Thoughts on Episode 8ACV04 – Parasites Regained (SPOILERS)

[on:]

Original Release: August 14th, 2023

After Nibbler falls ill, the crew shrinks down for a dangerous mission into a desert world contained within his litter box.

Discuss.

[Reply #1 on:]

6/10

I had to take off a point because of all the spit jokes. I won't be able to rewatch it much because of it; I also have to look away during that "one scene" in "Fun on a Bun". Despite the nepotism, Maiya Williams is a solid writer. There's a few good jokes too.

Still gross though :/

[Reply #2 on:]

That last third was painful. The amount of emphasis/sentiment being squeezed out of Nibbler losing his consciousness was really hard to watch.

It dragged on so much I believed the show would actually go through with that change, which just makes me even more baffled when they went back on it, trying to understand why all that time was spent crying over Nibbler and that weird “circle of life” ideology.

The first two thirds weren’t great, but I was thankful just to finally get another episode around the main trio (and Zoidberg) on a sci-fi adventure. It was mostly tepid Dune and drug jokes (that Dung joke especially lame just how many times they repeated it) but I was okay with it.

I hate that the characters acknowledged/said these are the same worms Fry had. It was implied in “Parasites Lost” a few generations passed between Fry eating the sandwich and them leaving. At least state the king worm is a distant ancestor, or just the same species as Fry’s, or give him a different crown, something. I’d rather it just be different creatures all together, but the ending kinda requires them, for a quick twist that was more interesting than any of the crying/Dune parody from the previous 10 minutes.

I kinda liked the opening scenes of Leela having an intellectual relationship with Nibbler, seeing Alienese movies and doing puzzles. It was a relationship I’ve wanted to see happen since That Darn Katz, its a damn shame it was barely explored here. Maybe if it was, I’d actually have felt something when they cried in each others arms for a solid minute.

I so wish this episode either went all in being about Leela and Nibbler having a spoken relationship, or just focused on being a crazy sci-fi adventure fighting creatures in Nibbler’s litter box. Maybe go further on that twist of the parasites having parasites. The trio has to constantly shrink and fight more and more parasites on parasites, and then that would add more meaning to that circle of life scene with Nibbler.

5/10. Better than last week, but not by enough. I could really use that Season 6A jump in quality right about now.

[Reply #3 on:]

Wow, I really liked this one personally! Real funny, and even though I don't know a ton about Dune outside of the two movies, I dug what they did with the inspiration. Wasnt too derivative, which bothers me in a lot of parody episodes on TV. Very creative and weird plot, too, Im glad it wasnt at all just a rehash of Parasites Lost. I liked how it worked in those wild psychedelic scenes and a lot of jokes you could never manage to make outside of Futurama. Tiny zoidberg showing up was amazing.

The sadder parts would've been stronger if Nibbler remained stupid-ified, but still, I think this was the first really good episode. It's still got that new era rustiness in some ways, but I'm also excited to see where things will go if it stays leaning towards this episodes vibe. Also... the first Manwich, at last!

Edit: Also, I totally agree that Nibbler and Leela's friendship was the best part. The whole time, I was thinking that parts of this episode were what I wanted to see after Nibbler's whole secret identity thing was revealed in the movies. I hope their dynamic comes back, it's great

[Reply #4 on:]

Alright I'm not even going to lie, I didn't know this episode was "Parasites Regained" when I first opened it up to watch it. Nevertheless, while I found the first act mediocre, I was drawn in with the second act & the beginning of the third act. Aside from those nasty spit jokes, which was dragged on for far longer than it should have. Regardless, it felt kind of like one of the better episodes of Season 7A during those 2 acts mentioned prior, but once that bug ship showed up it all kind of fell apart from there. There came the whole "oh no a character is dead" trope that we're all oh so used to by now thanks to the CC run + the first episode of the season. Really wish they would stop doing that. Wasn't exactly the worst ending but it was decent, I guess. This episode certainly had some great jokes this time around, probably the best seen in the reboot so far. Maybe it's just me. The zoidberg bug joke in act 3 made me especially chuckle. During the first act, was I the only one thinking to myself "maybe we're going to visit Eternium, Nibbler's home planet"? Would have been awesome to revisit there but nah, it just wasn't meant to be.

Show spoiler

Although we did get to see the nibblonian leaders for the first time since Season 4 which was a nice treat, even if it was just them giving Nibbler the cold shoulder saying "um ok then"

I think I'm fine with rating it a 6.5/10, or otherwise a 7/10. Wasn't going into this with any sort of high expectations just like the rest of these episodes thus far, and all in all enjoyed what I watched more than I did with these previous 3 episodes. I'm a slightly bit hopeful for the rest of the season after this episode, in all honesty. Season 6A started getting better after it's first 4 or 5 episodes. This seems to be a good step in the right direction in the same spirit, but I ain't holding my breath just yet.

[Reply #5 on:]

Why does fry talk in slow motion now?

[Reply #6 on:]

I know Nibbler was implied to have eaten a skier, and ate a bunch of hostile aliens in the comics, but I think this is the first time we've seen him straight up murder someone onscreen.   I personally found that more disturbing then funny, especially Leela's indifference to it.

On a similar note, has anyone noticed that these episodes have quite the body count?  It seems like at least one (usually new) character has died in each of the episodes, so I wonder if it's going to be a running gag for the rest of the season.

[Reply #7 on:]

That was quite a lot better than the previous episodes in my opinion. It wasn't obnoxious with the Dune references in the way "Near-Death Wish" was with The Matrix, and there were quite a lot of laughs throughout. My favourite was the misdirect about Fry being the "chosen one", and also the return of the vet, who now apparently hates to be interrupted.

I know Nibbler was implied to have eaten a skier, and ate a bunch of hostile aliens in the comics, but I think this is the first time we've seen him straight up murder someone onscreen.   I personally found that more disturbing then funny, especially Leela's indifference to it.

That surprised me as well; I don't remember him ever eating a person. Makes me wonder why he didn't eat the scammers in "Bender's Big Score" if he has no moral code against eating sentient life. As for the dog, that feels very on-brand for Futurama, which often uses "cute thing fucking dies" as a punchline. Many cats and dogs have perished.

[Reply #8 on:]

I know Nibbler was implied to have eaten a skier, and ate a bunch of hostile aliens in the comics, but I think this is the first time we've seen him straight up murder someone onscreen.   I personally found that more disturbing then funny, especially Leela's indifference to it.

That bothered me too. It reminded me of the scene in The Mutants Are Revolting, with the leg bone and the safe.

[Reply #9 on:]

Definitely the best episode so far of this revival, so 6/10. If we’re taking the whole series into account, more an inoffensive 5.

The Dune parody was heavy and silly, but I’d much rather a slathered-on genre/film/book parody than a meandering, flavourless plot.

The beetles were cute! Sue me! Their design was among the best Futurama has done for alien life forms. Sand pigeon will have me crying for days.

Leela was very typically herself when interacting with Nibbler I do yearn for him to play a bigger part in the grand narrative of the show again, but maybe that’s as hopeless a hope since the CC run.

It was just silly and fun like a cartoon should be, doing bonkers things only its premise allows (pre-Justin Roiland animated universe, of course. Thank god).

If this episode marks the end the the teething pains for this run, I’ll be happy just nostalgia-watching. I’m just so, so tired of all the IP I love being brought back from the dead just to be lame or butchered. Futurama has been lucky so far thanks to its core team, but this era of reboots just has a stank on it. I hope Futurama escapes the pong.

