Thoughts of Production Season 8

[on:]

Discuss your overall thoughts about the latest Futurama Season. Likes, dislikes, was it worth being revived again, anything.


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[Reply #1 on:]

Here's my ranking;

1. I Know What You Did Next Xmas
2. Related to Items You've Viewed
3. Parasites Regained
4. All The Way Down
5. Zapp Gets Cancelled
6. Children of a Lesser Bog
7. Impossible Stream
8. Rage Against the Vaccine
9. How the West was Etc
10. Atrocious Duck Episode

I'd say it's been a sort of unnotable semi-season. There's only been a couple big standout episodes, and even those are somehow a bit flimsy. Time will tell if any of these especially grow on me, but only the top three or four are ones I'd say were truly Futurama quality - which is too bad! I haven't seen very many people talking about this season, outside of fan spaces such as this, and even people I know in real life who are huge fans either didn't know there is a new run, or haven't been engaged much at all. Me, I was immediately pretty let down that they changed the ending of Meanwhile, and that started me with a pretty mixed feeling for things right off the bat. It's clear these episodes are all in all much more topical, and comedy based, but when they actually do venture into Futurama sci-fi territory, it's great. Same can be said for when things actually move forward in character relations, universe ideas, so on - they underestimate just how much people are willing to let go of status quo in the streaming era.

I hope the second half is stronger, because I really don't want them to only have one full Hulu season - but, that's my prediction, harsh as it may be. There's just not much of a spark, though when there is, it's when they're trying pretty specifically new things.

[Reply #2 on:]

Great:
All The Way Down

Okay:
The Impossible Stream
Children of a Lesser Bog

Cut out a few minutes and its watchable:
I Know What You Did Next Xmas
Related to Items You’ve Viewed

Not Good:
Zapp Gets Canceled
How the West Was 1010001

Some of the series worst:
Parasites Regained
Rage Against the Vaccine
The Prince and the Product

Worst Season of the series. Is it a massive drop from Season 7? No, but this was the first Season where I felt outright bored/apathetic to finishing an episode of. There are only about 4 CC episodes I would put under Vaccine & Product, but even those I might rather watch just for being a little more concise & not wasting as much of my time with laughless scenes or horribly drawn out jokes.

All The Way Down’s existence proved the series does still know how to produce a solid episode. I really wish it didn’t take until episode 10 to finally make one. Impossible Stream and Children weren’t great, but there was some pep to them that gave me hope the rest of the Season would get better from there, like Season 6 did. Then it didn’t. Until the finale.

I’m not confident Season 9 will be much of a rise in quality. At least they shouldn’t have as many topical episodes as 8 did (though Claudia Katz did say they were making an NFT episode). At least Otherwise should be good. 2/20 is...better than 0/20.

So much of this Season was just boring. Which is sad, if the best the writers can bring after a 10 year gap and getting a 2nd revival was this. In a world where plenty of revivals have proven they can still have quality to them (Beavis and Butthead, Clone High, Adventure Time), I find it hard to give this revival much sympathy.

Futurama is one of the last nostalgic properties I still have some uncontrollable attachment to. There are so many other things that would be better to watch than this. Still, I did get a few good laughs out of each episode, and felt some joy just seeing the characters in new episodes again.

Not a bad revival, but not really good either. At the very least we got All The Way Down out of this.

[Reply #3 on:]

Excellent:
All the Way Down

Quite Good:
I Know What You Did Next Xmas
Related to Items You've Viewed
Zapp Gets Cancelled

Decent:
Parasites Regained
Children of a Lesser Bog

Passable:
The Impossible Stream
Rage Against the Vaccine

Mediocre:
The Prince and the Product
How the West Was 1010001

Not a great season, but it could have been worse. The fact that it's only 10 episodes puts it at a bit of a disadvantage as well if you wanna play the comparison game; seasons 6 and 7 had 26 episodes each!

[Reply #4 on:]

1) All the Way Down
2) I Know What You Did Next Xmas
3) Related to Items You've Viewed
4) Parasites Regained
5) Children of a Lesser Bog
6) Zapp Gets Canceled
7) The Impossible Stream
8) How the West Was 1010001
9) Rage Against the Vaccine
10) The Prince and the Product

Three episodes I'd go out of my way to re-watch, two episodes I think are some of the worst of the show, and five episodes I'm very indifferent about.

