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Comedy Central Confirms 26 New Futurama Episodes
e9th was one of several readers to write with an update to the Futurama rumors we discussed earlier this week:
"TVWeek reports that 20th Century Fox Television and Comedy Central have officially confirmed a deal for 26 new episodes of Futurama, due to the strong ratings of its reruns and feature-length specials. Matt Groening is quoted as saying, 'We're thrilled Futurama is coming back. We now have only 25,766 episodes to make before we catch up with Bender and Fry in the year 3000.' According to the press release, the episodes will begin to come out in mid-2010."
Why does it take Comedy Central to re-animate the corpses of great shows?
yes, yes. We all know Comedy Central executive of extremely intelligent and deserve a huge raise.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Lessons learned:
Thinking like this is what saved Dollhouse.
Tomorrow, you'll all be making a delivery to Ebola 9, the virus planet.
the two movies that followed the series felt like the writers and voice actors were out of practice. That said, this is Good News! indeed.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
I'm convinced Futurama was not canceled for any reason within its power. The powers that be at Fox seemed to think that moving its time slot around so no one knew when it was on was a great idea. I don't know how the politics work there within the scheduling and piloting areas of Fox but someone must have had a problem with Futurama.
... you're going to planet X to deliver package Y" with optional information about said planet. From there, they could go anywhere. Using a mechanism like this was a lot like Star Trek (although better than just Trek's "for the sake of discovery" in my opinion but I know that's a monkey shit fight I can't win). And Star Trek (or some form of it) is still going strong on that same idea. Hell, I'll bet there's some pulp sci-fi series in nickel paperback form long ago that used the idea that the universe has an uncountable number of planets so there's an uncountable number of plot lines to keep my readers entertained and me employed.
... from the town sundial to the quarry to the statue of Jedediah Springfield to Springfield Gorge to the old folks home to the ... they have stretched that town out so badly that recent episodes seem to seep more into neighboring towns for a desperate change of pace. You wouldn't have this problem with Futurama.
The show had a great format. You had a mechanism for sending the crew anywhere where Professor Farnsworth would walk in saying "Good news everyone
And Futurama is animated so you're not limited by budgets and CGI.
I think the writers did a good job of keeping multiple plot arcs up and concentrating on them every now and then to keep the fans happy. I think the first movie (Bender's Big Score) was a clear indication of how much they value development in plot arcs and connections between episodes.
To compare it to a show far past it's prime and in a similar format: The Simpsons. The Simpsons has explored every possible crevice and building in Springfield to center on
Sure, Futurama could jump the shark. But I bet it will last a lot longer than other series if given the chance. Sure, Futurama could end up worse than before the break--much like Family Guy. But I think Family Guy depended too much on edgy questionable humor and when it came back and still had that humor it just wasn't as shocking. And the gimmicks and long digresses got old and tedious. I don't think Futurama relies on these as much as Family Guy.
Anyways, that's my largely opinionated two cents about a show I knew nothing about when it was airing and found it immensely enjoyable years after it was canceled. That's the only show I can say that about. The movies were ok but nothing like the TV formatted shows. Here's to hoping it's just as good as when it left off Season Four!
For the record normally I would complain about lack of originality in a situation like this but after watching some new shows on TV I don't care. Who ever is pitching/accepting these shows like The War at Home and 'til Death should be shot.
My work here is dung.
It's been said before and is worth repeating: The movies were 45 minutes of material crammed into 90 minutes of airtime. The 22 minute format is the best way for the series to continue.
Now, if they can just treat the movies as non-canon, all will be right with the world. New Futurama is always welcome.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
Please don't turn Futurama into the politically correct fiasco that The Simpsons has become. I honestly fear for this show after seeing the current The Simpsons season.
Too much time has passed.
The professor's probably dead by now, the kids will be all late teenagers, etc.
In Bender's case you can always put another guy in the costume but come on! Where do they expect to find another actress with the eye mutation?
The important question is, who have they got down to write these new episodes? The funny, sharp writers who made the show so good in seasons 1 and 2? Or will they resort again to the lazy dimwits who made series 3 and 4 a disappointment?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
For some odd reason, they had only been looking at DVR rating in three day blocks. Some smart person decided, hey, why not 5 day blocks so we can look at the weekend.
