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TV Database Futurama (1999)

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3.00/5 1 Votes

Genre: Animation,Comedy,Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Director: Matt Groening

First aired:

Last air date:

Show status: Returning Series

Overview: The adventures of a late-20th-century New York City pizza delivery boy, Philip J. Fry, who, after being unwittingly cryogenically frozen for one thousand years, finds employment at Planet Express, an interplanetary delivery company in the retro-futuristic 31st century.

Where to watch

Trailer Cast

    • Billy West

      Fry / Professor Farnsworth / Zoidberg / Zapp Brannigan (voice)
    • Katey Sagal

      Leela (voice)
    • John DiMaggio

      Bender (voice)
    • Tress MacNeille

      Mom (voice)
    • Maurice LaMarche

      Morbo / Kif Kroker (voice)
    • Lauren Tom

      Amy Wong (voice)
    • Phil LaMarr

      Hermes Conrad (voice)
    • David Herman

      Scruffy (voice)
Show information in first post provided by The Movie Database
Futurama
Parasites Regained
Season: 8
Episode: 4
Air date: 2023-08-14

Guest stars: Kyle MacLachlan,Ego Nwodim,Frank Welker
After Nibbler falls ill, the crew shrinks down for a dangerous mission into a desert world contained within his litter box.

Finally, a great episode, possibly the best since the reboot's inception. I haven't seen Dune, but I know enough to vaguely know what the show is parodying, and if you're gonna do a sci-fi comedy that's as nerdy as Futurama (having an aleph numeral as a trivial math joke in this very episode, for one), it makes sense to involve one of the most iconic sci-fi franchises of all time, especially now that Dune has entered the mainstream stratosphere.

The whole Nibbler losing his intelligence plot has been compared to dementia by some audiences, and I'm glad that subtext exists, but I think I've finally come to accept that for Futurama, even if it's rarely going to hit the emotional peaks of The Simpsons (see my favorite episode, "Lisa's Substitute"), its entertainment value lies in just goofing around with irreverence (though in a less cynical way than Rick and Morty) with cool sci-fi homages. For example, Leela straight up had Nibbler swallow an entire dog (and his owner) at the beginning of the episode, and nobody bats an eye. That's because that's the kind of zany vibe Futurama (and by extension, the Simpsons after season 2) operates on, just goofing around with riffs on stuff, occasionally offering tearjerking moments.

The strongest Futurama episodes though, in my memory, usually focus heavily on the character relationships and those emotional pathos between them (see "Leela's Homeworld"), and I think "Parasites Regained", while not nearly as great as those older episodes, finally hits closer to that vibe in this episode than when the reboot started with Leela and Nibbler's relationship and her not just not wanting to lose a pet, but not wanting to lose a companion she would often share intellectual musings with. So that whole "dementia" angle fits here, and I appreciate that.

Seriously though, those Dune references were pretty cool even without fully understanding them. I really dig that epic adventure in the sands atmosphere (even though it's just Nibbler's litter box), keeping the Dune aesthetic authentic with the spice-parody, and they even went so far as to get Kyle MacLachlan to voice the dung beetle general here.
Futurama
Related to Items You've Viewed
Season: 8
Episode: 5
Air date: 2023-08-21

Guest stars: Al Gore
Bender uncovers the mysteries of the vast Momazon corporation.

Even though it's more relevant now than ever, corpos being bad and AI being untrustworthy and rebellious is old hat, and this episode's attempt at messaging is also not subtle. That said, at least it's a messaging I could get behind, and more importantly, it's a funny episode that carried its message well.

From my Singaporean perspective though, using Amazon feels more justifiable because you literally couldn't get many American products through local means over here, especially with older blu-ray sets or collectible items. At least with Americans, they could support their local shops, or even head downtown, not traverse to another entirely different country. The shipping at Amazon is outrageous though, especially from America to Singapore, so it's not a service I regularly used.

The Leela and Fry stuff is pretty great as well, with their relationship feeling like it's finally gained progress throughout this entire season compared to the older ones, this time having them move in together and having their obligatory couple squabble (and immediate make-up). I like the pace of where their relationship is going.
Futurama
I Know What You Did Next Xmas
Season: 8
Episode: 6
Air date: 2023-08-28

Guest stars: Coolio,Dawnn Lewis,Feodor Chin,Mark Hamill,Cara Delevingne,Kevin Michael Richardson,Kath Soucie
Bender and Zoidberg travel through time to attack Robot Santa.

Bender and Zoidberg feels like an odd couple on paper, but they are in fact an even more compatible version of Bender and Fry, or S&M without the sexual parts. Zoidberg's craving for attention means he's willing to go to any length to please the always demanding hedonistic Bender, including construing abuse as compliments.

Early in the episode, Farnsworth had apparently "fixed" Santa using a time machine by reversing his naughty and nice sensor so everyone's in Christmas spirit to celebrate the holiday in a normal way for once. This leads us to this Christmas episode where the odd couple goes on a time-napping of Robot Santa in order to ruin Christmas for everyone else because they ended up as the only ones not having family to visit during the holidays. Things go awry, as they do, but they inadvertently ended up as heroes because Farnsworth pulled a Fry and did a self-fulfilling prophesy, making Santa evil in his attempt to fix said evil-ness.

Throughout the Hulu revival season, the show has spent quite a few episodes revisiting past plotlines to either bring back old characters, or better yet, further develop them into meaningful, even emotional arcs. This episode's attempt to explain how Robot Santa became evil was much appreciated, not only because his origin kept slipping out of my mind (and this episode probably knows how vague his origin can be since it literally offers a plot-dump recap), but the "I accidentally made Santa a fascist" goof-up is such an amusing Farnsworth thing to do, and it's a pretty clever way to properly tie up loose ends. I don't think the Hulu additional plot-developments were particularly amazing or creative, but I do appreciate the effort to progress the continuity rather than just do random whacky episodes without rhyme or reason (see Zombie Simpsons).

Also, thanks to Futurama, TIL that turducken exists. lol

The rest of the episode outside of Bender and Zoidberg's hijinks though is pretty standard Futurama "hey it's the future" riffs on Christmas, nothing too outstanding. I also found the revelation of what the eponymous "I know what you did next Christmas" is referring to rather lame and underwhelming.
Futurama
Rage Against the Vaccine
Season: 8
Episode: 7
Air date: 2023-09-04

Guest stars: Dawnn Lewis,Bill Nye,Feodor Chin,Kevin Michael Richardson
A pandemic ravages future Earth.

Bender: "Kill all humans! Kill all humans!"
Zoidberg: "Can robots even get the virus?"
Bender: "What virus?"

It's one of those all-gags episode that's prominently seen in Matt Groening's shows. Sure, it tackles something topical, but unlike something like X-Men: The Animated Series where it preaches about prejudice amidst a pandemic, this episode is more interested in just running through well-worn covid jokes that are still kinda funny if you lived through the pandemic (screw the swab test up your nostrils; the episode accurately showed how uncomfortable that was). The jokes about the paranoia surrounding the vaccine is very broad and didn't bother to take into consideration why people were skeptical of the government, but I'll let it slide just because of how funny the rest of the episode is.

Hermes (the poor cuck)' plot about using voodoo to resolve the virus situation is your usual Futurama brand of cleverness, in that it's obviously used as a metaphor for how something superstitious like voodoo (or in the real world's case, government policies) can actually be reliable. It's not a mind-blowing metaphor, but it's clever enough that it works.
Futurama
Zapp Gets Canceled
Season: 8
Episode: 8
Air date: 2023-09-11

Guest stars: Kathy Griffin
When Zapp Brannigan is canceled for crude behavior, Leela takes over as captain of the Nimbus on a critical mission.

“Governments change, but the lies stay the same.”

This was a strong and clever (and also very funny) episode, but it also hits your usual beats of appealing to both sides in the woke culture debate. In this latest attempt to progress the characters and plotlines of old Futurama, Hulu has now finally called out on Zapp's toxicity on an official channel, letting Kif have his day of victory, which is satisfying, but it's also smart enough to recognize that changing leaders doesn't remove institutional rot (see "The Wire"), and Leela got in a little over her head when she realized the moral compromises she had to make as part of the big boys. It might not involve problematic male-gaze or patriarchal oppression, but it's still brow-raising politics that take advantage of an indigenous culture.

I guess that's just how people are, as reflected not just in modern politics, but also entertainment. We dislike one politician or showrunner, have them replaced by someone who's either incompetent or just as problematic, and then wish for that replacement to be replaced again.

I like that the indigenous species, the Tactillians, are just as inappropriate as Zapp, but the matriarchal Glab just accepts it because politics (her excuse being "it's their custom"). There's also the sensitivity training instructor, Dr. Gary Kind, who turned out to be one of the sensitivity trainee in disguise, used the PC culture to his advantage. This exploration of the broken system is further shown at the end when Zapp didn't learn to be more sensitive, merely that his insensitivity will get him cancelled. It's close to being South Park level of cleverness, if a little hackneyed.

Biggest laugh?
Kif: He made me watch him perform an erotic fan dance with a ping-pong paddle and a no-show sock.
Zapp: It was a different time!
Kif: It was yesterday!
Zapp: So you admit it!
Futurama
The Prince and the Product
Season: 8
Episode: 9
Air date: 2023-09-18

The crew members are reborn as toys.

"Last night's Futurama was, without a doubt, the worst episode ever! Rest assured that I was on the internet within minutes." - Comic Book Guy, probably

Oh boy. I don't even know what to say. What happened? We had such a great string of episodes that progressed old Futurama storylines meaningfully without feeling like recycled plots. Hell, last episode finally had Zapp cancelled, something never happened before in the past seven seasons of this show! And now we're back to very dumb one-off Treehouse of Horror episodes that ignore continuity in the most annoying way: making Fry a cuck.

Perhaps it's because I'm a guy, a straight guy no less, but I find little humor in making male cuckolds the joke, especially in our "it's funny because it's a man" era of comedy. Perhaps I'm just crazy in a world of sane, but I'm willing to bet I'm not.

The Round Wheels segment is obviously the funnier and most creatively-inspired one where Zoidberg is the villain, but the rest of the short story segments just feel so by-the-numbers, only to be topped off by the laziest writing of all: It's just a spell! A science spell!

As I mentioned when I discussed my immediate reaction to this episode, "This is zombie Simpsons level of bad. This is season 10/11 Simpsons level of bad. This is Simpsons, "Kill the Alligator and Run" level of bad. It's like if Homer cheated on Marge in front of her and blamed it on a magic donut. Leela went full Jerkass Homer, and then some."
Futurama
All the Way Down
Season: 8
Episode: 10
Air date: 2023-09-25

The crew investigates whether the universe is a simulation.

It's a decent episode that plays on an old idea of "what if we're in a simulation?". The high concept is fine, but I guess I'm just so used to these Futurama gimmicky episodes with jokes inserted to them that it doesn't do much for me.

Daily Poll: Which universe do you prefer?

  • Marvel

    Votes: 1 33.3%
  • DC

    Votes: 2 66.7%
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