Hopefully the back half of season 8 is an improvement

[Reply #5 on:]

Season 8: 7/10

1. Related to Items You've Viewed  10/10
2. I Know What You Did Next Xmas 9,5/10
3. All The Way Down 9/10? 10/10?
4. Parasites Regained 9/10
5. How the West was 10101001 8/10
6. Zapp Gets Cancelled 8/10
7. Impossible Stream 7/10
8. Children of a Lesser Bog 5/10
9. Rage Against the Vaccine 4/10


Not a bad season, but the worst definitely. Worse than 6A, which had the most stinkers but also great ones (Late, Benda, Mutants, Origin, even Katz episode was very enjoyable).


Some loose thoughts:
- I think the Crypto one will grow on me, it has strong feel and rich setting.
- Fry was so side-lined this season, got nothing to do (and streaming tv shows feels like nothing cause he barely did anything!), and they even joked about him being chosen one in Parasites. Lame.
- Loved the callbacks, especially to the original run. Mermaids, already with my pijama, Salmonella guitar, albino worm, land Titanic, amazons and many more.
- LaBarbara was totally butchered as a character
- Richardson was great as Barbados and bad as URL and Chin was good as Scoop Chang and didn't try to mimic West's voice with Leo or do something funny or creative with the character.
- Zapp's voice was different.
- Nice to see more of continuity and not going back to status quo all the time. Kiff and Amy's kids are supporting characters now, there are sequels and some callbacks to previous episodes (even the newest ones with Nibbler's worms' socks on chimney and stuff).
- I guess we'd never have Anthology of Interest III or Reincarnation II  :/

[Reply #6 on:]

Up until "The Prince and the Product", this was the most consistently good season of the show since maybe season 1.

But, honestly, given the choice between consistently good and something way more hit and miss like season 6, I'd take season 6. The season 6 highlights were phenomenal. Season 8 is mostly all good, but never great.

"All the Way Down" is the only exception and even that episode doesn't come close to cracking the show's top 20 episodes for me.

If I average out my ratings of every episode per season in order to give the seasons an overall score, I get:
Season 1 - 8.8/10
Season 2 - 8.7/10
Season 3 - 8.7/10
Season 4 - 8.9/10
Season 5 - 7.9/10
Season 6 - 8.1/10
Season 7 - 7.4/10
Season 8 - 7.4/10

Given that season 7 achieves the same average with 26 episodes whereas season 8 only has 10, I'm inclined to say that makes season 8 the worst season of the show.

BUT, honestly, it being so close to call is actually pretty fantastic work. The show's been off the air for a decade. The fact that it's come back at more or less the same quality that it left is remarkable.

Does it feel like it was worth bringing it back yet? Not really. I don't think "All the Way Down" was quite good enough to justify it. But I'm enjoying it. I'm glad it's here. In many ways, this season has felt like a bit of a warm up and I'm hoping we'll see that reflected in season 9.

Overall, I'd rank the episodes accordingly (and I've also included how I'd rank them in terms of episodes of the entire series overall):
1. All the Way Down (#37)
2. Parasites Regained (#65)
3. Related to Items You've Viewed (#91)
4. Zapp Gets Canceled (#105)
5. Children of a Lesser Bog (#110)
6. I Know What You Did Next Xmas (#111)
7. How the West Was 1010001 (#113)
8. Rage Against the Vaccine (#135)
9. The Impossible Stream (#137)
10. The Prince and the Product (#144)

[Reply #7 on:]

I haven't seen very many people talking about this season, outside of fan spaces such as this, and even people I know in real life who are huge fans either didn't know there is a new run, or haven't been engaged much at all.

I've actually experienced the opposite. A lot of people I'd view as fairly casual fans in my social bubble have been watching it weekly.

I hope the second half is stronger, because I really don't want them to only have one full Hulu season - but, that's my prediction, harsh as it may be.

I predict they'll get at least one more order of 20 episodes.

[Reply #8 on:]

You're lucky man!! I wanna be nerding out with my real life fans too, hahaha.

[Reply #9 on:]

Four bad episodes:

Parasites Regained
Rage Against the Vaccine
Zapp Gets Canceled
The Prince and the Product

Two Unfunny but Still Watchable episodes:

The Impossible Stream
Children of a Lesser Bog

Three Good Episodes:

Related to Items You've Viewed
I Know What You Did Next Xmas
How the West Was 1010001

One genuine classic:

All the Way Down


For comparisons sake, I like pretty much all of the Fox episodes, but only three of the entire Comedy Central run. So while this (half) season isn't as great as the Fox years, it is a huge (and extremely surprising) improvement over the Comedy Central years. I'm actually very optimistic about what comes next now, which is something I haven't been able to say since watching Beast with a Billion Backs in 2008.

