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Futurama Returns
GrumpySimon writes "Good news everyone!
Straight from a one-eyed alien's mouth - 13 new episodes of Futurama have been confirmed by Katey Sagal on Craig Ferguson's Late Late Show. All the original actors have signed up too."
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I remember watching the old episodes of Ren and Stimpy and thinking, "why did I like this? This is horrible."
Ah, well, I bought the 3 dvd set of the originals and still get a big laugh out of them. Some are kinda weird, but I think they were weird back in the day, too. Best of the series were the Cmdr Hoek and Cadet Stimpy space serial send ups.
I've been to a Spike and Mike's Festival of Animation and have thought, "Whaaaattt? This stuff is supposed to be funny?" Then I realise about 75% of the audience smoked a bong before coming in.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Cuz the actors never get it wrong.
P.S. I feel like it's some futurama reference that my CAPTCHA was "breeder." Is Slashdot trying to say something about the human race?
ah but the whole use of celebrity heads was lame. Discuss
I think the issue is exactly that they don't have to worry about what happened last week if the writers don't want to. That the characters don't have to age. I live in the real world. When I watch TV I don't want reality. I want something different. Something to tickle my imagination. And the surreal world of many cartoons is great for that. A show like Doctor Who doesn't appeal to me as much, because I would much rather pick up a book and supply a much cooler image of a sci-fi world in my own head.
That being said, Futurama isn't the best example to be picking on for nothing ever changing. The series did have an advancing plot and the important events of previous episodes did matter in future ones. Individual events didn't matter as much, but the evolution of the character's relationships to each other definitely progressed based on the events of the show. I also felt it was much better written then other popular cartoons and didn't rely as much on mind-numbing pop-culture references.
If you listened to the DVD commentaries, you'd know that they actually had much more planned in the underlying plot of the series, but it got cut short. The final episodes were in no way a conclusion to the series.
Dude - It's just a cartoon.
Noone's really saying that Futurama is better than Dr Who, but that doesn't mean it's not enjoyable. Plot? No way. Funny? Absolutely! More importantly, it's just entertaining.
That's something I love about these kind of shows. You don't need to make the investment to watch them. I hate it that I can't watch a lot of "running plot" shows because I know I'm going to miss a bunch of them. With Futurama/Simpsons, I can just watch them if I'm free.
It's funny simply becuase it is. I enjoy the more scientific humour of the show. Things like winning by a quantum difference (I know I'm misquoting this) being responded with things like: "No fair! You changed the result by measuring it" It adds a humour for the physicist in me. Regards, Alunduil
In a nutshell, shows like Simpsons, Family Guy, The Critic, and Futurama make me laugh, and greatly entertain me for their 30 minute duration. Okay, there's a dud episode every now and then, but for the most part they're really fun. And funny. There have been a few scenes from these that would just make me laugh a few days later when I would think about it, for instance.
The fact that it bothers you that Lisa's mental acuity isn't entirely consistent from one episode to the next sort of implies you're greatly outside the demographic they're looking for, in which case I'd suggest stick with the shows that really make you happy. I watch these shows for their comedic value, not for a consistent basis upon which to do a comparative literary analysis.
Similarly, there are shows that other people love that I can't stand at all (eg Everybody Loves Raymond). it's all your own personal tastes. Regarding not liking the Simpsons, my Mom cannot get into the Simpsons either. She's tried and either doesn't get the jokes or just doesn't think they're funny whatsoever.
That said, at the end of your post you mention other shows that are 'really funny'. Can you give an example? I'm not trolling you either, just curious what you find funny.
You apparently didn't watch much of Futurama, in that case. Time actually did advance over the course of the show, starting in 3000 and ending in 3004. Relationships between characters also changed over time.
As for why Futurama is popular.. you may not find it funny, but a lot of people do. I, for one, like that there's a lot of geek jokes in there. One that I can think of off the top of my head was that there were a pair of books in the background of one scene labeled P and NP.
Ok that's indeed great news... the sad news is Futurama is still dependent on Comedy Central. Why do shows still need this kind of deals? Idealy this would happen: There is an official Futurama web-site, they say they want a new season, they need US $ X to produce it. They sell shares on their website or through ebay using a dutch auction in order to finance the project. Geeks buy them. They make the episodes. They realase them on the internet in a non DRM format and using bittorrent so they don't have to pay for bandwith. People pay a small amount of money to download the .torrent file. If they want to pirate it anyway nothing will stop them so why bother with protection.
Many people download that great show, the benefits are given to the shareholders.
Everyone is happy.