[Reply #10 on:]

I quite liked this one—definitely my favorite of the season so far. I know nothing of Dune, so all that was entirely lost on me, but I agree with UrL that it was done subtly enough: I could mostly tell when the references were happening, but my enjoyment and understanding of the story itself didn't depend on actually getting the references. The dung beetles were pretty funny, I thought, and the whole it's-pronounced-dune-g thing didn't hit you over the head too much or strike me as overly self-conscious.

The stuff I liked
* I'm a sucker for a Leela-centric story, and they pulled it off pretty well here. Which is to say (as Imy notes) that the characterization was solid: she was self-possessed, occasionally (understandably) overcome with emotion, but generally on-the-ball. Sometimes the characters can feel like parodies of themselves, but that wasn't the case with Leela here.

* As in "That Darn Katz," we got to observe her and Nibbler's mutual affection for each other. I liked them doing the bonkers multidimensional crossword and Wordle puzzles together, and enjoyed the subtle callback to PL with the two of them dining at the café across the street from the Planet Express building.

* Fry, Bender, and Zoidberg provided ample comic relief—and, in Fry's case, emotional support. Him offering his T-shirt for Leela to blow her nose in was cute, and I also got a laugh out of Leela's nonchalance at the scary bug-looking Fry asking her if the glitter trip permanently destroyed her senses.

The stuff I didn't like
* As others have noted, Nibbler's cold-blooded murder of a dog and its owner kind of bummed me out.

* The plot-specific callbacks to PL (or lack thereof) occasionally baffled or otherwise distracted me. Like, it surprised me that Fry didn't overtly note that he'd previously had intelligence-enhancing worms until they actually encountered the worms in the litterbox, and I was struck by the failure of Farnsworth (or anyone else) to note that the crew has previously shrunk down to save one of their own from a worm infestation. To Box Incorporated's point about Nibbler's worms being the same as Fry's: I don't think the implication was they were the same exact individual worms who infested Fry, just the same species (though, yes, it did appear to be the same emperor. Maybe the emperor-worm specifically is identical in terms of voice / appearance / mannerisms across generations?). I thought they sort of acknowledged that with Fry asserting he'd had these same worms before and the emperor basically brushing him off in an I'll-take-your-word-for-it-buddy manner.

* I feel like every Nibbler-heavy episode post-BBS has had a hard time balancing his super-intelligence with his status as a house-pet. Like, ha-ha, Leela always forgets he can talk, but that cheapens the intellectual and emotional connection we then see between them that's imperiled by the parasites (because we must assume that this is not typical of her and Nibbler's relationship, and is rekindled only by his reassertion of his intellectual capabilities).

* And, finally (as Box Incorporated notes), the scene where Leela and Nibbler are saying goodbye to each other was a touch too maudlin for me (the scene immediately following, at the conference table, was much more subtle and emotionally affecting). I worry the show has lost its ability to realistically depict complex emotions and instead must telegraph those emotions in the bluntest possible way, with all the characters literally crying to indicate that, yes, it's sad that Nibbler's sick. 

Overall, though, I think this one felt the most like an old-run episode to me, especially in the first act (and in that final, sweet-but-earned moment between Leela and Nibbler). The pacing was pretty effective, too, though I still haven't quite gotten used to this four-act structure. In any event, I'd say it's a solid 8/10. Next week's episode is the one I'm most looking forward to in this first half of the season, and based on the quality of the past two episodes, I'm keeping my hopes (medium) high.

[Reply #11 on:]

I was also expecting the Dune parody to be too heavy, so I'm really glad that they didn't go overboard with it. Easily the best of the season so far, great use of Nibbler, I would love to see more Leela and Nibbler bonding scenes in the future.

[Reply #12 on:]

A joke like "nice try....knot!" would never have passed muster in the worst episode of any of the previous runs of this show. The corny boomer puns were all over the place in this one ("I guess that makes me a quarter pounder," "the glitterbug!", etc.). It's extremely Saturday morning and concerning.

Was genuinely a fan of the Comedy Central episodes, never felt like they missed more than a few minor steps from the original run of the show, but I can't shake my feeling of disappointment with this run. This used to be one of the funniest shows on TV and it seems to be settling on "mildly cute/clever and blandly agreeable." It's not TERRIBLE but if this was the version of the show that originally came out when I was a teenager would I have become obsessed with it and bought all the DVDs and been desperate for it to be given a second life? Probably not. Huge bummer. And I was always the one defending the 2010-2013 episodes to friends and telling them to give it more of a chance.

I dearly hope it improves because I have loved this show since like 2000 and have followed it to the ends of the earth and always been rewarded for that loyalty, but it just feels like the writers may have finally gotten a little old and lost their edge. I didn't feel that way about the last run at all.

[Reply #13 on:]

A joke like "nice try....knot!" would never have passed muster in the worst episode of any of the previous runs of this show. The corny boomer puns were all over the place in this one ("I guess that makes me a quarter pounder," "the glitterbug!", etc.). It's extremely Saturday morning and concerning.

Eh, I think knowingly bad wordplay has always been a hallmark of the show. The CC run just had far more misses in that regard, the sort of self-congratulatory puns that, yeah, you see now in Facebook memes shared by your boomer relatives or whoever.

As for this episode specifically: I won't defend the glitterbug joke, which did make me roll my eyes, but I thought what made the quarter-pounder joke funny was the delay between Bender's initial point about having a grandfather(?) who was a pounder and the "quarter-pounder" punchline: like, they're being chased by a sandworm and Bender feels the need to share this (not especially insightful) musing while they're on the run. The context for the joke was funnier (I think intentionally so) than the joke itself.

This used to be one of the funniest shows on TV and it seems to be settling on "mildly cute/clever and blandly agreeable." It's not TERRIBLE but if this was the version of the show that originally came out when I was a teenager would I have become obsessed with it and bought all the DVDs and been desperate for it to be given a second life? Probably not.

Oh yeah, I'm with you there. I'm enjoying these Hulu episodes more than it seems you are, but that's because I've consciously (and very much) lowered my expectations by refusing to actively compare them to the first four seasons—which hold a special place in my life not only for nostalgic reasons, but because they are legitimately 72 of the best episodes of any sitcom, animated or otherwise, I've ever seen. I don't think the Hulu episodes can ever meet that standard, but so far they've given the bulk of the CC episodes a run for their money, and I've legitimately found something to enjoy in all of them. If nothing else, the ratio of stuff I've enjoyed to stuff that's pissed me off has been heavily weighted in the former direction, which is no small feat considering how cringe-worthy some of those CC episodes were (to me, at least—it seems like you were a bigger fan of those than I was, so that may also be what's working against you with these new episodes).

[Reply #14 on:]

A joke like "nice try....knot!" would never have passed muster in the worst episode of any of the previous runs of this show. The corny boomer puns were all over the place in this one ("I guess that makes me a quarter pounder," "the glitterbug!", etc.). It's extremely Saturday morning and concerning.

Eh, I think knowingly bad wordplay has always been a hallmark of the show. The CC run just had far more misses in that regard, the sort of self-congratulatory puns that, yeah, you see now in Facebook memes shared by your boomer relatives or whoever.