[Reply #10 on:]

Oh Gosh, here it is. After 10 long  weeks of mixed feelings I can finally say what I think about a season as a whole. I think it was worth of the renewal but the show was submerged in the mutant lake along the way.

What I liked:

The Impossible Stream: OK, it was incredibly self-referential and kinda pointless but the execution was also pretty funny, so I´m able to take it for what it is, although I usually hate that phrase.

How the West Was 101000: In this one writers seem to still have their usual share of problems with coherence of modern episodes but they manage to compensate for that by some cute humor.

Related to Items You've Viewed:Although I had to wait till later parts, maybe to those where Tress started to really sound like Mom again...

I Know What You Did Next Xmas:I still think that the first half is kinda trashy and with its attitude to both time travel and jokes in general, this seemed to be closer to Red Dwarf. Still, enough to make it a memorable episode.

 Zapp Gets Canceled:This is probably the closest to the old Futurama episodes but that is not the only reason I liked it, I think it worked on its own.

All the Way Down:I know it won´t be but if this would be the last episode ever, I would be happy.

What I´m on a fence about:
Children of a Lesser Bog: I try to not think too much about this one. It did a lot things right so I´m willing to forget that it had almost no plot and that the last act is sorta epitome of bad writing. I can´t stop bitching about it. There is an anecdote about guy who couldn´t shut up about That´s Lobstertainment so Verone himself felt obligated to write to him, so who knows, I might get message from Horstedt.

Rage Against the Vaccine: I know it was dated satire full of jokes everybody was making but it get some honest chuckles out of me and  had some neat concepts, so I´ll rate it higher than most of people.

What I hated:
Parasites Regained: Honestly, I´m not sure why. I would have to rewatch it but I just don´t want. I think it was the most underwhleming of the bunch.

The Prince and the Product

All in all, 70%.





   

[Reply #11 on:]

Did anyone else feel like there was a substantial lack of pop culture references in season 8?

I think I can pretty much list the entirety of the pop culture references throughout the entire season from memory:

• "The Impossible Stream" was littered with fake TV show titles, a few clips from them, and meta jokes about how the stuff is produced and consumed
• "Children of a Lesser Bog" is named after Children of a Lesser God
  
• "How the West Was 1010001" is named after How the West Was Won
  
• "Parasites Regained" was an extended Dune parody which largely played on the 2021 film but also tipped its hat towards the '80s one
  
• "I Know What You Did Next Xmas" featured a lot of parody elements from I Know What You Did Last Summer
  
• Same episode's time machine was based on that from The Time Machine, though obviously this is just picking something up from "The Late Philip J. Fry" and running with it
  
• Same episode had a quick Disenchantment cameo
  
• "Rage Against the Vaccine" is a reference to the band Rage Against the Machine
• The Professor turning himself into a teddy bear on Gloom was a parody of that viral video where a guy accidentally turned himself into a cat on Zoom
• Hermes inverts a famous Arthur C. Clarke quote at the end
• "The Prince and the Product" title is a reference to The Prince and the Pauper
  
• The "Round Wheels" segment intro was partially based on the intro for the old Hot Wheels cartoon
  
• The "Round Wheels" segment directly spoofs The Ring for some unknown reason
  
• "All the Way Down" references the saying "Turtles all the way down" -- not sure if this comes under pop culture or just culture honestly
  
• I forget when, but at some point this season, Zapp paraphrases the "It sickens me" line from the infamous William Shatner recording

That's honestly pretty much the extent of it.

I think there genuinely might be more references to past episodes of Futurama throughout season 8 than that.

It's barely anything. Classic episodes would have like five Star Wars references on a sign in the background at the start of a scene that would then have a space ship from Star Trek, some outfit from an Issac Asimov short story and a power up from some 1980s video game in the background. Is this a lack of background gags? Or have the writers changed their approach to be less reliant on pop culture?

