overall. This is where cringefests like Zapp Dingbat and The Butterjunk Effect lie, though.
7B: Pretty great. They finally hit their stride, right before being cancelled... again... I wish we had more seasons of this quality and caliber.

I generally agree here,

6A has two unwatchable episodes - Gadda with its awful writing and SEX WITH ZAPP! and Killer App, which could be decent if not for those 2 gross characters. But generally half of it is great, and half is avarage.

6B is my favourite. Really, it's the closest to original run, I like the tone, the feel, it's like mixing season 3 with the movies. Many callbacks to first season. Only Yo Leela Leela sucks... and yeah, Neutopia is not perfect, but I enjoyed it for the first two acts and some really nice references (the Terminator 2 joke is great!).

7A - it wasn't bad, but it wasn't great. I never liked the tone, it felt more like The Simpsons than Futurama. The ep that really stood out was Fun on a bun.

7B is my second favourite after 6B. I think that the second run finally found its ground here. It doesn't feel like a rehash of previous seasons or ideas. Yeah, there are weaker episodes like [Stench and stenchibility[/b] or T: The Terrestial, but nothing really bad.

The original series is perfect to me, with only 20 or so episodes below 10/10 and only one below decent - A Taste of Freedom (but maybe that will change after another rewatch).

[Reply #154 on:]

John DiMaggio provides the voice of King Zög in Matt Groening's upcoming show Disenchantment. His crown may-or-may-not be a little nod to Bender, with the little jewelled-antenna.

[Reply #155 on:]

*bump*

Another awesome Futurama easter egg from Disenchantment:



And Fry's hair can be seen here (along with what looks like Lisa Simpson's on the bottom shelf):

[Reply #156 on:]

Needs more friender.

[Reply #157 on:]

I found this:



It never occurred to me how often they said that...

[Reply #158 on:]

Awesome!

[Reply #159 on:]

Futurama premiered 20 years ago on March 28, 1999!