So often the first two words that come out of anyone’s mouth when complaining about newer Futurama. I wonder if Matt, David X., and the rest of the creative team have come to realize was a horrible choice that was. It easily takes the crown for “Worst Thing Ever on Futurama”. As it is from only the third of the “new” episodes, I think it strongly poisoned people’s evaluation of everything that came after.
Look at this way, with places like Netflix, Redbox and probably even Amazon looking for original content, there are plenty of places to shop a show like this around to - assuming that they have the freedom to do so.
I don’t know what kind of budget you need for animated half hour show like Futurama, but since you don’t have a lot texture and detail work like do for something like UP! or Ice Age, I’m guessing it’s not too demanding, even at 24 frames per second. And it has to compare favorably to any scripted show with on camera actors except maybe some reality bullshit (which yes, is technically not “scripted”)
I would be thrilled if Netflix picked up Futurama. And they’re in the market, too…
I don’t have any of the CC stuff either simply because I don’t buy nearly as much physical media these days. As long as I can stream it from Netflix, I have no real desire to purchase it.
I wonder what people think the most dated reference is in the Fox run. I’d think the Nappster episode is up there.
I’ll see your Napster and raise you an entire episode about Beck.
The references have always been at least a tiny bit dated as per the heads in jars. Adam Yauch will definitely not be kept as a head, and I don’t see as large a market for Lucy Liu bots 990 years from now. Also, I don’t think anyone has to be too worried about Pauly Shore stealing their thawed frozen gf because Pauly Shore probably doesn’t have the q-rating to warrant head saving at this point. Oh. And the very first episode Fry mistook a suicide booth for… what exactly?
Susan Boyle was just a particularly egregious mistake but it’s mostly nostalgia saying that the 1st run episodes didn’t rely on pop culture references. I think it just became more pronounced because of a)while cancelled, enough time went by for the restart to bump people in terms of time continuity and b) they did an era-based technology reference with the iphone episode.
A phone booth, but I assume you knew that. But pay phones were still a lot more prevalent in 1999/2000 than today and a broke guy like Fry wouldn’t have owned a cell phone yet so that makes sense to me.
Susan Boyle was especially bad because it was not only a flash-in-the-pan and instantly dated reference but it was also just a terrible, obvious, unfunny pun. I expect more from Futurama than that.
I was no fan of “Kidnappster” either but that particular aspect of the episode (“haha, Napster joke”) was mercifully short.
Their network is bad and they should feel bad!
That aside, it’s a bummer, but the show had a great run and since they’ve either been canceled or almost-cancelled so many times, it’s hard for me to think of the last couple of seasons as anything but a bonus. I think the show overall has been less consistent on Comedy Central and arguably the low points have been some of the worst of the series. On the whole the “adult” humor hasn’t fit into the show too well.) On the other hand I think the best episodes of the Comedy Central run have been as good as anything they ever did. “The Late Philip J. Fry” was amazing and I’d put it up against any of the other top-ranked episodes from the original run. “Overclockwise” and “Lethal Inspection” were also excellent, among others.
Intentionally so: they’re a way to get modern day celebrity guest stars onto the show and I think you just kind of have to accept them on those terms. If it’s giving you angst I’d suggest that perhaps they cloned the celebrities through DNA or other means and that’s where the heads come from - after all, we know nobody preserved the heads of presidents who died in the 19th century. Mostly I’m mentioning this theory because I may not get another chance and I think it’s a quality fanwank. 
I still think the claims that the iPhone reference dates the show are a little weird: it’s a scifi-ish show about the future, and if anything they probably should’ve commented on technology more in the original series. Apple became such a huge deal between late in the first run of the series and the revival that it would have been weird if they never satirized it, although it didn’t have to be the subject of a whole episode.
I don’t think the iPhone references were particularly dated. But parodying a specific iPad commercial (the one with silhouettes of people dancing against a coloured background) that was already stale by the time the show came out seemed a little clunky.
Dated references have always been a part of the show. The original run did an episode about the Bush $300 tax refund which by the time it aired was long dated and today half the people reading this probably barely remember what I’m referring to.
As a fan since the pilot (my god, *fourteen *years ago!!) I have to say that *Futurama *was close to a perfect show. There isn’t a single episode I can think of that I’d call ‘bad’. And when the show came back on CC after being off for, what, five years or more? It just picked right up where it left off. I saw no difference or decline in quality whatsoever. And although I thought that the direct to DVD episodes were much better when watched together, not chopped into half hour episodes, I thought they were great too (I’m still trying to wrap my head around the time travel Fry/Lars one!) Considering that The Simpsons has been 95% crap for well over a decade now, I just don’t get how Futurama got so overlooked. I guess it was just too smart for its own damn good.
Maybe it’s karma. ***Futurama ***gets cancelled right as the similarly too smart, similarly too soon canceled Arrested Development finally gets resurrected!
*
“And it’s a quantum-photo finish!”
“Bah! You altered the outcome by measuring it!”* 
Hopefully Arrested Development will stay on the air until they can release the Veronica Mars movie.