A joke like THAT? I don't think so. Futurama always had a lot of genuinely clever wordplay, and if it sunk to a level like that it was because it was really underlined that it was the character themselves trying to be clever and failing. ("Oh, so it's a little safer than skateboarding!" followed by a strained, self-satisfied "waiting for the laugh" grin. Or hell, "super heroes? Or super zeroes!" followed by Fry's genuinely hurt "that was uncalled for.") This is just Saturday morning stuff. There's no beat where anyone groans at Fry or Bender's terrible wordplay. It's not subverted in any way. It's just...the joke, by itself.

Not a pun, but I got similarly concerned a couple episodes back where Kif is about to go into the cave to save Zapp and says something like "I'll send them...to their graves." (I'm sure I'm butchering it, but you know the moment I mean.) I was waiting for some kind of subversion, some kind of joke acknowledging that they were using a corny action movie trope but it just...didn't come. That joke by itself was enough, apparently.

So many of these jokes just feel like first passes. Is it writing over Zoom? Is it the smaller staff? Is it just that these guys have gotten old and this is what they think is funny now? (I keep thinking of Phil Hartman's, sadly, unintentionally prophetic declaration that he was likely to retire from comedy after reaching age 50 because in his opinion most comedians would lose their edge after that point.) I don't know, but I will say this version of the show really feels more like Disenchantment than Futurama, and it's THAT show and not the Comedy Central Futuramas that first made me really concerned about this revival. The slow pace, the corny "good enough" jokes, the blandly agreeable tone without much real edge, subversion, or anarchic spirit. I've been revisiting episodes from the CC run that I barely remember (not that I disliked them, I just only ever saw some of them once or twice because I was a busy adult and not an aimless teenager with a DVD set and seemingly endlessly time) and have been laughing quite a bit, even at episodes people here seem to have really disliked, but I'm averaging maybe a couple actual laugh-out-loud moments in all the episodes after the first one this time around.

I don't know, man. It's bumming me out. A show like Always Sunny is still wickedly funny in its like 100th season so I don't think it's impossible to keep a show funny after a bunch of seasons, but something has really been lost this time around. Feels like they resurrected it from the dead one too many times and it finally came back a little too "wrong."

[Reply #15 on:]

To be clear (and not to derail this thread too much), I'm not interested in going to the mat for any of the new-run (whether CC or Hulu) episodes. My point was just that lackluster wordplay has always been a go-to joke for the show; I'm not defending the specific instances of wordplay ("wordplay") in this most recent episode, simply noting that this kind of joke, if not the execution, has always been part of the show's DNA. You're perhaps attributing more significance to these subpar jokes than I am, but I agree with your basic point that these newest episodes aren't nearly as smart or funny as (at least, for me) the original run.

Also, I think that's a great observation about the show's "anarchic spirit." The original run was subversive in fun, clever ways—episodes like this one, on the other hand, give us mindlessly violent "jokes" where a tertiary character commits double-murder to the approval of a main character. I think the writers fancy jokes like "Nibbler eats a dog and a douchebag lawyer" to be anarchic, but the target of "self-righteous asshole" is way too nonspecific and the practical effect of the joke is not to get the audience rooting for Nibbler and Leela as heroes but to have them questioning the show's (or at least the episode's) moral center. And those juicy ethical questions can be thought-provoking and interesting—see, for example, the relative morality of penguin-murder in my beloved "The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz"—but here it's just a cheap joke that's not especially funny and doesn't make me think or feel anything besides pointless shock and mild annoyance.   

[Reply #16 on:]

The ending really bugged me because it so clearly should have been that they shrunk Nibbler down again so that he could eat all of the worms' parasites, thus completing the circle of life in a way that retained whatever reverence he had for it. It would have been far more satisfying and would have felt like good writing instead of lazy writing ("Eh whatever let's just stamp on them").

Why does fry talk in slow motion now?

It's very possible they used to speed up his lines or at least ask Billy to do faster takes because they were so up against it with runtime whereas now the runtime is seemingly much more relaxed and they have a bit of freedom.

I know Nibbler was implied to have eaten a skier, and ate a bunch of hostile aliens in the comics, but I think this is the first time we've seen him straight up murder someone onscreen.   I personally found that more disturbing then funny, especially Leela's indifference to it.

Yeah, I'm with you. I didn't like that moment at all. Not that it was disturbing so much as it just seemed completely out of character for Nibbler.

Anyway, easily the best episode of the revival so far for me. Still has a few rough around the edge qualities but overall I really enjoyed it. Not a modern classic or anything but good.

I liked:

• Good continuity with Bender retaining his love of tap dancing
• Double guest stars! Kyle McLaughlin only had one line but it was nice to cram a star of the original Dune in there. Ego Nwodim did a perfectly decent job.
• Great performance from Frank Welker as Nibbler in this one -- particularly as his brain starts deteriorating to the point that he can't speak properly
• The "It's pronounced 'dune-g'" gag was great
• Fry not being the chosen one was funny
• Nibbler being depicted with blonde hair and blue eyes
• 3D crosswords and Quantum Wordl
• Nibbler wanting American cheese when he became stupid
• The continuity of The Professor bringing back his enlarging ray from "Anthology of Interest I" and the fact that inverting the lens just made it a ray that made things the same size
• Fry taking a whiz was a funny resolution to that scene
• "The sun grows hot and my deodorant grows weak"
• Fry and Leela walking like a dung beetle was a great gag
• Bender's "That's the worst one of all!"
• Fry's "I'm a flatty" bit in context
• The sandstorm being Nibbler kicking litter
• "On a scale of dumb to Fry"
• Solid emotional core to the plot. Could have been turned into a real tearjerker ep if they'd tried harder, but I was happy with it as it was. I did start to wonder if they were going to leave Nibbler with the intelligence of a dog for a while -- to sort of retcon their way back to the dynamic the character had with them at the start of the show
• The voice cast all seemed to be fully back to normal. I guess Billy West just needed to warm up a bit as Fry because he sounded fine to me here
• The Dune parody felt like a nice, new world and injection of a flavour that was new to the show. I hate Dune and I still really enjoyed it

I didn't like:

• The lack of acknowledgement that Nibbler is presumably even more intelligent than he used to be now
• Weird logic holes in general such as how the worms are affecting Nibbler despite not even living inside him? I know presumably there are worms we don't see in him as well as the ones in the litter box, but they make a point of saying they like living outside now. It was odd.
• That they liked the "It's pronounced 'dune-g'" gag so much that they felt the need to repeat it about 6 times
• The way Nibbler showed zero signs of his mind deteriorating prior to them going to the vet. It seemed like such poor writing. Obviously the way you do this episode is he hangs out with Leela but one or two things happen that make it seem like he's not himself until they go to the vet and find out what's going on
• The aforementioned Nibbler murder
• Quizblorg, Quizblorg playing in cinemas as a new release despite it also being in cinemas in whatever original run episode it was... "Raging Bender" was it? I'm going to have to headcanon the idea that this is a remake or another adaption of a book or something now
• The Professor now being able to shrink everyone with ease when this was a huge part of "Parasites Lost" felt wrong on some weird level
• Poor continuity in terms of the size of the characters when they're shrunk. The litter tray shouldn't have seemed like a sprawling desert to them based on how small the ray made them. Classic cartoon logic, I know, but I feel like this was handled much better in "Parasites Lost" for example
• The "giant" worm just being made up of all the small worms grouped together. I don't understand the logic to it on any level -- including the fact that it seemingly had a digestive system
• There seems to be a hell of a lot of off-model animation this season. More than the Comedy Central run had. I'm not necessarily opposed to it, honestly -- it feels very Groening-y. But it also seems at ends with the aesthetic of Futurama that was established in the Fox run
• Another wonky 3D model used when Nibbler appears shrunken in the litter box and his ship opens up

8/10

[Reply #17 on:]

To be clear (and not to derail this thread too much), I'm not interested in going to the mat for any of the new-run (whether CC or Hulu) episodes. My point was just that lackluster wordplay has always been a go-to joke for the show; I'm not defending the specific instances of wordplay ("wordplay") in this most recent episode, simply noting that this kind of joke, if not the execution, has always been part of the show's DNA. You're perhaps attributing more significance to these subpar jokes than I am, but I agree with your basic point that these newest episodes aren't nearly as smart or funny as (at least, for me) the original run.