[Reply #12 on:]

My current rankings, after having seen each episode only once:

1. All the Way Down
2. I Know What You Did Next Xmas
3. Related to Items You've Viewed
4. Zapp Gets Canceled
5. How the West Was 1010001
6. Parasites Regained
7. The Prince and the Product
8. The Impossible Stream
9. Children of a Lesser Bog
10. Rage Against the Vaccine

The only offensively bad episode of the bunch was the fuckin' COVID one, and really my top four episodes all pass the test of "Would I like to rewatch this episode some time soon?", meaning there was something interesting/lasting about them; the remaining five episodes were all some flavor of "enjoyable and/or not objectionable" (though CoaLB is really on the line for me between "just OK" and "actively bad." It definitely felt the most like a CC-era episode of the show to me, and I mean that as an insult).

In any case, I think I preferred this season as a whole to everything else post-Fox with the possible exception of 6A (and the definite exception of "Into the Wild Green Yonder"). As others have noted, there were no real highs in season eight, but the baseline level of quality was superior to that of the CC episodes for me, and I did not actively dread watching the new episode each week. I am cautiously optimistic for season nine, whenever it may come.

I rated the season as a whole a 7/10, which is a 7.5 rounded down simply because I cannot on principle give any new-run season a rating higher than a C. It's called being a stubborn jackass having standards, people!

[Reply #13 on:]

This wasn't as bad as I had feared, nowhere near as good as I'd hoped, and individual episodes fell on both sides of my actual expectations.

ZGC was the episode I'd dreaded the most. PR was the one I'd really looked forward to. Both of those were completely opposite to my expectations, and I'd have to say that the surprise hit of the season now that I've seen it a couple of times was probably the point in PR where Nibbler just callously eats's somebody's fucking pet.

Just gobbles a dog in Central Park. Like, WTF? But I cackled like an evil swamp witch, and it's no less funny and no less awful each time.

Each episode has at least one thing (even if it's only a second of footage) that I thought was great, each has at least one glaring flaw to it, and there are differences to the overall sound design and feel that don't quite let this run feel like the first four seasons.

But I guess that it's worth letting the Futurama crew keep on grinding for now, because honestly none of these episodes (even the worst of them) made me feel like it was a show that should have stayed dead.

This has been a better revival than that of the Animaniacs. It's been a more faithful treatment of its source material than Star Wars: Ahsoka*. It's been a decent attempt at bringing the show back. And it's spawned discussion here again, so I can't really say I'm unhappy about it.

Just mildly disappointed. And I feel like that line from The Good Place about taking something good and ruining it a little bit so that you can have more is particularly relevant here.

*Specifically, Thrawn compared to Zahn's version.

[Reply #14 on:]

My personal list:

1) I Know What You Did Next Xmas
2) All the Way Down
3) Related to Items You've Viewed
4) Children of a Lesser Bog
5) Parasites Regained
6) Zapp Gets Canceled
7) The Impossible Stream
8) Rage Against the Vaccine
9) How the West Was 1010001
10) The Prince and the Product

I think this was undeniably the worst Futurama has been, worse than Season 6A or the beginning half of 7B, although that should have been expected. I really did like the first 3 episodes in my list quite alot, (especially the in-depth analysis' done on number one on my list) but not enough for the show to be renewed. I'd gladly watch FaLBF before watching Parasites Regained or The Impossible Stream. Really hoping they pick up on the latter half of the season next year, although considering the CC era of Futurama, there's a damn good chance it could get much worse before it gets better.

[Reply #15 on:]

I preferred it to 7A.

[Reply #16 on:]

I think these 10 episodes have, on average, been much better than the Comedy Central run. Honestly, I think the episodes from those seasons are almost all abysmal. Just crude, dumb, and unfunny. 

[Reply #17 on:]

I'll admit that the writing crew definitely did make a great, sincere effort to improve upon the mistakes they made during the CC run. Especially considering that Bill Odenkirk is supposed to write one of the new episodes next season, a writer who hasn't written anything for the show since the Fox Era. (Although I'm almost certain he wrote something for Disenchantment before) I actually really appreciate the fact they waited to bring him in for the latter part of the season so that the writing crew had time to get themselves back into the swing of things. It gives me a good idea as to the amount of care & effort they are putting into these episodes, which gives me hope for the latter part of the season. I just thought alot of the jokes & plots from this beginning half of the new season fell flat on their face in terms of not only humor but premise and execution as well. Like, much harder than Season 6A and 7B's beginning half of the season. We're all entitled to our own opinion, but I generally find most of these episodes forgettable except for the last three. Although I must admit, I have a feeling one of these episodes or another will really grow on me. I only really watched some of them once, so a rewatch in the near-future couldn't hurt.