That's really what the RIAA really is affraid of. Artists now have a way to have vertical control, marketting, distribution etc. They claim to fight piracy but really want to make this come as late as they can. Once the artists realize they can actually make more money by short circuiting the distribution cartels
a) price will also fall for the consummer
b) more competition of works, more quality
\u262D = \u5350
Well, they won't make the same mistake they did with the new R+S - I'm sure they'll get Billy West back. Seriously, there are a lot of factors that led to the failure of the Ren and Stimpy's adult swim or whatever it was called that aren't present here. There wasn't the bloody custody battle like John K. had with Nick and the resultant split of the creative staff. The show's not going from "a kid's show written for the adults who make it" to "a show for adults. or at least, not for anybody under 18". The gap in production, while long, is nowhere near a decade. While David X. Cohen hasn't gotten a lot of (any?) projects of the ground in the iterim, he and Matt Groening are not the "do not play well with others" personalities who had to spend the post Fuuturama time coasting on their past success. Though, I will agree that there's a good chance the show will not come back on track, but there's little chance it won't come out better than Drawn Together (Damning with faint praise, I know). Anyhow, this is probably the first time I've had a good feeling towards Comedy Central since they canned MST.
...DRM'ed. "Geeks don't want DRM, geeks want Futurama (just see @ the Internet) so we will release new episodes of Futurama to sell DRM to those bloody nerds..."
This is the only reason for Fox to start it again.
--
This is not a flamebait... this is bloody serious... Just wait'n'see.
Stirring defence of Futurama and the Simpsons there. But I think you're pretty much wrong in everything you say. To respond to your three main points:
1. The characters in the Simpsons are surprisingly consistent; the clearly distinct characters and their traits are one of the shows great strengths. Lisa is BOTH intelligent AND a member of the archetypal working class family; these are not mutually exclusive, and the show is subtle enough to deal with this.
2. Futurama IS better than Dr Who whichever way you spin it (allowing for taste), and its PLOTS are amongst its great strengths. When you compare the Simpsons to Futurama, one thing that is very apparent is that Futurama has much more comprehensive, less formulaic, better written storylines. The episodes, and the series, feature an internal logic which is stronger than the Simpsons, or indeed almost any other comedy other than Seinfeld or Arrested Development.
In many cases the humour is directly derived from the strength of the plot. For example, Fry travels back in time and becomes his own grandfather. As a result, he is unique in the universe, and his uniqueness ties in to the whole Nibblonian vs Brains subplot. Similarly, Leela's origins story is tightly woven throughout the various episodes and across the series. I know for a fact that Groening, Cohen and co set out to write lengthy thematic arcs which in some cases spanned series 1-4 inclusive.
If you think it's a plot-less cartoon with jokes, you're not really watching it.
3. Well, this basically explains why you think what you think. I agree to the extent that each episode of Futurama is self-contained. However, they are also intricately linked with other episodes, and you miss a lot of important context and detail from some episodes if you treat them as a one-off 'adventure'.
Try watching Futurama, in order, from start to finish. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
Read Pynchon.
Great. Good to see the Actors are on board. What about the writers though? I have to imagine the highly talented futurama writers found new homes that have been enjoying their talent for a while.
I'd have to say mostly - you can't compare Futurama to the Simpsons.
The second of the two jumped the shark a while ago - although it came back from the groaner pile a bit it never compared to Futurama which was just getting a decent groove when Fox pre-empted it into oblivion.
After Futurama came out - the Simpsons seemed just wholesale tame by comparrison and even in some of the comentator tracks on the DVDs you could see where Matt G.'s passion was going (or at least more of it). It's not just the geek factor - it's the ubber geek factor that made it great among other things. Plus not having to be tied down to earth led to a much broader swath of possiblities - continuity be damned. Or at least horribly twisted if one recalls brain-burners like the Farnsworth parallel universe boxes. That was a particularly fun episode.
I don't really know where I'm going with this so I'll just stop now.
Ooooohhhh no. I fell for this one before...
I don't think Futurama actually even tries to have a real continuity. In the beginning of the series, they make references to Star Trek all the time, but later on the name becomes a "forbidden word."
I just think of it like I did the Simpsons in some jokes. Lisa once stated the Springfield Oil Field is 3 times the size of Texas. This means either they live in Alaska (possibly, I need to consult a map for scale) or it's a joke because it's too ridiculous to be true.
FYI, they were probably referring to the author John Milton (often referred to simply as "Milton"). Instead of (or in addition to) condensing his writing, they condensed his name.
Hmmm, an inside joke for both English majors _and_ Biology majors. Not bad.
I rented Dangermouse to watch with my kids, and it was sad for me not to get the same kick out of them. Sometimes memories are best left as memories.
seg fault
Actually, Family Guy humor comes from their making jokes which are so repetitious that they aren't funny any more, but annoying, and then taking it a step further until it becomes funny that they're dragging the joke out, then they drag it out just a little more to make it that much more annoying.
Futurama humor and plot development is actually quite clever, especially since (like Arrested Development) some of the jokes and plot twists aren't revealed until later episodes (e.g., Nibbler's being present but unseen in the first episode but upon subsequent viewings after seeing "The Why of Fry" (4ACV10) it becomes obvious Nibbler was there and that plot line was planned from the beginning).
Oh, and the Dave Matthews Band does not rock.