Yeah I mean, it’s not JUST the puns but they’re just kind of emblematic for me, and in this specific episode I was kind of shocked how many there were. I was trying to stay optimistic despite my general feeling that something’s been “off” about these shows but it was when they got to the “nice try…knot!” line that something broke in me and I felt like “okay…something is REALLY wrong.” It’s not like there aren’t jokes or decisions in past episodes I don’t like. It happens. I think there are overall a lot worse episodes of this show than this one, even in the original run. But I could always see what they were trying to do, that they took a real, honest swing and just came up short. It happens to the best shows, but it never felt like they just got lazy and used the first draft or joke that came to mind.

It’s not just jokes either (though the storytelling and joke telling on a sitcom are pretty linked). The whole “Leela realizes she can’t let Nibbler go dumb after all, then they shrink down again, then they realize the actual problem and kill the creatures” segment happened over…what, three minutes? For the whole show it felt like they meandered, threw in a bunch of half baked ideas they didn’t want to commit to, and then ran out of time and had to speed run through an actual moral quandary and resolution that should really have been the whole third act. I was expecting them to go into Nibbler’s brain, or shrink down further and battle them, or SOMETHING…but instead they just….stomped them. Good enough?

I never liked, say, “A Pharaoh to Remember,” in fact I probably liked it less than this on the whole, but it has an actual form and structure and even a few genuinely killer lines (“actually, on a robot they sorta do,” “ladies and gentleman, the pharaoh….suddenly died”). I had a dislike of what they were doing with it but I never thought it was just unpolished and I could see what they were TRYING to do even if it just wasn’t for me. It doesn’t feel like a first draft. This episode does, as do most episodes this season so far. What happened?

[Reply #18 on:]

I share your concern, I'm far more concerned about the aging writers losing their touch than I am about Fry's voice sounding a little hoarse. I haven't seen the latest but I'm hoping its just a case of early days and it can still find it's groove. I'd put the first 3 episodes about on a par with the first 3 from season 6 though, maybe even a little better. The 4th episode from season 6 (Proposition Infinity) was a a bit weak too although it then raised the bar with episodes 5,6 and 7 being good, very good and great respectively.

I definitely wasn't expecting the quality of the original run but if we got the overall quality of the CC run I'd be happy enough with that.

Also thanks for the reminder that Always Sunny is back, love that show.

[Reply #19 on:]

It’s not like there aren’t jokes or decisions in past episodes I don’t like. It happens. I think there are overall a lot worse episodes of this show than this one, even in the original run. But I could always see what they were trying to do, that they took a real, honest swing and just came up short. It happens to the best shows, but it never felt like they just got lazy and used the first draft or joke that came to mind.

Yup, this is 100% it: whether it's time constraints, budget cuts, the writing staff just getting older and less sharp, the multiple years spent away from the show/its characters leading to inconsistencies—whatever's going on, the new-run episodes are more half-assed. I don't want to overattribute it to budget and time, but I do really think the financial resources of a primetime network animated show circa 2000—combined with the sheer level of concentrated talent in that writers' room in the first four seasons—were just greater than what we got with the CC run and what we're getting with the Hulu run.

It's sort of like how the Simpsons movie was written by most of the same comedic geniuses who were on-staff during the show's golden age, and while it has moments of greatness there's still something off and disappointing about it. I don't think Futurama's writers (the ones who came back) are any less talented, per se, just that the show's time has simply passed. I'm enjoying these new episodes as something separate from the original run, but to be honest I would've been just as content to never have had the movies, the CC seasons, or these Hulu seasons. I've come to think of them as sort of stale icing on the perfect cake rather than something substantive or filling on their own. Keeps me from going mad with disappointment, I suppose.

There seems to be a hell of a lot of off-model animation this season. More than the Comedy Central run had. I'm not necessarily opposed to it, honestly -- it feels very Groening-y. But it also seems at ends with the aesthetic of Futurama that was established in the Fox run

Ah, that's interesting. I've actually been pretty satisfied with the animation so far this season (though the voice-acting is still leaving something to be desired for me). There are definitely some weird, off-model moments in terms of character design, but I think in general these episodes look about as good as (if not better than) the CC ones...which looked significantly worse than the movies and the Fox episodes, but I've aired that grievance elsewhere.

[Reply #20 on:]

I've noticed the maybe wonky animation a few times too, but so far I don't exactly mind it as much as notice the difference. For example, in this one, the part where Fry starts singing toward the camera was kinda weird - not bad, just a lot more, er, animated than I'm used to with modern Groening shows. I wouldn't totally mind if they kept getting more expressive and loose with the poses. The only part of the new look i actually will nitpick is the pupils seem kind of big sometimes. I hope someone got fired for that blunder

[Reply #21 on:]

Yeah, will chime in an echo for the "best of the new season so far" - gave it an 8, even though it's less than what I gave last week's, but then I got too excited...

This definitely felt more akin to the original run and last week I overall enjoyed it a lot. I liked the new characters, I liked the Dune reference; I felt it overall didn't outstay it's welcome; the Dun...g joke just about stayed fresh(?) and I had several good chuckles, but there were a few jokes that fell flat again. Some of the icky creatures were icky because we were told they were icky. The littlest Zoidberg-esque critters were almost cute, imo.

I sort of wanted, after what we saw with Zoidberg, more from the spice trips than just characters eye's going orange and them declaring that they can see wisdom; but it served its purpose for the narrative. The story worked, even if the pacing in parts seemed to rush ahead.

I see people were upset with the dog/owner murder; I can't say I enjoyed it, at all, but I genuinely believe it's not massively out of character for Nibbler and presumably Leela has witnessed/approved numerous times before. Futurama has often shown jet-black humour and while it sort of does the opposite of engendering sympathy to the characters, from me, I accept it's not an extreme. I could though imagine a slightly more acceptable version where it's merely implied, much as before.

Anyway, be that as it may. I'm still mostly optimistic for the rest of the season; that said, it bothers me that I feel like hanging fire before wholeheartedly recommending other people that they should watch it. I guess we'll see.

[Reply #22 on:]

I'm in a pickle because I gave last week's episode a 1 and i enjoyed this even less.

I perhaps need to recalibrate my scale.

[Reply #23 on:]

8/10 on the Hulu scale from me. I watched some classic Futurama from SE01 before and after this episode. In that context, this week's episode didn't feel so disgustingly out of place that it felt like a different show altogether. Sure, there were points where it felt clunky. I personally hated that they used Ivermectin outright, instead of a parody drug. That started a whole rash of petty debates in the real world, so the joke left a sour taste in my mouth. On the up side, I think this was the most ambitious outing yet this season. There were lots of small things I liked, and if small things annoyed me, I just remembered that even the classic episodes straight up shamelessly parodied things. Dune is simply the latest in the roster.