Lo and behold, a lot of people in this demographic watch the shows at odd times during the weekends.
This is why despite low Nielson rating Dollhouse was renewed.
I suspect a couple of things are being learned right now.
1) People like to watch on their own terms.
2) Ad skipping isn't as bad as they had thought.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Unfortunately, Dollhouse is crap. Firefly, on the other hand...
3. 3. HTML ordered lists already number themselves.
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
n/t
This will be a reboot of Futurama with a new cast, and more action (and sex) to excite a younger more modern audience. The Planet Express spaceship's bridge will look like the Apple Store, Leela will be having a secret affair with Bender. It will be shot in realistic shakey-cam. And there will be lots of lens flare...
I just finished watching every episode of that show, and thought I was done. You mean to tell me there's going to be MOAR?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
... for not giving up on everything else...?
Does that mean Firefly will be back? *looks wistfully into the distance*
Huzzahs are in order!
http://pinopsida.com
Who cares why it's coming back, the point is it is coming back!
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
When you say "not on slashdot", do you mean some other time than now? This would seem true given your "keeps breaking it" comment. But it's still a bit unclear. I note that the following code produces the proper auto-numbered result:
As far as the indent level goes, the left edges of the text in both lists' items line up with each other. Since the numbers with periods and the single dot take up different amounts of space, the overall left edge for the unordered one does look indented. I'm not sure which way I'd actually prefer it. The HTML spec may actually say it should be that way. In any case, it isn't slashdot, it's your browser. Just try editing a plain-jane html file with both types of lists and you'll get the same result even without slashdot's css. I find both FF3 and IE7 format it the same way.
Perhaps this is all a browser problem? Are you still not seeing auto-numbered lists?
Moderators: Before moderating a comment Insightful/Informative, check to see if a child post has already refuted it.
I really like Futurama; I have all four DVD sets and the four movies. However, I think this series should rest in peace. It's over.
The series was great and got progressively better as time went on. However, if the movies are any indication the revived series will be crap. Each movie was worse than the last. They weren't particularly creative with the stories and overall the writing overwrought and not compelling. There was so much untapped potential in the series but instead the movies degraded into pathetic, poorly executed fan service. Some jokes were quite funny but otherwise I felt like they were trying too hard to recreate Family Guy and Adult Swim's brand of humor. And probably the most obnoxious part was the constant environmentalist proselytizing. Some episodes used Al Gore and that theme to great effect but Bender's Game, in particular, was about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the crotch.
However, I am a sucker for Futurama, so I'll definitely watch. But if it ends up being the same kind of crap I saw in the movies I wont be watching for long.
Tomorrow, you're going to be kidnapped, have your memory erased, and be used as an Active.
Over the past 15 years I've watched as my life become harder to live due to a series of set backs that are out of my control. I sat down and reasoned out suicide as being the best solution to my permanent problems. Now that Futurama is coming back on TV I figured that I should just sit around until it goes off the air again. I hope it's as good as it used to be.
Correct.
Dollhouse is shit.
Firefly is also shit. It was good the first time through, but the ending and the movie completely fucked it over so much that I can't go and rewatch it. It's just so bad.
Huh. Now my post shows numbers for the ol and round bullets for the ul. When I posted it, it showed just L shapes for both. Maybe someone saw my post and fixed the CSS. Either that, or it's a massive coincidence since it's been broken for several weeks (months?) and was fixed within two hours of my post...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I suspect that you've got some extension overriding the CSS, because in my version of FF3 your post makes you look pretty foolish. What is with those carriage return looking bullet points, anyway?
I like Dollhouse.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
By the way, am I the only person who thinks that Alan Tudyk deserves to be the real star of "Dollhouse"? In two episodes he out-acted Eliza Dushku's entire season.
Ratings may not be the end-all-be-all, but the viewing audience still IS the end-all-be-all of tv shows. People are still not going to sit their butts on the sofa and sit through this show during the CC airing. Unless they decide to scrap prime time showings and go direct to DVD this is doomed to fail yet again.