Anyway, if this is actually true, I shall no longer refer to Fox as Faux and I shall no longer say that Faux can bite my shiny metal ass. Furthermore, I shall have to now watch Fox's crap reality shows because I've repeatedly sent them emails promising to watch their crap reality shows and buy from their crappy sponsors if they bring Futurama back as a series. I wonder if watching just one episode of American Idol or whatever crap they're airing now will fulfill that obligation, or is that like making a deal with the devil?
Anyway, here is what I really posted to say:
<Amy>Yay!</Amy>
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
And now for the unresolved plot lines of Futurama, all of which I am hoping to see picked up in the new series:
-Fry loves Leela
The most obvious over-arching story during the series was Fry's adoration of Leela and Leela's continuous indifference to Fry. Obviously this IS something which is meant to work out with a happy ending. Episodes such as "Parasites Lost", "The Farnsworth Parabox", "Time Keeps On Slippin'" and the series finale, "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings" make this pretty clear.
The question is how they'll eventually get together. Leela keeps rejecting Fry because he doesn't have a lot to offer. He's a dumb, dropout delivery-geek - she's a smart, attractive spaceship pilot. Alternate/previous Frys have managed to get close to Leela with romantic gestures: a diamond scrunchie, a holophonor serenade, a love message written in stars. There's another key point, and that's Leela's oft-mentioned but never-seen ex, Sean. In "Devil's Hands", she describes Sean as pasty, unambitious individual whose redeeming feature was his skill as a jazz saxophonist. So it seems like creativity, specifically musical creativity, is the key. The problem is, even though he works hard at it, Fry doesn't even have musical skill. Not as far as his hands are concerned, at any rate. Nor can he sing. Or draw. And he won't artificially enhance his skills if this distorts his personality - "Parasites Lost" makes this clear.
The solution? Either Fry will come up with some other amazing romantic gesture, or he'll find a musical instrument he CAN play well. Or perhaps he'll find some other, more successful creative outlet.
-Fry is the single most important person in the universe
This arc was intended to occur from the very beginning of Futurama's production. "Space Pilot 3000", act three of "Anthology Of Interest", "The Day The Earth Stood Stupid", "Roswell That Ends Well" and "The Why Of Fry" are the relevant episodes. Thanks to his being his own grandfather, Fry is the only person in history to lack the delta brainwave, making him the only person able to fight the evil brainspawn on behalf of the Nibblonians. Fry has twice defeated the brains, but as Nibbler wiped his memory of the events of "The Why Of Fry", he doesn't remember the second time and possibly not the first either.
At the end of said episode, Fry remarks, "If you ever need a saviour again, just ask." Nibbler replies, "Oh, we will. We will." Presumably Fry will need to fight the brains at least once more. And obviously it must be the brains that he fights: against any other foe, Fry is all but useless.
Earlier in that same episode, Fry mentions Leela and Nibbler remarks, "Ah. She must be the other. You must not give up on her..." and promises to help Fry make things work with her. This suggests not only that Leela has some critical part to play in saving the universe next time around, but also that much more hangs on Fry and Leela getting together than just Fry's happiness. These two arcs are obviously strongly linked together.
Side note: while "Anthology Of Interest" is mostly non-canon, the spacetime warp which tears open as a result of Fry failing to be frozen is very important. During "The Why Of Fry" the enormous brain explains: "There is a nexus point between universes at the space-time where you entered the cryogenic tube." Here's why: if Fry fails to enter the tube, he fails to go to the future. If he does that, he isn't present at the supernova and doesn't go back in time, where he doesn't sleep with his grandmother, meaning Yancy Fry is never born and so Fry himself is never born either. The result is a paradox which, as seen in the "Anthology Of Interest" story, destroys the whole universe.
How Fry and Leela's fates are linked, and what shape the next (final?) brainspawn threat will take, remains to be seen.
-Morbo
Newsmonster Morbo is an extremely poorly-disguised spy for his (unnamed) home planet. His race is plotting to take over the Earth. Will they ever do it? Will
qntm.org
But I still get a huge kick out of Log (tm), Powdered Toast Man, Lummox herds, lambasting the materialism and exposing the fetishism in western society, and the fact that the show could ever have been marketed as a kid's cartoon to start with.
Thank you. The thing a later half generation doesn't seem to get is this was fairly cutting edge, underground stuff. Why Nick even picked it up is beyond me, it should have played late evening on Viacom's other network MTV, as Beavis and Butthead did. RnS (as it was referred to back in the day) was a huge hit with the college age group. Little kids could laugh at the nose-goblins or Mr. Horse sniffing a pan of Gritty Kitty, but the content wasn't really intended for them. John K. waged epic battles with Vanessa Coffey, who would eventually get him the sack, which dramatically altered many finished cartoons, which then went back to the shop for some modification and as John once said, just to mock Coffey, they'd make no sense, like the butchered PC Looney Tunes of the 70's.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar