So? None of that changes the fact that he is dated as a cultural reference.
Most people under 30 just aren’t going to get 20- and 30-year-old references like these. It makes the show feel as though it’s written by culturally out-of-touch 40-somethings or 50-somethings still mostly stuck in the 1970s.
Fuck 'em. They got the whole inner nets to play with. Let us have this.
And that’s what makes it good.
You make it sound like Futurama is written by, I dunno, some kinda nerds.
Actually most comic book nerds do know him recently for his Groo the wanderer comic book.
The last series of it, “Groo The Hogs of Horder” is being published right now.
What about references to 1930s space adventure serials or abstract algebra? Or in the '90s, when Martin Prince made a joke about winning tickets to Supertramp on The Simpsons?
It’s a show by geeks, for geeks, not hipsters and trendsetters.
This episode bored me, frankly. Didn’t like it much at all, though Fry’s drawings were cute.
On the other hand, I rewatched last week’s episode and found that it was even funnier than I remembered.
I think mathematician Ken Keeler must’ve come up with the news vans joke.
Square Root 2 News and 4th Root 4 News, indeed!
Yeah, OK, but it doesn’t have to be a series by and for old geeks.
Geekiness and youth are not mutually exclusive, you know. 
No, it doesn’t, but it kind of is…if, by “old” you mean GenX. I mean, it operates on the philosophy of giving enough laughs for everyone, but GenX geeks are the core target audience, IMHO.
Let’s put it in perspective. A lot of the people you find living in the Head Museum are going to be at least 1000 years old. In the year 3010, it’s all dated. Throw us oldsters a bone. That’s what makes the show great. Just because you don’t get a reference doesn’t mean it’s unimportant to a lot of us. The show is mainly for adults, after all. Even those of us who lived before the 70s.
Oh I get the references. I’m no kid myself. I just question whether the show can draw a young audience (and thus stay on the air) with inside jokes about stuff that happened 30 years ago.
I didn’t know who Sergio so and so was, and I still laughed at Fry enthusiastically presenting his crappy comic. You don’t *need *to know who he is. Context made it clear that he’s a famous comic creator, and he’s about to dis Fry’s work. Anythng else is bonus.
The reason Futurama is so great is *because *it has obscure jokes mixed in with the slapstick. Don’t get the joke about the quantum horse race? That’s okay, because a minute later, Fry’s going to be climbing a telephone pole during a lightning storm while holding a rake. If the writers decided to make the show more “easily accessible” by nixing the jokes most people wouldn’t instantly get, it would destroy the show.
And what person over the age of, say, 20 doesn’t know who Cheech and Chong are?
As for the episode itself, I thought the individual gags were great (anyone notice the Australian man working in the mine?) but the ending was unbelievably obvious. I knew from the moment Ndnd pulled the gun that someone was about to get teleported.
My sister is 21 and all her friends are about that age, and they love Futurama even if they don’t get every single reference. Some people don’t need to have every second be all about them and their cultural touch stones to enjoy comedy.
I wasn’t talking about you in particular, just people in general. Sorry if I wasn’t clear. But if they take away the Cheech and Chong jokes or the Soylent Cola gags just to cater to the 20-somethings, they are going to lose a lot of their viewers. Not a lot of people remember Mork and Mindy, but I howled when Bender said “Dork calling Orson, Dork calling Orson.” That joke definitely wasn’t wasted.
References to before-my-time pop culture are the primary way I know about a lot of stuff that happened before I was born, so I kinda like them in TV even when I don’t completely “get” it. Obviously a show with nothing but Mork and Mindy references isn’t going to last long, but one or two isn’t going to hurt.
Plus, the premise of Futurama is basically built on referencing old sci-fi stories, so not doing anything pre-1990 would be pretty limiting.
I watched the last couple episodes all at once and thought that in general the show has gotten much better over the streatch of the new season (I thought the first few were really weak), but that this last one was actually the only one that didn’t follow the trend of each episode being better then the last.
Okay, I’m 25, and you’d better bet I know about Mork and Mindy, and the War of the Worlds broadcast. Sergio whatever–nah, but I’m not sure why I needed to get it–he’s obviously a comic book writer, and that’s all I need to know for the rest of the scene.
That said, I don’t usually laugh at Futurama, and this was no exception. But I don’t think laughter is necessary to enjoy a series like this.
Well, if you introduce a transporter gun in the first act, you better use it by the third.
I think it’s called “Kirk’s rule”, or something else Trekkish.
And no, it is not referring to the Star Trek Russian guy, but to the playwright Anton Pavlovich Chekhov.
I agree with everything written here (Even the age) cuz it applies to me.
Not counting the end because I actually DO laugh at Futurama.