I do wonder this though, as we all watch and discuss this season amongst ourselves: Have all of our own perceptions of television and humor shifted? If we were to collectively go back and watch from SE01 of the show, would our opinions change on the new season, or the show as a whole? Would we think the parodies were too corny and dated or too on the nose? The jokes too flat or too stupid? The characters too dim and inconsistent? Would we hold the older content up like a monument, deemed flawless because we'd all experienced it in a golden era of our lives? Or would we give each episode as thorough a dive and potential grilling as the current content?

I do wonder.

[Reply #24 on:]

Those are good points Prof Zoidy, and to be honest I don't think there's an easy answer. I know I put the early 1990s on a pedestal when it comes to Formula One because that is the time I fell in love with Formula One. Because of such a strong attachment, I am more willing to forgive obvious flaws, or forget less-stellar aspects.

And so, with some degree of projection, I think the vast majority of us here - especially those who have stayed so long - all quite literally fell in love with Futurama at some point. For me it just so happened to be Season 3 when I started watching it live, so many of those episodes hold a very strong place in my heart. Truth is I did see the pilot, but never got round to really following Futurama until, yeah, Season 3 - I don't know if that says anything, but of course I retrospectively fell in love with Season 1-2 as well.

Yeah, there are some shows that really don't fire on all cylinders until after the first few seasons but I think, even subjectively, Futurama is golden right out the gates. But, I know I can look back at certain episodes around that time, even from my precious Season 3, and go "nah, didn't like that one much" or "yeah, it was okay, but the jokes were just lazy and fell flat"

Whereas, I know I can point to several episodes in the later seasons and proclaim them as among my most favourite of all time. But I will say they are fewer and further between.

So - in my opinion and in my case - I would suggest the answer is both; there's a lot of fondness attached to the old run that might cloud judgement, but unfortunately I think the show's quality has subjectively become, shall we say, less consistent.

[Reply #25 on:]

So - in my opinion and in my case - I would suggest the answer is both; there's a lot of fondness attached to the old run that might cloud judgement, but unfortunately I think the show's quality has subjectively become, shall we say, less consistent.

I can certainly agree with that assessment. What's so sad is that television in general has become so hit-or-miss or just downright terrible that getting something even somewhat decent gets put on a favorable grading curve. Nostalgia also helps with this. It's just a shame that so many revivals/reboots/continuations has suffered this way to varying degrees.

I'm really hoping this season will give me an episode or two that I fall in love with, but thus far, while I've certainly liked most of them, or bits of them if not the entire episode... nothing's hit a home run.

[Reply #26 on:]

I feel like every Nibbler-heavy episode post-BBS has had a hard time balancing his super-intelligence with his status as a house-pet. Like, ha-ha, Leela always forgets he can talk, but that cheapens the intellectual and emotional connection we then see between them that's imperiled by the parasites (because we must assume that this is not typical of her and Nibbler's relationship, and is rekindled only by his reassertion of his intellectual capabilities).

Much like Leela, I tried to forget they did that Between this and Kif's children, it's baffling why they refuse to acknowledge continuity properly. Maybe it's so new viewers can drop in and not have to know about the previous episodes to enjoy it? BECAUSE THAT IS NOT WHO IS WATCHING THIS SHOW GUYS, IT'S THE SAME PEOPLE FROM 20 YEARS AGO AND WE REMEMBER IT ALL TOO WELL ACTUALLY
*Cough* Sorry, did that sound like words?

The only part of the new look i actually will nitpick is the pupils seem kind of big sometimes. I hope someone got fired for that blunder

THIS! And it's ALWAYS Fry as the worst offender! I'm not even a huge Simpsons fan and I'm aware of the art book that exists wherein they call this an inexcusable design.

[Reply #27 on:]

Between this and Kif's children, it's baffling why they refuse to acknowledge continuity properly. Maybe it's so new viewers can drop in and not have to know about the previous episodes to enjoy it?

You know, I think you may be onto something there. But the whole catering-to-new-viewers thing, while it may be more a commercial decision than an artistic one, is still kind of silly even on a ratings-grubbing level considering anyone who's watching the show on Hulu has access the the entire back catalog of Futurama episodes. Like why not just include a little note in the episode description that says "Children of a Lesser Bog" is a direct sequel to "Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch" or "Parasites Regained" revisits the worm species first seen in "Parasites Lost"? Seems like a missed opportunity to me...but perhaps that should be the slogan for this entire season.

If we were to collectively go back and watch from SE01 of the show, would our opinions change on the new season, or the show as a whole? Would we think the parodies were too corny and dated or too on the nose? The jokes too flat or too stupid? The characters too dim and inconsistent? Would we hold the older content up like a monument, deemed flawless because we'd all experienced it in a golden era of our lives? Or would we give each episode as thorough a dive and potential grilling as the current content?

I don't know that there's a satisfactory answer to the ol' Nostalgia Goggles debate, but I recently rewatched through about the midway point of season three in anticipation of the new episodes and I absolutely do think there is something appreciably different—and, yeah, better—about the original run in comparison to all that's followed. Even episodes in the old run I used to think of as stinkers, like "Where the Buggalo Roam," are still just (as DtB is suggesting) better structured, or more carefully crafted, or just straight-up funnier than the new-run stuff.

I'll try to illustrate my point by considering something the new-run episodes are often criticized for—contemporary pop culture references—that was already present in the original run but in a different, more agreeable form. Let's take two examples from season four, which I personally believe to be the best season of the show and basically above reproach: Leela's Truman Show reference while confronting Morris and Munda in "Leela's Homeworld," and the Nibblonians chiding Fry for his feelings on the Dave Matthews Band in "The Why of Fry." These are both then-contemporary references, and at least in Leela's case it makes no sense for her to have a '90s Jim Carrey movie on the brain, but neither one bothers me as much as Nibbler's dig at M. Night Shymalan in this most recent episode.

Why is that? Could be nostalgia talking, sure, but I also think the way in which pop culture references were used in the old run is fundamentally different from how they're used in the new run. In "Leela's Homeworld," the Truman Show reference is tossed into a long, emotional, somewhat rambling speech from Leela (which, side-note, what a perfect example of how Futurama used to be able to do high emotion in a realistic, compelling way): if you get the joke, you might get a little chuckle, but otherwise it sails right over your head without calling too much attention to itself because it's essentially a throwaway line. In "The Why of Fry," Ken's assertion to Fry that "The Dave Matthews Band doesn't rock" is the punchline of the scene, one clearly directed at a viewer circa 2003, but it simultaneously pokes fun at the band itself and at Fry for being the kind of white-dude-of-a-certain-age who would be into their jam-band bullshit. In other words, you don't have to be familiar with the Dave Matthews Band specifically to get the gist that the Nibblonians are mocking Fry, and the reference point itself is one that makes sense for Fry since it's a band that pre-dates his freezing in 1999. The joke works without the viewer being in-the-know as to the specific reference point, in other words.

