Futurama

I'm still gushing about the "frivolous poultry" joke two days later. Matcluck's "slap" just completes it.

Is anyone else enjoying the new musical Couch Gag with different leading in music over 20th Century Animation each time?

Not particularly, to be honest, I usually fast forward through it.

The Hyperchicken is never less than a hoot.

So how is the revival ? I'm planning to stArt after the season is done. I've heard it's okay from people.

Yeah, it's okay (aside form "Rage Against The Vaccine" which is made up almost entirely of pandemic jokes that were already stale by 2021). No real stand out episodes, but an average Futurama episode is still good television.

The show in general has felt like it is trying to catch up on ten years of topical episodes (at the least since 2020) and that hasn't really helped the show find the tone for this new season. On the positive side, I'm not getting the vibes of things like Flanderization, Sequel Reset or Serial Escalation that normally happens. Bender in particular has been rather downplayed so far, actually showing more of a sensitive side instead of emphasizing his classic debauchery and hedonism. And while they Hand Waved a Time Skip they are actually following up on some continuity.

They pretty much went as far as they could with that in the Comedy Central run...

So, it's nice that he's less obnoxious.

Yeah I agree on Bender being less... assy so far. It was my problem in the CC era. I was worried in the Momazon ep and I'm glad he actually managed to get along with Leela.

I agree Bender is better, though I still feel a degree of exhaustion about his character, which may just be a holdover from earlier seasons.

This episode was weird. Like it's an anthology episode but the between-sketches plot isn't a framing device it's just an entirely unrelated half-baked plot.

Honestly, I'd have preferred to just spend more time with the Framing Device plot - seems like that's where all the best jokes were.

Same here - the whole main plot made little sense and was simply handwaved away at the end. The toy segments were a bit cute though.

Considering Fry/Leela fluff has been the biggest redeeming feature of this season to me. The main plot for lack of a better word was awful and it didn't even connect the shorts, which were just vapid.

Weakest episode so far for me.

Well that... exists.

I've kind of just gave a pass to the previous wacky genre Three Shorts episodes as they were just meant to be something weird to break up more character driven stories, but here we got three stories and a canon-esque framing device and none of it lands. It's not even really fun, each bit is too short to be more than a single joke and characters can't be anything except broad caricatures.

So, despite an underwhelming episode, one interesting idea did stick with me. Do you think Fry could have suffered any medical issues from being frozen for 1000 years?

That kind of episode can work very well, though. I think Naturama is one of the best episodes of the show.

I think that ship has sailed a long time ago. Would be weird for the show to suddenly have consequences for that.

Edited by Redmess on Sep 18th 2023 at 2:09:21 PM

I think the show has done about all they could with stories surrounding Fry's freezing, plus already doing a handful of episodes about dealing with a virus, illness or other affliction.

Thing is I did like "Naturama" and "Reincarnation" for being silly genre spoofs, while this episode not only had very thin material surrounding simple toys but included a fourth story that kinda-maybe would have worked as a full episode. As is, it feels like splicing two episodes together without any rhyme or reason.

It's a shame because I thought the Zapp episode was great, then we got a weird anthology-esque episode. The framing episode would have been a good episode on its own.

Honestly, my only reaction after I finished the episode was a flat "I don't get it..." It feels like its trying to be a Bizarro Episode, but it just feels totally incoherent and half-baked.

While I did sorta like Zapp Gets Cancelled (its pretty much a Spiritual Successor to Brannigan Begin Again, an episode I like), both this week's episode and the Covid episode are making me concerned for Futurama again and making me rethink my opinions on the seasons overall. Shame too, because it felt very promising with the first six episodes, all of which I liked.

The season kinda peaked with Children of a Lesser Bog tbh.

I didn't think the covid episode was bad so much as lazy. It was the lowest hanging fruit which we had all seen for the past few years and don't want to relive. I liked hermes plot though.

I think what also concerns me is that we haven’t had a good emotional moment that the series is normally know for. “Children of a Lesser Bog” comes close, but the pacing kind of kills it.

Edited by HoloMew151 on Sep 19th 2023 at 6:26:40 PM

Man, this episode is random. It feels like they just gave up and did whatever. Or like they ran out of ideas and just did a filler episode. Which sure is weird after a 10 year hiatus and 8 episodes. If the tank dries up that quickly, I'm worried about the rest of the season.

Speaking of the tank running dry... an episode about Leela falling in love with some random space prince for no reason just to cause cheap drama, really? Is that the sort of pattern we are going with now? This feels like the usual trap shows with established couples fall into, where the only thing they seem to know to do with them is have them have constant breakups-saved-at-the-last-minute plots. The Simpsons did this, and after the third time, you just stop caring for it. Why can't writers take a page from the Addams Family and just have them be a happy couple?

No, this relationship crisis leaves me entirely cold, and I feel a bit offended that this show tries to play with my feelings in such a cheap way, with some throwaway characters that may as well be cut out of cardboard. There's also some bullshit handwave about Leela being under a "science spell" that the episode can't even be bothered to explain.

And then there's the three segments, which feel disjointed and aren't particularly interesting.

The first has the crew as wind up toys, and Fry is running out of power due to his being frozen, which doesn't make all that much sense. The episode doesn't even try to justify why they can't just rewind each other. There's also some random thing about Bender being reincarnated into a plane.

The second short has them be hot cars. This is probably the most interesting one, though they weren't terribly creative with the car choices for the characters. The plot is a parody of The Ring and some other horror work I don't recognize (though for some reason I'm reminded of cupcakes...).

The third one is about rubber ducks and some toy I don't recognize. There's a weird Plymouth Rock pilgrims/Thanksgiving plot that doesn't seem to fit the toys at all.

It's all rather disappointing, really.

Isn't "the rest of the season" one episode? I'm seriously asking, I don't remember ever being told how many episodes this season was going to have. Ten is commonplace now, but stuff often has more.

What, really? Just ten? And that's normal now? Good grief...