This reminds me of the story of the grasshopper and the octopus. All year long the grasshopper kept burying acorns for winter while the octopus mooched off his girlfriend and watched tv. But then the winter came and the grasshopper died, and the octopus ate all his acorns! And also, he got a racecar! Is any of this getting through to you?
::sigh::, Family Guy is “absurdist”, and there’s nothing new about that type of humor to call any other types “traditional”. Other absurdist comedies include the recent seasons of Saturday Night Live, and Arrested Development (wait…that’s not helping my case…oh well, I can’t think of any classic absurdist examples off the top of my head). Sure, there’s some wit, irony, and even satire mixed into Family Guy, but its stamp is its absurdism. Futurama is mainly satirical. You can tell that without ever watching the show, because si-fi as a rule is allegorical, and allegory + comedy=satire.
Have you checked out DVD releases? Every crappy TV show gets a DVD release, ASAP. FTR, I am not saying that Futurama is crappy, in fact I have gone on record saying that this was the show that Fox should have brought back instead of Family Guy and I like Family Guy.
Shows that I have never heard of, mainly because I don’t get WB or UPN have boxed season sets. FIrst and foremost it is greed on the part of the network to capitalize on a show, but it also shows what sort of popularity a series may have that isn’t reflected in the ratings.
There is a DVD set of the fucking Apprentice for crying out loud. Granted the Fucking
Apprentice would probably be more entertaining than the standard Apprentice…
Well, yeah. I’m just interested in why this is happening with DVDs now but didn’t with VHS 15-20 years ago. Is it the flexibility of the DVD interface? The solidifying of fan communities because of the internet?
Well, sure. But not every season set sells all that well. I remember hearing that some quality classic shows have only done one or two season sets and stopped there because not enough people were buying them.
My own feeling is that most current shows will probably sell well enough to make some kind of profit. But I don’t think they’d bother making new stuff unless the sales of the season sets indicate a potential profit above the production cost - something you don’t need to be concerned about when you’re just repackaging previously broadcast programs. And I have heard that the sales for the Futurama DVDs were pretty high.
Khan:
Are you kidding? Shelf space, clear and simple. And entire season set of a show on DVD takes up the same amount of shelf space as a single VHS cartridge. The entire run of MAS*H will take up less space on my shelf than a single season would have if released in VHS format.
Also, VHS sort of killed itself in the home-consumer market when, in the early days, studios were charging exorbitant amounts to buy one. I think I recall videotapes of movies being something like $80 to buy back in the late 80’s. (That’s why rental took off so well.) The prices eventually came down, but the momentum was lost, and studios never gave real thought to releasing TV shows that way, because they didn’t expect them to sell. DVDs hit the stores at $20 per movie, at the same time that DVD players went on the market.
All right! New Futurama goodness … Real Soon Now! Let’s Get Tomorrow!
I seem to remember buying T2 for anout $119 at Tower when it came out.
Don’r forget that because of the great capacity-to-size ratio, DVDs can include a bunch of stuff besides the movie itself. For the most part “Extras” were either limited to a music video after the movie’s end credits, or would be on sale separately. Now, any yutz with eleven dollars at a Walgreens can buy their favorite movie plus several hours worth of commentary and other goodies on a format that’ll play until you lose it (my dad sent several copies of Dune to their demise simply from overuse).
Some of the success of DVDs can be attributed directly to the DVD format, and some to studios realizing the power of more content for less price.
Can I be the first to say this is Good News, everyone!
I’d never even bothered to hope for this.
True. That could definitely work. On the other hand, we’d get fewer episodes that way.
Yeah, and a lot less censorship. Look at Japanese OVA series for adults.
The censorship is fine, I want to be able to watch Futurama with my kids.
I can’t with Family Guy. Thankfully it is on after 9pm.
Jim
You know, I live about four blocks from Rough Draft Studios. Maybe I should pop in and start interrogating them. I’m sure they won’t mind.
I dunno, there was that one episode of the Simpsons where they clearly showed the animators being chained to their desks and getting whipped. The same thing could happen to you if your not careful!
:eek:
Eighty bucks, huh? I had no idea. I only started to buy movies and such on my own back around 1998 and they were all under $20 by then. Was this a gradual transition or was it more of a price collapse?
Eighty bucks for a video tape. Kinda hearkens back to $7999 for a 386 with VGA, doesn’t it?
It was sort of a gradual transition, combined with a price collapse. Big, blockbuster movies were sold at a high price, while lesser known films were sold cheaply. Eventually the bean counters realized that the cheaper films sold more copies and the refridgerator light came on. They started selling many movies at what was called a “sell-thru” price, and sales picked up, but occassionally, one of them would release a big budget movie at a high price. The Hunt for Red October originally retailed for around $100, and there was an uproar in the industry. Even the video rental places were ticked at the price, and apparently, the only thing you got for that extra price was a red tape. (The tape cartridge was red plastic.) The high price didn’t stick around too long, and that was pretty much the end of high dollar tapes, unless they were “anniversary editions” with all kinds of extras like copies of the film scripts, etc. etc. etc.
This story has been picked up on Slashdot thanks to Yours Truly.
Sniff Sniff, I get no credit?
That’s cool though, I see a lot of Slashdot stuff spread rapidly by word of mouth and maybe we’ll set of enough incidental buzz to get the Show back on.
I can dream, can’t I?
Jim
It took you awhile to notice that? Family Guy is sort of like if South Park was written by someone with severe, untreated ADD. I’ve probably only sat through two episodes of it; it’s amazing to me that it’s as popular as it is. I remember when it first came on - the commercials for it were hysterical, but then I realized that the show was exactly the same as the commercials: zero plot, just a bunch of disconnected gags that stopped being very funny after, say, ten minutes of watching.
Family Guy impressed the hell out of me in terms of occasionally hitting on a really funny joke. But that wasn’t often enough to justify sitting in front of a TV show that made no sense at all. And complete, utter nonsense just isn’t all that funny anyway. Family Guy always struck me as seriously lazy writing: come up with a lame excuse for an episode of a TV show, and then cram it full of easy sight gags. It’s to the creators’
My favorite Family Guy episodes are the ones where the storyline actually gets some notice, but then very sparingly the write’s have dropped in the insane flashbacks or ridiculously over the top moments. In the more recent episodes of Family Guy (and you started to see this some near the end of the original run) it seems like the writers are overusing certain comedic devices and such, which is why I think the show isn’t as funny as it used to be (still great, though.)
Family Guy stands on its over the top antics, while Futurama relies on, I guess, more “traditional” humor. Situations that are just funny in and of themselves without need for something over the top like a random fight with a giant chicken or a ludicrous appearance of Optimus Prime at a synagogue.
Anyways, Futurama is actually one of the most amazingly consistent cartoon comedies ever. Several major plotlines are obviously developed from day one.
For example in the very first episode of Futurama, long before Nibbler was even introduced into the show, you can clearly see a small hand push Fry’s chair backwards, propelling him into the cryogenic freezer. This all ties in with the larger “evil brains” plot arch and Fry’s unique situation in the universe caused by being his own grandfather.
That’s why I think Futurama would actually benefit, if not from a full fledged rebirth, at least another season or a short series on DVD. There were a lot of major plot arcs that I think could be seen as unresolved by anyone who watched a good chunk of the show’s episodes. And additionally, and most importantly, all of these plot lines were advancing to what appeared to be some conclusion eventually. The Fry and Leela romance, and Fry’s unique situation in the universe (I think Groening planned another 2 episodes at least based on foreshadowing that Nibbler gives after the second defeat of the flying brains.)
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Excalibre: That was strange, I got a strong sense of Deja Vu all over again from that post. 
It took you awhile to notice that? Family Guy is sort of like if South Park was written by someone with severe, untreated ADD. I’ve probably only sat through two episodes of it; it’s amazing to me that it’s as popular as it is. I remember when it first came on - the commercials for it were hysterical, but then I realized that the show was exactly the same as the commercials: zero plot, just a bunch of disconnected gags that stopped being very funny after, say, ten minutes of watching.
Family Guy impressed the hell out of me in terms of occasionally hitting on a really funny joke. But that wasn’t often enough to justify sitting in front of a TV show that made no sense at all. And complete, utter nonsense just isn’t all that funny anyway. Family Guy always struck me as seriously lazy writing: come up with a lame excuse for an episode of a TV show, and then cram it full of easy sight gags. It’s to the creators’ credit that many of those gags really were funny, but they weren’t funny enough to make the show watchable for me. I feel sorta like I’m the only person in the world who doesn’t like that show.
:: sigh :: It’s a trial, let me tell you, having sophisticated tastes. Enduring the entertainment that so amuses you plebians is extremely taxing at times. 
I’m surprised, actually, that people like both Family Guy and Futurama, because the shows strike me as such polar opposites. At least for me, a lot of the pleasure I got from Futurama was simply the great characters, with backstories that were referenced later on, and overall just that the show seemed like a genuine story involving real people (who happened to have only one eye or be robots or whatever.)
Plus, Bender was simply a brilliant comic nucleus for the show. And Futurama had so many hysterical supporting characters it was ridiculous: the professor, Zapp Branigan, Mom (“Jam a bastard in it, you crap!” has to be the best swearing without actual swearwords in all history), Morbo (“Kittens give Morbo gas. In lighter news, the city of New New York is doomed. Blame rests with known human Professor Hubert Farnsworth and his tiny, inferior brain.”)
Futurama was based on absolutely brilliant writing. Not only was an overarching plot for the show apparently established in the first episode - with Nibbler’s pushing Fry into the cryo-booth - but it simply had some of the funniest writing and best situations of any comedy I’ve seen. It’s very similar to the Simpsons in that respect, only possibly better as it’s a tad less syrupy: the humor in Futurama is very rarely “easy” humor - it was always based upon funny situations revolving around plot and character. That sort of thing is not easy to do. I miss that show dearly; it certainly ended on a strong point, but I’d still love to see it return no matter what.