[Reply #18 on:]

My rankings:

Good
Related to Items You've Viewed
I Know What You Did Next Xmas
All the Way Down

OK
Parasites Regained
Zapp Gets Canceled

Meh
The Prince and the Product

Bad
The Impossible Stream
Children of a Lesser Bog
How the West Was 1010001
Rage Against the Vaccine

Things picked up quite a bit towards the end of the season, but the first few episodes and Rage Against the Vaccine were almost unbelievably bad. I found these episodes bland and disjointed with terrible one-off characters and a lot of jokes that just didn't land kind of similar to season 11 or 12 Simpsons. Go back and watch an episode of The Simpsons from that era like Kill the Alligator and Run and it's structured very similarly to How the West Was 1010001 with it's disjointed plot, high ratio of jokes that don't land and one-off characters that have a single gag for a personality that is run into to ground. 

Was it worth reviving? I dunno. If the ratio of good to bad next season is similar to Parasites Regained onward, it was probably worth reviving the show,  but if we get another season where a good half of the episodes are duds, I think you'd be hard pressed to argue the revival was warranted creatively. I legit almost tapped out after the first three episodes and didn't watch the rest until they had all aired and I saw people raving about All The Way Down, and I'm a guy who has a 20-year old account on a Futurama forum. I'm hoping that the weak start was just the cast and crew getting back into the groove, and we'll get a lot more middling to good episodes next season. 

[Reply #19 on:]

I guess what confuses me, and maybe due to the strikes we lacked some context through interviews, but WHY exactly was the show revived? And is this an ongoing revival or a one and done sort of situation? I'd imagine Hulu sees the viewership numbers on old episodes and threw some cash at a new season to retain subscribers. I believe Animaniacs was revived for that same reason. But did Matt and David X. talk about why the series returned, and if there is some longer term plan for the revival? Or is the show, once again, in limbo of being cancelled for the hundredth time?

[Reply #20 on:]

You forgot one cyber_turnip, the Impossible Stream is a pun on a song called The Impossible Dream.  It's from a 1965 Broadway musical called Man of La Mancha, and it's something of an American standard, covered by lots of notable artists including Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin, Florence Ballard, Elvis Presley, Roberta Flack, Shirley Bassey, The Temptations, Scott Bakula and Tom Jones to name a few.

But overall I do agree with the lack of good pop culture references.  I really would like things like Day of the Triffids, Fantastic Planet, Phantasy Star, the Midwich Cuckoos, Firefly, Pacific Rim to name a few examples get the Futurama treatment, even if it's just in passing cameo.

[Reply #21 on:]

You forgot one cyber_turnip, the Impossible Stream is a pun on a song called The Impossible Dream.  It's from a 1965 Broadway musical called Man of La Mancha, and it's something of an American standard, covered by lots of notable artists including Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin, Florence Ballard, Elvis Presley, Roberta Flack, Shirley Bassey, The Temptations, Scott Bakula and Tom Jones to name a few.

Oh Goldy, I do appreciate you and your musical literacy. 

[Reply #22 on:]

Ooh, Day of the Triffids would be terrific. Triffic.

[Reply #23 on:]

I guess what confuses me, and maybe due to the strikes we lacked some context through interviews, but WHY exactly was the show revived?

I assume because of the winning mixture of the current TV landscape being all about revivals of old, beloved properties and Hulu wanting in on the action combined with the fact that Groening, Cohen, et al never wanted to end the show with "Meanwhile". They always wanted to make season 8 and Groening even spoke about trying to get picked up by another network in the immediate aftermath of the CC cancellation. But they gave themselves an excellent out in case that was the final episode and, for a while, it was.

And is this an ongoing revival or a one and done sort of situation? I'd imagine Hulu sees the viewership numbers on old episodes and threw some cash at a new season to retain subscribers. I believe Animaniacs was revived for that same reason. But did Matt and David X. talk about why the series returned, and if there is some longer term plan for the revival? Or is the show, once again, in limbo of being cancelled for the hundredth time?

Two seasons were ordered upfront. Season 9 is currently in production for 2024. Beyond that is anyone's guess, but it certainly seems (especially going off the meta jokes in "The Impossible Stream"), that the show's staff would like to strike a deal to produce seasons 10 and 11 across 2025-2026 if these episodes all perform well enough. Right now, I'd say that seems fairly likely to happen. Long-term though, yes, the show is forever at risk of cancellation.