No, it wasn't ratings. They just read my NSFW slashdot journals and found out that they got it all wrong. Leila's my daughter - first, they spelled her name wrong. Second, they got the wrong daughter; it isn't Leila but Patty. Third, it isn't that Patty has only one eye, she has both of them. It's her kidney that's missing.
And my robot does NOT say "bite my shiny metal ass." It's the cat, she says "GTFO my tail!"
Free Martian Whores!
Big fan of Scott & Greg Vanzo, Peter Avanzino, Claudia Katz and the rest of the crew! http://www.roughdraftstudios.com/
but the ending and the movie completely fucked it over so much that I can't go and rewatch it. It's just so bad.
It's just an object. Doesn't mean what you think.
But this Rottweiler not only is snarling and frothing at the mouth; it also went to Harvard.
Yes, it's all those "extensions" I have installed in IE7, eh?
Moderators: Before moderating a comment Insightful/Informative, check to see if a child post has already refuted it.
Good News Everyone!
Could be that they fixed the numbers/bullet points. Another AC said "What is with those carriage return looking bullet points, anyway?" What about the indent? Was the explanation what I said?
Moderators: Before moderating a comment Insightful/Informative, check to see if a child post has already refuted it.
Good choice.
Public use of any portable music system is a virtually guaranteed indicator of sociopathic tendencies. -- Zoso
For it is insightful.
You consistently hear that a show's first seasons were better than the latest seasons, be it Family Guy/the Simpsons/House/Sarah Connor/etc.. when when you look at it the first episodes weren't all that great and the latest episodes aren't all that bad. I suppose it falls in the same category of behaviours as "back in my day, music was good".
The only show I can think of you can call out for having turned bad is South Park, between the 5th and 10th season it changed so radically you can either think that the first few seasons were awesome and the last few seasons are the gayest most unwatchable piece of televisual shit you've ever seen, or you can like it for the systematic bashing of just about anyone and parody of just about any show/movie seasoned with a generous dose of cynical libertarian agenda and think it's better than ever.
You just got troll'd!
Well, since he turned out to be who he turned out to be, I'm sure we'll end up seeing him at least 3 times a season. (premiere, sweeps, finale)
Since the only show they offer that I know and/or care about seeing is South Park and I watch that online cuz the wife HATES it, I kinda forgot about Comedy Central. I think the main reason really is that they are not offered in HD around here (FIOS). Do many of you have it available in HD? I very rarely scan through the non-HD offerings...
Yeah that's pretty much it...seen a lot of junk and to read a show that I still enjoy watching is going to get a few extra seasons makes for a good day.
Also, I can kill you with my brain.
Well someone fixed it before you posted. I viewed your post while the old CSS was still cached, which made your post seem pretty silly.
After a refresh it is indeed numbered and the GP post is lined up correctly.
The problem there is that Dollhouse sucks.
blah blah blah. and furthermore blah blah. Blah? Nah. Blah blah dah bah pah rah tah.
I'll have to disagree with you there. In my opinion the final half of the season was easily some of the best Whedon I've ever seen. The first half was crap, but it was worth it to get to the second half.
Mystery Science Theater 3000
Except do it in the form of ICWXP (www.icwxp.com). I can't say I've been happy with the quality of rifftrax lately and I doubt the old writing team and rifftrax are going to join forces... At least ICWXP has their act together.
I only see the L-shapes, all the time. And lately I've had no color at the top of the reply box. Oh, Slashdot.
Except the show isn't coming back to Fox. Comedy Central ordered the episodes. 20th Television, although owned by News Corp, is a separate entity from the Fox broadcast network, and they also produce content for NBC, ABC, and CBS, among others.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
One of the things that was cool about Futurama was it broke the Simpsons 'family animated sitcom' mold. Giving it a different feel and of course many different options for the writers.
Since there is always the comparison to Family Guy keep in mind that Family Guy was just another family animated sitcom. In fact many people have gone far out of their way to point this out as if other non-animated sitcoms have not been doing the same thing for many years. We just had virtually no other points of reference when looking at prime time animation.
