Hint: 27 times 2.
Let’s just hope that the only thing neo-Futurama has in common with neo-Family Guy that they were both revived on the basis of DVD sales and an active fanbase.
I never watched Futurama when it was on its first run. I only caught it when Adult Swim was showing it and fell in love with it after that so I don’t know how to gauge the new episodes in “real time” like the last ones. I thought the first episode was good and the second sucked. Whomever made the comment of “the first episode was written by a vet, and the second a new writer” made a very good point. I’m really hoping that the “from broadcast to cable” aspect doesn’t hurt the series and make it go to stupid toilet humor.
Anyone else not like it that Leela and Fry are in love? I loved that a common thread in the entire first run of the series (and the first movie) was Fry loves Leela who doesn’t love him. It was the basis for two of the high drama episodes (Devil’s hands and the Globetrotter one) and the basis for a lot of other high quality eps (Valentines day candy one, the worms, the one where she gets a second eye). It would kinda be killing a small bit of momentum in the new series to retcon (is that the word?) back to the original…but I kinda hope they do.
The difference between this re-boot and Family Guy’s is that Family Guy is not even the same show anymore. Not even counting the quality of shows…it’s literally a totally different show.
I was telling a friend that this time around, I bet Fry dumps Leela.
How is Family Guy different? I hated it when it was new, came to tolerate it when it was in reruns, and now watch the new ones when I don’t have anything better going on.
I have to disagree with that sentiment. Leela doesn’t not love Fry… near the beginning of the series Fry latches onto the first woman meets because he’s a 25 year old delivery boy who has no idea what a a normal healthy relationship is like. As the series progresses, he learns how to actually be friends with a woman and hopelessly falls in love with Leela because even though she is demanding , she is nothing like the manipulator that Michele was. She doesn’t string him along and make him do things he doesn’t have the ambition to do. While Leela would rather he change, she doesn’t make him. Leela doesn’t exactly not love him, she has feelings for him but can’t see herself with him until he grows up a little bit. We can see that in Why of Fry and in the first movie as well.
And in the second movie, it really exposes Leela’ character (without slapping you in the face with it)
She is the only sentient being in the whole universe not to succumb to LOVING THE TENTACLE. She was determined enough not to let go of herself and be absorbed into some one else’s control, love be damned. Then, when everyone is on Yivo, she sees that it’s not so bad, and that all her friends are happy and like it, she makes her own choice that she will love Yivo too. That’s a turning point for Leela as she finally lets go of her mistrust of relationships. This is why, despite giving Fry a different look in the first movie, they aren’t together in the second movie. Leela needed to develop herself first.
So with the events in the first movie where she can see that Fry is capable of being a mature responsible adult, the second movie where she grows up a little too, in the last movie, she can finally appreciate Fry’s devotion to her, trust him, and give the relationship a chance. So, it’s not a retcon, just really good character development.
And as you can see… I spend entirely too much time dissecting Leela and Fry’s relationship.
All I can say is a perfect episode title would be “A Bit of Fry and Leela.”
In short (since I could go on further) before the reboot Family Guy was a funny, irreverent, cartoon. Its humor were the cutaway gags but the jokes in them were random, relied in humor that actually made you think, and actually used history and pop culture as part of its humor.
Since the reboot Family Guy is the “Seth Macfarlands opinion on (insert topic here)” show and every cutaway uses a stupid celebrity trope/social commentary angle on it. It’s gone beyond pop culture humor and after the cut away you aren’t laughing and going “that was stupid” but now saying “omg I can’t believe they said that”.
Approved for all audiences!
Nah. The series has been building up to that for a long time. I would hate for them to suddenly dismiss it out of hand the way they did with Kif and Amy.
I finally caught the second episode but wasn’t paying close attention - did they explicitly address the issue of them all being fugitives? Or are we to assume that they all got pardons for helping out Nixon on this mission?
All I care about is that the episodes are funny. If an episode is also heart-warming, or furthers continuity, or brings back a familiar character – those are all a distant second place in terms of importance vs. “is it funny?”. So a love story with jokes tacked on is bad. A funny story with a love scene tacked on is fine.
For instance, I found “Jurassic Bark” and “The Devil’s Hands” weren’t very funny, so I didn’t care for them. On the other hand, I thought “Parasites Lost” was very funny, and the love story bit was a nice touch as well.
Yeah, I caught the rerun. Bender did have two eyes when he came out of the cyclophage’s mouth. Definitely a continuity error.
The second one did seem weaker, although I’ve noticed with Futurama that sometimes episodes take a while to grow on you. There were a couple of nice touches, though.
Leela: “This is the moment we should have been training for!”
When Zap touches the scanner in the sub-White House, I was thinking “Hey, he’s wearing a glove!”. And the scanner goes: “Glove identified.”
“Proceed Mrs Eisenhower.”
Hmm…no responses about tonite’s new ep? Might deserve it’s own new thread perhaps, but I loved the lampooning of all the trendy tech-craze keeping-up-with-the-Farnsworths stuff-several moments had me laughing pretty hard. Frankly the idea of someone inserting some sort of electronic gizmo into my head is a pretty chilling prospect.
Great episode tonight! I liked that they didn’t wrap everything up in a neat little package at the end.
So after episode 2 of the new season, are Fry and Leela no longer in a “relationship”?
Leela said “Thanks Fry, you’re a good friend”.
Yeah, there is a thread actually, but it looks like it was posted around the time you were posting, so it would have been quite easy to miss. It’s here: Futurama July 1: "Attack of the Killer App" - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board