On the other hand, Nibbler no longer being able to predict the twist ending of a Shymalan movie is just an egregiously bad joke. It takes an easy target (Shymalan movies) and makes the obvious, culturally accepted point about that target (the endings are too predictable). In basic structure, it's not unlike the Dave Matthews joke from TWOF. But the reference itself makes little sense coming from Nibbler, who we've earlier seen watching foreign films and would likely not be caught dead the whole time, Sixth Sense style watching a Shymalan movie. Well, okay, the same is true of Leela's Truman Show reference: there's no in-universe reason why she'd be familiar with that movie, or toss it out in an emotionally charged monologue. But, again, the LH reference is tucked into a larger speech such that it's barely noticeable—whereas the Shymalan thing is used as some kind of shorthand to convey something crucial to the story, i.e., that Nibbler's intelligence is rapidly deteriorating and the situation is dire. The pop culture reference detracts from the emotion in the scene and is also just not especially clever or funny (and the rest of the characters gasping at Nibbler's confession just calls more attention to an already-not-great joke). Unlike the earlier jokes about Nibbler's increasingly plebian tastes (the American cheese thing, for example, which I did like), this one doesn't fit the character, doesn't fit the scene, and blunts some of the emotion by off-loading an important story point to the most tired non-joke imaginable.

But I digress. Point is, if I took the very worst episodes of the old run and held them up to the very best episodes of the new run, while I may be forced to admit to liking the latter episode more, I don't think I could make a compelling case that it's significantly better in a writing/narrative/structural sense. Like, I think "The Late Philip J. Fry" is a better episode than "Where the Buggalo Roam," but that's mainly because I find the premise of TLPJF more interesting. Joke for joke, story beat for story beat, I'd say "Where the Buggalo Roam" could absolutely hold its own; my preference for TLPJF ultimately comes down to being a sucker for a good Fry and Leela tearjerker.

Perhaps I've just inadvertently proven Zoidy's point by getting all belligerent and grasping at straws to defend my fervent belief that the first four seasons are comedic gold and everything else is, like, comedic bronze or silver at best...but so be it.

[Reply #28 on:]

What I’d add to the nostalgia debate is something I said earlier, which is that I’ve been revisiting a lot of random old episodes recently, including a lot of the Comedy Central run, and in a lot of cases I haven’t seen the episodes in so long that I basically barely remember them. When I put on “Free Will Hunting” I had the realization that I really did not remember ANYTHING about it, to the point that it was like watching a new or “lost” episode essentially. I don’t even really remember what I thought of it when I saw it 11(!) years ago, but I had definitely not seen it since. Others I sort of remembered broad strokes of but not a lot of specific details and jokes. It’s not that I ever disliked them (that I can recall), but it had just been forever.

Now, obviously, I remember the Fox episodes better. Because even though those I often haven’t seen in a similarly long time, or even longer, they were the ones I watched when I was still a kid basically, and made this terrible username. I just saw them far more times and they imprinted a lot more on my memory. I’ve forgotten some details over the years, but I can often anticipate lines before they come, and quote them word for word. Of course they would hold a more specific, nostalgic place in my memory, because I watched them dozens of times and not once or twice over a decade ago. More memories are tied to them, and more of my life revolved around a TV show as a teen than when I was an adult actually busy working and dating and shit.

But you know what? A lot of the revival episodes are funny. DAMN funny. I was laughing a lot through “Neutopia” and “Free Will Hunting,” just as much as I do through a lot of the original episodes. “Fun on the Bun” is a classic in its own right. I rewatched “Six Million Dollar Mon,” another episode I had at best vague recollections of, and absolutely lost my shit at the hysterical scene where Fry is so focused on eavesdropping that he ignores Leela and Amy in the shower. (“Please, Fry? Leela punishes me when I don’t use enough.” I nearly died.) Granted I was a little high during that one. But it was funny! And all those episodes had real energy, coherent structure and character arcs and throughlines. I understand some people don’t like them, but watching them with relatively fresh eyes, I can honestly say I thought they were at worst solidly funny and strong half hours of television.

I never really cared about continuity (it’s a cartoon; plus, a lot of the best episode going back to the Fox years are impossible if you’re stringent about that, which the writers NEVER were). I never minded the topical stuff, because they’ve always done that, to some extent to the point that people who were kids when the original episodes were on I think aren’t even aware of how much they reflected their time, either because they don’t even get the references or weren’t cognizant of how much certain things were in the zeitgeist. (OG Futurama reflects a time when comedy writers thought it was inherently hilarious for someone to use a cell phone, especially if it was comically large or small. That doesn’t even register as a joke now.) I just like stories that use the characters intelligently and contain rapid fire, hilarious jokes. The kind of stuff I can’t see on another show necessarily.

I have friends who have watched through the whole show relatively recently and don’t actually see much difference. One of my friends is always quoting stuff from the Comedy Central episodes. He only watched them all for the first time over the last year, so they are new as anything in his eyes. They’re not nostalgia for him. The fact is, I’ve already heard from him that he hasn’t been laughing much at these newest shows. Obviously, that’s anecdotal. But I’m just saying, this isn’t someone who can’t separate their feelings about the show from watching it 20+ years ago as a kid.

In any case, I’m just not laughing a ton at these episodes. I could make all sorts of observations about this or that callback I liked, or what have you. But at the end, I laughed pretty consistently at nearly every past episode, and not so much at these. I hope it’s just growing pains, but even when season 6 started, I remember laughing a lot and enjoying the first few fine. (“Rebirth” is a legit great episode, and while I appreciate that people were annoyed at immediately topical episodes, if you don’t think “even horse and ghost!” is funny, we are very different people). I’m just worried that something is actually really….WRONG this time. Not just different because shows always evolve, but actually OFF in the tone, and the style of storytelling and comedy. I hope not, but each week it gets harder to shake that feeling.

[Reply #29 on:]

Honestly, Nibbler just straight up eating a guy and his dog was my favorite part of this episode.

5/10. That's bad, for Futurama. This episode felt clunky, clumsy, like a poor nod to much of the continuity that they nodded at, and a very overplayed Dune joke.

I'm not going to pretend I didn't enjoy just a little that they at least tried to go beyond the obvious "Fry has worms again" episode idea, and I do like that they gave some attention to Dune. But they did both of these things badly enough that I almost wish they'd just retrod Parasites Lost.

It wasn't clever, it wasn't terribly fresh, and it was certainly ham-fisted with its references to other franchises and other episodes of Futurama. And I think that's the major set of unforgivable sins for an episode to commit as far as I'm concerned.

Being ham fisted and unclever is expected from a lot of current shows, but Futurama felt better than that, when it was originally running. It was definitely clever at one point, and the writers have come up with reasonably original plots as recently as the previous run. So why are they settling for... ...well, this at present.

I think this might actually be more Hulu's fault than anything else, as I remember having similar feelings about the resurrected version of the Animaniacs. There were some high points, but they really stuck out thanks to the low bar represented by the majority of the series. And this newest incarnation of Futurama might fall into the same unfortunate category.

* tnuc shakes her head sadly and walks away...

[Reply #30 on:]

when I was still a kid basically, and made this terrible username.

yeah, you really should have put more thought into your username. Its one thing being called that as a kid but when you are an adult?

[Reply #31 on:]

I do wonder this though, as we all watch and discuss this season amongst ourselves: Have all of our own perceptions of television and humor shifted? If we were to collectively go back and watch from SE01 of the show, would our opinions change on the new season, or the show as a whole? Would we think the parodies were too corny and dated or too on the nose? The jokes too flat or too stupid? The characters too dim and inconsistent? Would we hold the older content up like a monument, deemed flawless because we'd all experienced it in a golden era of our lives? Or would we give each episode as thorough a dive and potential grilling as the current content?

I did a full rewatch of the show ahead of the revival (my first rewatch in perhaps 6-9 years) and I was frankly shocked at how well the original run held up for me. If anything it was even better than I remembered. The Comedy Central run didn’t hold up nearly as well, though I still had a great time with it. Season 7 felt less like the wheels fell off the show to me this time round (I was hugely let down by it when it aired).

Maybe that’s the context that’s made me feel like I’m being a lot more positive about season 8 compared to the consensus here. I feel like older me used to be one of the more negative voices on here whereas now I feel like one of the more positive ones. I dunno… I guess I’ve reached a level of “it’s just a cartoon” tranquility.

[Reply #32 on:]

But the whole catering-to-new-viewers thing, while it may be more a commercial decision than an artistic one, is still kind of silly even on a ratings-grubbing level considering anyone who's watching the show on Hulu has access the the entire back catalog of Futurama episodes.

While this is stupid, it does seem like a very conscious decision to make the new episodes work for the insane people who decide to watch them religiously despite only being passively familiar with the stuff that came before it.

The upside of this is that we only need reestablish things once. Or in other words: Leela should remember that Nibbler can speak from now on and future episodes will hopefully reflect this.

I don't know that there's a satisfactory answer to the ol' Nostalgia Goggles debate, but I recently rewatched through about the midway point of season three in anticipation of the new episodes and I absolutely do think there is something appreciably different—and, yeah, better—about the original run in comparison to all that's followed. Even episodes in the old run I used to think of as stinkers, like "Where the Buggalo Roam," are still just (as DtB is suggesting) better structured, or more carefully crafted, or just straight-up funnier than the new-run stuff.

I suspect the reason for this is budgetary. I think the Fox run had a larger writing staff which meant more people in the writing room throwing out ideas, story notes and jokes. The show is made with a fairly skeletal writing crew these days and it’s remarkable how good it still manages to be considering but it does make a difference. Individual writers seem to make a much bigger difference to the end product in the revival (here and CC) than they ever did in the Fox episodes. Al Jean tweeted earlier today about how he maintains that no single Simpsons writer has ever had more than 40% of their script make it to the finished episode because of how their writing process works. I suspect this was true on Fox Futurama as well, whereas now it feels more like 70% of the credited writer’s work makes it to the end with a rewrite by David X. Cohen and a few extra joke pitches making up the rest.

On the other hand, Nibbler no longer being able to predict the twist ending of a Shymalan movie is just an egregiously bad joke. It takes an easy target (Shymalan movies) and makes the obvious, culturally accepted point about that target (the endings are too predictable). In basic structure, it's not unlike the Dave Matthews joke from TWOF. But the reference itself makes little sense coming from Nibbler, who we've earlier seen watching foreign films and would likely not be caught dead the whole time, Sixth Sense style watching a Shymalan movie.

I don’t think that’s quite fair. M. Night Shyamalan films have been Oscar nominated before. He’s considered an interesting and important auteur filmmaker who’s hit and miss but has something to say. A lot of films fall into pulpy territory but it’s not like he’s making Transformers movies. He’s taken very seriously in serious film circles. To be honest, part of why it’s a bad joke is because M. Night Shyamalan absolutely isn’t known for making predictable twists. He’s just known for making twists. They’re usually very effective. It’s just that his bad movies tend to be very bad for other reasons such as insane directorial choices — particularly regarding performances — bizarre tangential dialogue, pretentiousness and so on. They went for M. Night because he’s the only household name director known for twists. I don’t even have an issue with the idea of the characters being familiar with M. Night’s work. The idea that his head in a jar is still making movies makes perfect sense to me. 

Honestly, I don’t think the joke is any worse than the Truman Show line. I just think the Truman Show line was a low point of the original run.

The Dave Matthews gag is, on the other hand, great. It’s a joke about alcohol above all else but it’s also completely in character for Fry who, most likely, was a Dave Matthews fan in his time and carried that through to the future. Ken being aware of them seems to be more implicitly down to Nibblonian mind reading or ultimate knowledge than just them knowing and having an opinion on Dave Matthews Band.

I DO think you could make a case that the writing IS significantly better in a narrative/structural sense on average for the Fox run compared to the revivals though. Among other things, there are a lot of arse pull endings where there’s no resolution to the story and then, for example, The Borax Kid turns up out of nowhere, waves his magic hands and everything goes back to normal within the space of 30 seconds. The end. Worse than that: there are episodes that don’t even have a conclusion full stop. The closest I can think to this in the original run is “The Cryonic Woman” and that was so far beyond the endings of say “The Butterjunk Effect” or “Attack of the Killer App”, it’s crazy. That’s another point actually — there are more episodes where the plot straight up makes no sense in the revival too (see Mom’s plan in AotKA).

[Reply #33 on:]

It wasn't clever, it wasn't terribly fresh, and it was certainly ham-fisted with its references to other franchises and other episodes of Futurama. And I think that's the major set of unforgivable sins for an episode to commit as far as I'm concerned.

I don’t see how anything here was more ham-fisted than, for example, the crew getting on a cruise liner that’s just straight-up called The Titanic.

In fact, I actually feel that the way in which they worked a parody of Dune into the plot (worms in Nibbler’s litter box with the crew shrunken down) was wonderfully inventive and fun and clever. But hey, that’s just me.

Past episodes on the other hand? You mean “Parasites Lost” specifically right? It felt more like they wanted to use worms and were like “well we should bring those old worms back instead of creating new ones” which I’m fine with. I loved the other references to past episodes and actually felt they were remarkably organic. Bender’s love of tap dancing just felt like good continuity from “Stench and Stenchibility” for example. Fluffers walking Dave Spiegel in the park just felt like a nice, world-building Easter egg for fans. The Professor modifying the enlarging ray from “Anthology of Interest I” just felt like a nice bit of continuity again — and something of a workaround for the fact that he didn’t want to shrink them last time round.

[Reply #34 on:]

I don’t see how anything here was more ham-fisted than, for example, the crew getting on a cruise liner that’s just straight-up called The Titanic.

My problem with it was that it's on roughly that level. Which is an alarming level of ham content for something that's not an actual pig.

[Reply #35 on:]

In fact, I actually feel that the way in which they worked a parody of Dune into the plot (worms in Nibbler’s litter box with the crew shrunken down) was wonderfully inventive and fun and clever. But hey, that’s just me.

I agree; I thought using the litterbox as a stand-in for a desert automatically made it more interesting. It would have been easier, and far less interesting for them to go to a desert planet instead (Well, actually I guess that depends on whether the parasites idea was first or the Dune parody idea was first).

I haven't been spoiling myself on what the episodes are about so I wasn't expecting the Dune references.

[Reply #36 on:]

Honestly, I don’t think the joke is any worse than the Truman Show line. I just think the Truman Show line was a low point of the original run.

Would actually have to agree with this. It's one of the types of comedy that drives me a little nuts, just a random poking at some other piece of media that could easily be swapped out for some other piece of media and be essentially the same joke. (I guess in that case it's sort of contextual because Leela was being watched by her parents secretly, but still.) I remember some Simpsons line around that time where the characters are reacting to something that sucks, and one of the kids goes "still beats Disney's California Adventure." Like...come on, you could swap that out for literally anything and it will be the same joke. Because it's lazy. At least make the dig specific somehow.