As an example look at American Dad. It's a family animated sitcom but it changes up the: dad is fat and does wacky stuff all the time, mom is very well intentioned and ignores all the flaws of her dysfunctional family, kids do stuff, blah blah. Instead, due to some...suggestions...from Fox they made the dad a wacky wing-nut, the mother a blond ditz wing-nut enabler, and the kids who do stuff with the added fact that like the Simpsons the girl is the token left wing voice. (And I don't want to get into the politics of American Dad but there is plenty more to be said about it's dynamic but that is beyond the scope of what I'm trying to say here. Suffice to say I find it hilarious how they have left politics alone in S4.)
The uniqueness of Futurama's sitcom environment made it very open and different than the other 3 prime time family centered ones. We can all only hope that the writers working on it's return will embrace that as well as the original ones did.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Thinking like this is what saved Dollhouse.
No, the fire-sale slashing of the price that the Fox network had to pay for the next season saved it.
Basically, at a low enough price point, a network will show anything..."reality" shows are proof of that.
I watched the first couple episodes and stopped. Finally, over a month later and after a couple of episodes had already expired on Hulu, and another was about to expire, I decided to watch it and found it was actually good. And they got better after that. The problem is, I expect most people watched the first couple of episodes and stopped before the show actually started any signs at all of being any good. It's actually quite good, but it takes a while to get there...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
One thing I've noticed is the "preview" option here appears to use a different stylesheet than the actual post. "Preview" basically tells you how you post isn't going to look, you just kinda have to imagine what it will look like based on past experience...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
It looked like that in preview and after I submitted. Oddly enough, it now looks correct, as does the top post (I now see 1. 1. in all of the list items) but posts in other articles are showing the L still. I wonder if it's a stylesheet cached somewhere, but not for this article (somehow) or if it's not fixed in some of the Slashdot sections.
I've recently also started intermittently seeing something that looks like the divider between the 'Full' and 'Abbreviated' bits of the floating bar on the left being drawn over peoples' comments too. I don't know who is doing the site design, but they really should find a new job.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Correct.
Dollhouse is shit.
Agree! I tried to give it a chance but after watch 4 episodes, it just felt like a weak re-hashing of the Buffy formula (which was juvenile at best).
Firefly is also shit. It was good the first time through, but the ending and the movie completely fucked it over so much that I can't go and rewatch it. It's just so bad.
(partially) Disagree! The series really had no "ending" it just stopped. The series IMHO was definitely a contender for the best Sci-Fi show on TV ever (in that category would be the new BSG and STNG). I've re-watched the series with friends and family and consistently they are impressed. The movie was not so good for a movie and did fuck up a few things I agree. The "reaver history" card seemed like a card that was supposed to be pulled out in a 3rd or 4th season but was forced in the movie. That said, Fox messed up the series far more than the movie did.
If Firefly was re-introduced to TV I'd watch it.
Firefly is also shit. It was good the first time through, but the ending and the movie completely fucked it over so much that I can't go and rewatch it. It's just so bad.
What ending? I haven't watched through the DVD's repeatedly, but I don't recall an ending, especially considering the show was canceled rather abruptly. I thought Serenity was really good, though it was a bit of a fuck-you to the people who were hoping for a series revival.
By the way, am I the only person who thinks that Alan Tudyk deserves to be the real star of "Dollhouse"? In two episodes he out-acted Eliza Dushku's entire season.
You watch Dollhouse for the acting?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
If I view your post in its own page, the lists show up correctly, but as part of the main page, I just get the L images that are used for comment nesting. My guess is that it's because the CSS has quite a few instances of ul li, which of course matches list items that have an li tag somewhere far up the tree, and it's overriding the ol li styles.
Does the chick with one eye have an extra hole to make up for it?
"Huh. Did everything just taste purple for a second?"
- Fry, Futurama
"Why am I sticky and naked? Did I miss something fun?"
- Fry, Futurama
"Now that's a wave of destruction that's easy on the eyes!"
- Zapp Brannigan, Futurama
"I am the man with no name. Zap Brannigan at your service."
