Futurama! 26 New Episodes! Not Movies! Resurrected!

[Danny Stephenson]

A friend has just linked me to this:

http://ausiellofiles.ew.com/2009/06/its-official-futurama-returns.html

FOX finally got the hint…

Topic

[Moonlight]

Saw a new post but I can’t read it because the topic isn’t displaying at all.

Edit: I can now see the thread after making this post.

[Moonlight]

I’m not really a fan of the term, but to me you can only really go “Zombie” after having so many years of being automatically renewed that you become complacent. In terms of quality I’d equate Hulurama to the Scully or early Jean eras rather than the full “Zombie Simpsons” era of the late teens and 20s seasons. The fruit may not be fresh, but it’s still got the juice.

Scully Simpsons might be a better comparison (although I think those episodes are a lot funnier on average), but I’d be more comfortable making it if Hulurama starts doing deranged third act swerves and ending episodes with Fry plunging into a volcano with no resolution.

Although on that note, I’ll be real, when I think problems with Scully Simpsons I immediately jump to how often it does things that feel fundamentally out of step with what the show had always been up to that point. Hulurama isn’t swinging for the fences with big, crazy ideas and the apathy I feel for its weaker entries is an entirely different reaction from the bemused incredulity I feel towards Simpsons episodes like Missionary: Impossible. It’s much closer to how I feel about a mediocre HD Simpsons episode, i.e. “yawn, never watching that again.”

But that’s probably me taking the comparison far too literally.

[Ben Saunders]

Disney+ is insane, since the Fox deal they not only have The Simpsons and Futurama, but Family Guy, and for some ungodly reason it has Peep Show of all things. The show full of fucking and blackface and multiple slurs. Maybe I’m the old fogey for thinking Disney = family friendly, but i was still taken aback when my flatmate told me that’s where he’s watching Peep Show.

[Flap Jack]

Yep, The Simpsons, Futurama, Family Guy, King of the Hill, American Dad, and even The Cleveland Show – all available on Disney+ UK! Subscribe for as little as £4.99 per month from a streaming service store near you, terms and conditions apply, the only Indiana Jones film currently available is the recent one that people were kind of lukewarm on.

They also have Bob’s Burgers. Anyone else like Bob’s Burgers? I’m quite fond of it.

[Unrumble]

 Anyone else like Bob’s Burgers? I’m quite fond of it.

I love Bob’s Burgers, picked it up about 8 or 9 years ago, and have followed each new season ever since. They’ve achieved the Parks & Recs balance of cosiness without over-sentimentality.

[Ben Saunders]

You also get the (I believe) Disney+ exclusive Macklunkey edit of A New Hope. I love George Lucas and will defend almost anything he’s done, but fucking hell man.

[Flap Jack]

The Maclunkey (actually “Ma klounkee”, which is Huttese for “I am definitely about to try and murder you, therefore it would be 100% ethical for you to shoot me, you’d still totally be a good guy, no worries”) edit of A New Hope was released on 4K Blu-ray back in 2020, so hopefully it being a Disney+ exclusive wasn’t the reason you subscribed.

For what it’s worth, despite adding a Maclunkey the Disney versions of the original trilogy are quite a bit better than the previous Blu-ray versions, because they re-scanned the negatives in 4K and re-created the post 1997 changes with greater competence. They still didn’t think to de-credit Clive Revill though, which I find kind of funny.

[Technopeasant]

As my wife was a fairly early adopter of Disney+, I can say the Fox acquisition was a gamechanger in terms of value. Otherwise it was indeed overly skewed to the family friendly demographic.

Bob’s Burgers was frankly starting to lose it (characters were getting Flanderized and Gene actually creepy) but has picked up a lot since the movie and the latest season was very good. If I have to watch one more “film parodies but framed as the kid’s weird stories” episode I may scream though.

[Cardinal_Hordriss]

 Anyone else like Bob’s Burgers? I’m quite fond of it.

I love Bob’s Burgers, picked it up about 8 or 9 years ago, and have followed each new season ever since. They’ve achieved the Parks & Recs balance of cosiness without over-sentimentality.

Me too. Love Bob’s Burgers.

[Technopeasant]

The show or the food?

[Moonlight]

I’ve watched 2 episodes and it seems to be the same kind of “It’s fine, I guess…” 

[Flap Jack]

Looks like the era of production codes starting with the season number is over. AACV, not 10ACV? They’ll regret that when they get to Season 36 / 39!

Only watched the first episode so far, and yeah, while I’m personally happy with Futurama at this level, I can see why if you were “meh” on the Hulu era previously, this wasn’t going to turn you around. The episode was fun, and I enjoyed seeing the Robot Devil, but the premise was pretty thin (… or short?). Plus it’s basically an in-canon redo of that one Anthology of Interest segment. And yet they still won’t bring that back, despite how much the writers seem to love both anthology episodes and alternate universe stories!

By the way, does the Hulu version of the show still do the “HULURAMA” thing in the intro?

[Moonlight]

I thought the first episode was a lot stronger than the second.

[Moonlight]

By the way, does the Hulu version of the show still do the “HULURAMA” thing in the intro?

Yes.