Don't care about the timeliness of it, never did. It's fine with me if the characters in Futurama know about stuff from the 20th century. It's a cartoon and it doesn't matter, and given that it's a show being made NOW it has to be funny to an audience watching it now. But it was just never a great line. And even worse for me as a film fan because, frankly, "The Truman Show" is a really great film. Peter Weir is a really underappreciated director.

I suspect the reason for this is budgetary. I think the Fox run had a larger writing staff which meant more people in the writing room throwing out ideas, story notes and jokes. The show is made with a fairly skeletal writing crew these days and it’s remarkable how good it still manages to be considering but it does make a difference. Individual writers seem to make a much bigger difference to the end product in the revival (here and CC) than they ever did in the Fox episodes. Al Jean tweeted earlier today about how he maintains that no single Simpsons writer has ever had more than 40% of their script make it to the finished episode because of how their writing process works. I suspect this was true on Fox Futurama as well, whereas now it feels more like 70% of the credited writer’s work makes it to the end with a rewrite by David X. Cohen and a few extra joke pitches making up the rest.

You probably understood it, but it's worth putting Al's comments in some context - he had just tweeted a list of a bunch of beloved series that were basically written in the writer's room, and then was putting that in the context of his own show. This was (as with many TV showrunners) a response to a rather noxious piece in Variety that purported to quote an unnamed TV showrunner criticizing the WGA's ask for a minimum of 6-12 writers in any given writing staff. His point was that basically no showrunner would actually want a smaller staff than that, because basically ALL TV shows are written in the room (there are very rare exceptions, but basically any sitcom is going to be mostly written in the room). He's often made this point with The Simpsons because, well, a) it's his show, but also b) people have a tendency to look at Simpsons credits and think they mean a hell of a lot more than they do. Over the years here I've seen a lot of that too, people prognosticating about how an episode is going to be based on the fact that Ken Keeler or Eric Horsted or whoever is writing it. It doesn't really work that way. Writing credits in sitcoms, really in most TV shows, are more about allocating fees and residuals than anything else. A 40% retained Simpsons (or Futurama) script means that it's basically the most amazing script they ever had - and it still gets rewritten to hell, because that's the process. The stories are usually broken in the room well before the writer even sits down and puts it to the page, and then even after that point they go back to the room and it gets reorganized and torn to shreds. The rapid-fire joke delivery of shows like The Simpsons, Futurama, Seinfeld, etc. owe themselves to the fact that the shows are really written by the team. That kind of density of jokes just wouldn't be possible otherwise. If someone tried to do an entire 30 Rock script on their own it would probably end in suicide.

I don't think there's any way to know what the breakdown is in later Futurama episodes (unless David X. ever clarifies it in a commentary or interview), but to be honest I'd be surprised if it's any different. 70% of the script being written by the credited writer just isn't really how TV shows work. HOWEVER, it IS a BIG problem that they are working with such a reduced staff (one of the major sticking points in the WGA strike, for very good reason), because at that point you have fewer people firing off ideas and amazing jokes in that room. If you have 6 or 7 writers, you have a reduced chance of coming up with that truly amazing joke than if you have 12 there. And based on how these seasons are apparently structured (one of the animation directors claimed on Reddit that these are actually separate seasons for once - 8ACV and 9ACV; to be fair, this is the right thing to do because the split seasons thing is also a tactic by the studios to get around union-mandated pay raises), it would appear they have even fewer regular writers than last time, though who knows. Regardless, the studios being so cheap about this stuff is hurting the shows we love.

I don't know to what extent the reduced staff is hurting the comedy this season, but it's definitely not helping. I thought they held their own in the Comedy Central episodes considering, but a combination of factors including a further reduced staff could certainly be dilluting it further.

[Reply #37 on:]

A bad waste of a Nibbler episode, so far this is the worst one. 3 out of 10

[Reply #38 on:]

It's always funny to read Americans talking about how no single human being could ever be responsible for more than 40% of a good episode of TV by themselves, given that single-person penned scripts with ad libs from the lead actor form the backbone of 60% of the BBC comedies that Americans either adopt more-or-less wholesale twenty years after they stop (Steptoe and Son, for example - remade a decade later in America as Sanford and Son), or use as a loose inspiration for their most popular network hits (House of Cards, as another example).

And the rest are usually two people working together, with one supplying the jokes and the other supplying the plot (The Office, Red Dwarf, etc).

It's quite possible for a single writer to come up with a brilliant comedy script. It gets done all the time. It's just not possible for American studios to accept that anything can be done without doing it by committee, which is how the Writers Room came about. And now that it's common practice, nobody thinks it can be done any other way.

But if you look closely at the way that TV has evolved, it used to be that writers would put together most of an episode, then somebody would go over it with a blue pencil claiming that this that or the other would unravel the moral fabric of American society and then it would be passed on to other writers who were more devout and humorless creatures to fix it up so it would be suitable to air for a good Christian audience.

And of course, in the end this lasted longer than the moral panic that led to it. Because writing things by committee is convenient when it comes to making sure nobody gets paid enough to think they're important, and everybody knows they're replaceable.

Meanwhile, in countries that never faced that particular flavor of censorship (and instead had a whole other sort), you get one weirdo sitting down at a typewriter and bashing out six to eighteen episodes of the wackiest hijinks imaginable over the course of a blackout-drunk week in a shack somewhere in Cumbria, then selling it to the BBC with all the character names crossed out so that they can basically use it as a template for whichever show needs scripts, secure in the knowledge that they can repeat the feat whenever they can get hold of another seventeen bottles of absinthe and a bag of the ol' waccy baccy.

What I'm saying is that it's purely a very bizarre cultural construct that all TV shows must be written by committee, and that TV writers might be more productive and TV more generally enjoyable if American writers started holing themselves up in dimly lit rooms and smashing open their subconscious with barely-non-lethal doses of substances that render ones consciousness into a fine paste and filter it through the kidneys of angels and the devil's old socks before returning it to you.

[Reply #39 on:]

Not bad, but not as good as I'd hoped. 6/10.

Pros:
The animation of the dog park. Kind of spoiled by Nibbler's murder of the arrogant wrong-university person, but it was classic Futurama animation. Looked like Central Park in the year 30XX. Nice to see the travel-tubes used again, too. The appearance of Dave Spiegel and Fluffers was nice fan service.

The entire 2nd-best thing.

 "The sun grows hot, and my deodorant grows weak" - Beetle Shaman

The 3D crossword was good, though the mechanics would be interesting to see detailed.

"All paths end in death" - "Then let's just take the shortest one"

"So many mounds"

"Quarter-pounder"

Middling:
Lottery number being ~6. The joke in When Aliens Attack about the winning number being 4 was funnier, imho.

The Veterinarian seems to have taken on some of the character of the Whale Biologist.

I really wish the Nibblonian Council had said more. They (and the very similar Robot Council on the Stanislaw Lem world) are among the funniest parts of the series.

Bad:
The Nibbler event

To state the obvious, Nibbler pooping outside of a litterbox is well-established, back to episode S01E04. Adding that requirement as a motivation for an adventure is not convincing.

The joke in the first worms episode about how very small atoms were expensive, therefore shrinking was ridiculous, was one of my favourites. Sad to see it ignored here with the shrinking ray.

Episodes with a package delivery:
0/4