- Zapp Brannigan, Futurama
More here:
http://www.quoteaddict.com/quotes.php?search=futurama
And this is news worthy because.....?
Works the same either way I view it, in FF or IE. As mentioned above, it's probably pulling your CSS from a cache from before they fixed it.
Moderators: Before moderating a comment Insightful/Informative, check to see if a child post has already refuted it.
I'll have to disagree with you there. In my opinion the final half of the season was easily some of the best Whedon I've ever seen. The first half was crap, but it was worth it to get to the second half.
It might have been, but Firefly was still much better!
Exactly. The "ending" was just OMG RIVER'S CRAZY and OMG CONSPIRACY. And Serenity was trash. Just more Joss Whedon hard-on for thin, blank girls with super powers.
I still see the L shapes.
Having seen at least 2 of the movies (Bender's Big Score and the Beast with a Billion Backs), I'd say that any 4 random classic Futurama episodes put together gave me more laughs and pleasure than the movies did. Perhaps Futurama doesn't scale, so I've got hopes that these eps represent a return to classic form...
It's sci-fi. If I watched it for the acting I'd be crazy as Alan Tudyk's character.
Well OK, not quite that crazy. I still only have the one personality, but I'm looking for a little nuance here. Can I not like it when a sci-fi show ends up having really good acting?
People have been conditioned to make snap judgments about things with little to no information these days. Nobody appreciates subtlety or the nuance of story-building anymore. They all want to be hit with it instantly like a brick to the face. And it better match their preconceived notions or fuck off.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
Also, we applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural response from either patient.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
Actually, ratings do matter. All that matters is ratings, but you cant keep pre-empting the show with football and who knows what else. Pre-tivo people needed a set time to tune in. They didnt get it often enough with futurama and Fox pretty much pissed away its potential.
You know, I bet they used some Torgo Executive Powder on the ratings people...
It's the nerd humor. My all time fav is the one where it starts out with Nibbler drinking an entire swimming pool and then burping out the resultant chlorine gas. Everyone drops to the ground, knocked out by the poison gas, and Bender is left there laughing at the plight of the "meatbags" until he goes (with classic comic timing): "Oh wait, chlorine..." and then is nearly immediately covered in rust and succumbs as well. Oh wait, found it! http://www.hulu.com/watch/65768/futurama-chlorine The best, imho. Followed closely by the Asteroids episode. *chuckle*
There is simply too much glass..
And now it's back to L-shape
Welcome to Slashdot. I mean... What the fuck? You may say Dollhouse is crap (and I can't disagree, because I haven't seen it) but you get modded Insightful for such a comment? You should either got modded as Interesting. This is your own personal opinion - and maybe most Slashdotters have the same opinion, but it's an opinion. I can prove that Dollhouse was not crap because it was a movie. If it were a crap, it would have been in the toilet, literally and you would have gotten modded Informative. I know this is completely off-topic, but come on, mods, what the fuck? The parent was more like a Troll comment, but because Slashdot agrees with it doesn't make it Insightful. This has everything to do with personal taste and nothing to do with objectivity. It even bashes the show judging it by personal taste and forgets that someone actually liked it and believed in it. Unless it's common sense to say that the show completely sucked and there wasn't one rational person to find it worth watching, this was a bad mod day for Slashdot and a bad mood day for me.
Bye-bye, karma!
Still shows the weird L-shapes over here. Not to mention parts of the D2 threshold setting thing that's usually on the left of the screen being stuck in your post...
The workaround that I've been using for the past fucking week goddammit Slashdot fix yer shit is this: click any comment (like the #28282375), then click the story link at the top of the comment page.
The white goes away and you can read the comment header, and those stupid boxes go away too. Don't try adblocking the image with the boxes because it's a composite image and that will break all of the goofy CSS, it looked a lot worse until I figured out how to unblock.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Firefly was crap. Dollhouse on the other hand.... (you missed a dot)
See, i can express subjective opinions as if they were scientific facts too!
What else do you like that i can shit on?
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
Actually... you ADDED a dot.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Ellipsis&l=1
The Bible: Historically verifiable fact from an observers point of view