Just heard eyes described as “limpid pools” in episode 3.

[Flap Jack]

Thanks for confirming. I thought maybe they would have got over that gimmick now they’re onto the second episode order, but I guess not.

And hey, Futurama has been… coincidentally similar to Red Dwarf since it’s started, so this is continuation of that great tradition.

[Ridley]

I enjoyed the Baked Alaska exchange.

[Moonlight]

OK, episode 4 was properly good.

[Moonlight]

And hey, Futurama has been… coincidentally similar to Red Dwarf since it’s started, so this is continuation of that great tradition.

Episode 5 features the Professor walking in on Cubert playing a VR game and going into the game to get him.

[Flap Jack]

OK, I’ve watched the whole season now, and my impression is that once you get over the hump of the first 2 episodes, the rest of the batch is the strongest the Hulu era has been. Maybe not Fox era funny, but the feel was right. And despite my earlier snark, they did actually manage to go a whole season without doing either an anthology episode or an alternate universe episode. I’m proud of them.

And appropriately, “The White Hole” is the Dwarfiest episode of the bunch, but in a different way than expected.

[pi r squared]

It’s reassuring to know the season holds out strong. I’m only up to Episode 5 and am really enjoying it so far – the writing feels very OG Futurama, the dialogue all feels really in-character (“it’s a good job those spikes retracted at the last minute as far as I know” was used in the trailers I think, but is pretty typical of the voices being recaptured well), and I think the move away from super-topical ideas has benefited this season so far – not that I hated the crypto / MeToo / COVID / NFT stuff, but I think Futurama’s at it’s best when it’s at its most random. 

The gags seem to be landing well, as well. Even the ones that are absolutely telegraphed a mile off – the punchline to the “wean-ee” setup, for instance – are still being played effectively.

[Moonlight]

I do find myself getting really exhausted by the callbacks to FOX-era jokes though. They did a “lengths of wire” line two episodes in a row and they already did one last season, and each time it feels like the only joke is that we’re meant to recognize it from the pilot. It’s self-indulgent in the same way The Simpsons has been with the multiple Homer in the bushes callbacks in the past few years, except those were at least actually jokes beyond just being a reference.

I feel like I was always the one who liked Dave era Dwarf more than everyone around me and now I’m the one who isn’t impressed by new Futurama while everyone else seems to like it fine.

[Technopeasant]

Especially since Dave Dwarf is just as guilty of referencing past jokes, and is also a revival from a previous ropey continuation.

I do think Hulurama being kinda aimless and meh is partly why King of the Hulu landed as it did though. For all the flaws it has (more than many admit), it at least knew what it wanted to be.

Looking forward to sitting down to watch the new ones, mind. Even if personally I even feel the Fox era is overrated.

[Flap Jack]

As I’m in a Futurama-ish mood I decided to finally watch this popular Futurama ‘making of’ video that YouTube likes to relentlessly recommend to me. It’s pretty solid overall, but my eye did twitch when the narrator said “Seeing as how science fiction comedies didn’t really exist at the time, Groening and Cohen were mostly inspired by the low budget productions of old sci-fi television, like Doctor Who and Lost in Space”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNKdfvpFvgA

I know that technically Red Dwarf was in its Series VI/VII gap for the period of Futurama’s early development being described, but if they were able to base it on old non-comedic sci-fi, then why not old sci-fi comedies as well? If they didn’t, them not existing is obviously not the reason.

[Stephen R. Fletcher]

I think overall this run of episodes has been the strongest of the Hulu era so far. Not perfect, and maybe having them all in one go to watch had something to do with how I felt (Also, I personally loved watching Futurama this way, I know binge watching has it’s critics these days, but I’m all for it really).

My favourite of this batch is undoubtedly the season finale. Already watched that 3 times. Conceptually, I just loved it.

Also, just adding “The” to the title of their White Hole episode feels like a deliberate choice by them. If they’re not Red Dwarf fans, they must at least be aware of the White Hole episode and didn’t want people to think there were too many similarities? 

[Technopeasant]

Have Matt Groening or David X. Cohen ever come out as Red Dwarf fans? I know Groening is a Tom Baker fan.

[Dave]

[Moonlight]

I wasn’t expecting The White Hole to be Officer Rimmer.

So I think 4, 6, 9 and 10 are the episodes I really liked from this run. Of course I’d like the one with the cute talking animal. Typical.

[Technopeasant]

Yeah, I really don’t see why they decided to reference Pizzagate without seriously engaging with Pizzagate… the fact that there was indeed something off with the pepperoni sends mixed messages.

I did like the one where Zoidberg is adopted, even if I do not understand why Leela suddenly hates her parents. I appreciated the continuity that Decapodians die after mating.

The truffles episode was… something.

[Moonlight]

I liked the truffles episode a lot so maybe I am just swayed easily.

[Flap Jack]

Because Jambone is a treasure and must be protected at all costs.

[Technopeasant]

I didn’t say it was bad. Just really weird. Feels a bit like the Ameglian Major Cow without the bite, before recycling fat Bender from Anthology of Interest.

Wait a minute… no anthology episode this year? After finally managing a decent one last year?!

[Author]

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