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Katz v Taco: Futurama
When Richard Nixon's head falls out of a jar 1,000 years into the future, growls, and bites the arm of Fry, the hero of Matt Groening's new TV show "Futurama," it was clear Groening has another hit on his hands.
"Futurama" isn't much like Groening's "Simpsons," except for its bug-eyed (or in this case, sometimes one-eyed) characters.
This time, the target is us - nerds, geeks, the power of computing, the sci-fi culture and the insanely-hyped Millenium. In "Futurama (8:30 p.m., Sundays on Fox)," Groening's target is the hi-tech future, and if it isn't pretty, it's sure funny as hell.
Our hero Fry is a pizza delivery boy with higher aspirations who, through a series of mishaps, is catapulted 1,000 years into the future, where he hooks up with a shoplifting robot named Bender and a lonely Cyclops who was originally supposed to be his "fate" counselor - that is, it was her job to make sure he had as crummy a job in the future as he'd had in the past, because that's what the compute program chose for him.
When he thinks about it, Fry is delighted to be free of his former family, girlfriend and job. But he wants a better life for himself, running afoul of future regulations, which are centered on the universal principle that "You gotta do what you gotta do." With Bender's help, he runs from the police - who beat people of the future with wimpy "Star Wars" Jedi laser swords rather than guns and clubs.Fry takes refuge in the Hall of Heads, a repository for still-talking, important heads from the past.
Appropriately enough, the first head he runs into is that of Leonard Nimoy, who's being fed fish-flake food in his jar. Asked by the incredulous and worshipful Fry what he's doing there, Nimoy declines Fry's request that he do "Spock" talk. He tells Fry that he's leading a life of "quiet dignity." (Groening's head is one of those lined up in a row of jars).
The second head Fry encounter's is that or Richard Nixon, whose jar breaks in the tussle and who vengefully clamps his teeth into Fry's arm and won't let go.
Like the "Simpsons," "Futurama" is subversive, rebellious and scathing. In an upcoming episode, Fry - who ends up being an interstellar pizza delivery boy despite himself - meets a race of aliens who happen to spend part of their time in liquid form.
Fry gets along with them fine, until he accidentally drinks the emperor.
"The 10-year-old Simpsons" was a landmark in the bland history of commercial television. It defied almost every conventional wisdom about demographics and market research. No network executive believed that America was interested in a dysfunctional cartoon family led by an addled Mom in a bee-hive hairdo and a fat, bald wreck of a father. Only Fox, struggling to invent itself as a new network, dared to put it on. By May, there will be at least eight mostly iconoclastic cartoons on television, including "King Of The Hill", and "Family Guy", another Fox show that takes aim at families.
"Futurama isn't as revolutionary as "The Simpsons," mostly because the idea of the satirical non-kid TV cartoon isn't as original anymore. But judging from the first episode, it's as funny, and for the sci-fi worshippers, geeks and nerds it targets, hits even closer to home.
CmdrTacoMatt Groening's "The Simpsons" is an icon. Its a hard act to follow, but he's actually done it with Futurama. Don't kid yourself- its not as good as "Peak Simpsons" (which I define roughly as Season 3 through 6 or so, give or a take several episodes on either side) but this is television we're dealing with. Its a cespool guys, and this show doesn't stink, so its good simply because of what its surrounded by.
The show is simply "Guy From Present Winds up in Future". (like Back to the Future 2, or The Time Machine, or maybe Planet of the Apes, and, well, thousands of other books and movies with the same premise). In this case, The Future that "Fry" (our hero, a pizza delivery boy) is a mishmash of every future you've seen or read about. It steals from Trek, Star Wars, 1984, and warps them appropriately through Groening's artistic and humourist perspective. In short, its worth seeing just to see the stunning parody of every sci fi you've ever seen, and done well.
Last nights episode suffered from the same problem as every premiere episode of every show: to much time spent introducing the characters and environment. On one hand, the environment is fascinating- the charachters look like Simpsons characters of course, its Matt's trademark style. It's just like Life in Hell. But the backgrounds have much more depth, and many of the objects are actually 3D objects. Its much more advanced then The Simpsons would ever try (outside of a halloween episode anyway), and it all works. It looks good. It feels right.
The advantage of a sitcom in its 3rd season is that you know the exactly how and why charachters operate, so you can simply enjoy their wacky misadventures. The struggle of a new show is to set the characters up. The first few seasons of The Simpsons struggled as the writers tried to find the angles that worked. As the shows focus shifted from Bart's wise cracking, to the "Family", with the major emphasis on Homer, the show improved. Likewise, Futurama has to find its footing.
Its got a good start. The characters aren't bad. Bender is especially interesting. But as with The Simpsons, the guest appearances are what really make the show shine. In this case, the Heads of famous people appear in jars and are quite funny (this weeks episode included the heads of Leonard Nemoy, Richard Nixon, and even Matt Groening himself).
Futurama suffers from the same flaw as modern Simpsons episodes though- the end of the show almost tried to have a moral. The best of the Simpsons never tried to preach, it simply did its thing- and while there often is a moral, it doesn't sit down and scream it at you like a minister on a roll in his Sunday Sermon. South Park has it right- the "Moral" is terribly overdone- a parody of the crappy sitcoms that it strives to mock. Early Simpsons had it right too- the "Moral" simply isn't summarized at the end of the show. Futurama blew that one with a cheesy little dialog about being free to choose your own destiny.
Some things are obvious guys. You don't need to say them. But this is a minor nitpick relative to the number of good gags and jokes (and yes, social commentary) scattered throughout the show.
Anyway, I'll tune in again. Its visually pleasing, and as long as its in a sweet time slot (between Simpsons and X-Files for example) I won't run off to check my email. And I'll give it a few episodes to find its footing.
"This time, the target is us - nerds, geeks, the power of computing, the sci-fi culture and the insanely-hyped Millenium."
Us?! Katz != geek.
I await the censors.
Posted by Stanks:
Here we go again with another round of Katz... Notice how he skitters away from taking ownership of his opinions by the repeated use of the word, "our."
Katz, I am not happy with your attempt to group us all together like a hippy commune. If you're going to state your opinion, take ownership for it. Isn't this the basics of journalism?
I won't watch a TV show until I can recompile it from the source footage!
was when the guy says,
"Stop, we have you partially surrounded!"
And the brick falls out of Bender's ass. I rolled on the floor laughing.
Of course, like any PHB, I'm easily distracted by shiny objects....
-Randy
- Kate
"DNA is life. The rest is just translation."
I think the little "preachy" part at the end of the
episode was intentially ironic. Remember, Fry
wanted freedom of selfdetermination because he
did not want to be stuck being a delivery guy the
rest of his life. And what did he end up as at
the end of the episode? a delivery guy.
As someone with limited amateur-level experience in creating 3D art and animation, Futurama is simply incredible. They took "real" 3D objects and made it look like a forced-perspective 2D cartoon.
Simply amazing!
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
In the suicide booth, Bender uses a quarter tied
....31.
..uh.. officer ID number?
to his finger to pay for it, then yanks the
quarter out--even though he's committing suicide
and won't be able to use it again.
In the bar, Bender talks about how he could bend
girders to any degree... 30, 32,
Bender's 'Olde Fortran' Malt Liquor
In "Old New York" after Fry talks about never
seeing anyone he knows again, Blender
says "there's someone you know!" (Refering to
Leela, who at the time was hunting them down)
This is the best: When Fry and Leela have
their "moment" Bender puts his hand on top of
both of theirs, stealing Leela's ring. Leela
quickly notices and Bender gives it back. Then
he says "Well, that solves the case of the
missing ring! This calls for a drink." He then
pulls out 3 beers, and instead of giving one to
each person, chugs them all.
Another part, that everyone knows, is when they
are partially surrounded, he $h*ts a brick.
One other thing, I wasn't sure if it was
intentional or not... After he $h*ts the brick,
he says "We're Boned!" The first time I thought
he said "Doomed" but after playing it through
over and over I discovered it is "Boned." Can
they not say "screwed" on television, or was it
just something stupid that I took way to far?
One footnote--Another thing I noticed (not about
Bender) was Leela's
When she called for backup, she said this is agent
"1 B D I". Just something small and stupid that
I overlooked the first time thru.
__________________
~enucite~
I don't remember where (maybe the faq), but Rob has said that he's a programmer, not a writer. I mean, come on; all the thousands of lines of code it takes to run a joint like Slashdot and you're going to fault him for some silly spelling mistakes? Have you ever noticed that the mistakes are generally always the same ones? For example, "to" and "too" are often switched, and the "charac(h)ter" example already mentioned. This probably means that this is how he thinks the word is spelt, in which case the mistake would not be detected upon rereading.
The emphasis on spelling is completely overdone in our society. We have all these spelling bees which really serve no purpose. The national spelling bee is broadcast on ESPN to give the kids a sense of importance, but honestly, spelling is one of the more useless talents a person can have.
Spelling is, of course, important. Proper spelling is necessary in major publications, such as the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times in order for them to be taken seriously. But such publications have armies of editors who proofread articles for a living, and are trained to pick up typographical, spelling, and grammatical errors. Would you suggest Rob employ such a person? What a waste that would be.
There was a guy in my eleventh grade English class who had atrocious spelling. I can't recall any illustrative examples right now, but I remember that it was pretty terrible. The teacher told us repeatedly that spelling had nothing to do with writing ability, and that some of the best writing she had ever seen was riddled with egregious ($5 please) spelling errors. I, being of the old "if-you-can't-spell-you-can't-write" school of thought, scoffed at her claims. But as the year progressed and I read more of Steve (the bad speller)'s writing, I began to see that she was correct. Despite the errors, his was some of the most beautiful writing I had ever seen. The Educational Testing Service agreed, awarding him a 5 (out of 5) on the English Language and Composition AP Exam.
And though it's true that spell- and grammar-checkers are available (if not ubiquitous [$5]), who actually writes up their Slashdot comments in Word (or whatever word-processor you prefer), spell-checks them, then cuts-and-pastes them into the Comment box? ANYBODY?
If you do, sir/madam, you are almost as anal as the guy I met freshman year who refused to make web pages because they didn't look "exactly" the way he wanted, and instead included links to
So in short what I am trying to say is lay off the spelling issue. If it bothers you that much, maybe just email Rob a version sans-errors that he can repost if he wants. I don't really know. I usually pride myself on correct spelling (not to say I don't make frequent mistakes) but I rarely come down on anyone else for their spelling ability (or lack thereof). It's rather petty and doesn't affect the quality of the content. Would you rather Rob stop to examine every "to" or continue writing splendid content? Hmm?
Right.
Number of errors in this post: _____
Ha!
PS - regarding the moderation, if a post is marked with a -1, how can people see the replies to it if their threshold is +1? Just wondering. I keep mine at -1.
-Begin Evan's Dumb Signature.....
rooooar
"a shoplifting robot named Bender"
Shoplifting? Maybe in future episodes... they foreshadowed with the "swipe the ring" bit at the end. But you couldn't get that from this episode. The rest of the article has this problem - it sounds like he's reviewing the press releases than the actual episode.
"a lonely Cyclops"
No mention that she is an alien. With Xena on prime time, you might point out her purple hair and non-human species. Cyclops is a greek myth.
"beat people of the future with wimpy "Star Wars" Jedi laser swords"
They are lightsabers. "Jedi laser swords"? Think of your audiance when you write, Katz. We know and recognize the term "lightsaber".
And they aren't wimpy.
"the first head he runs into is that of Leonard Nimoy, who's being fed fish-flake food in his jar. Asked by the incredulous and worshipful Fry what he's doing there, Nimoy declines Fry's request that he do "Spock" talk. He tells Fry that he's leading a life of "quiet dignity." "
Wow, he beat this great scene all to hell. First off, Fry asked Nimoy to hold his hand in the Vulcan "V" hand gesture (a la "Live long and prosper". Nimoy indicates that he can't -- no arms. I don't see what the heck this has to do with "Spock" talk. (Actually it was that "Spock" talk phrase that made this rant occur).
The "quiet dignity" occurs just before the food is dropped in the jar. That makes it much funnier than the implication above - that Nimoy is being fed when Fry encounters him.
"No network executive believed that America was interested in a dysfunctional cartoon family led by an addled Mom in a bee-hive hairdo and a fat, bald wreck of a father."
Yeah, there was nothing like "All in the Family" (a predecessor), "Married with Children" (another FOX original series that set the tone of the network), or the proven sucess of the Simpsons as a regular segment on the "Tracey Ullman Show".
--
Evan "Maybe it was that coffee I brewed with Water Joe... I seem to have very low tolerance, and I can't even type SQL statements today" E.
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Matt G, the shows creator says that there lots of "VCR moments" or subtle things that you might not get unless you tape the show..I think he said it in the Wired interview....
There seemed to be a lot of signs and stuff in the background, you couldn't get to read unless you'd taped it... I should get A VCR....
This is similar to the simpsons which has (ie when bart cheats on his aptitude test, there is a picture of him next to einsteins picture in the principals office.) hard to see unless you've seen the episode many times.