I finally got around to seeing the first 4 eps of this new series last night. (I realize there are 6 or 7 out now; please no spoilers on those.)
Preface: I’m a huge fan of Futurama. A huge, huge fan. I would probably go so far as to call it my favorite tv show of all time. My favorite aspect is Fry and Leela’s relationship, and my favorite episodes are Sting, Luck of the Fryish, Devil’s, Jurassic Bark . . . you get the trend here. Making me laugh is cheap, but making me laugh and cry in the same episode is priceless.
So, my very first impression of the very first new episode is that the colors and character designs look slightly off, and the voices sound slightly off. I remember the rumors going back and forth about the original voice cast returning, and then I finally quit following them. Is everybody back or not?
Second thought was that it seems kind of disrespectful to bring this back at 10pm on Thursday nights during the summer. Why not just play it against Survivor or constantly preempt it with baseball again? I feel like they’re just dooming it to failure all over again.
My next thought was that I’m sick of them going randomly back and forth on Fry and Leela’s relationship. The series ended with them almost getting together, and then continued along those lines with Bender’s Big Score. Then Beast came along and threw that continuity out the window by having Fry move in with a cuckoldress, and it’s just been a mess ever since. Suddenly they’re making out in the first ep of the new series? Where did that come from? Continuity sticklers usually annoy the hell out of me but this time I’ve got to say: they need to show some consistency here.
My final thought was that they seemed to be going for a lot more cheap/easy “Family Guy” jokes. I mean . . . a boil. On Leela’s ass. Named Susan. My eyes nearly rolled out of my head. I was embarrassed to be a fan throughout that whole episode.
I really thought they were bringing the show back because they knew they had something special going, but the 4 episodes that I’ve seen so far are starting to make me think that they were just grabbing for a quick buck.
Its the same voices. I don’t really notice any difference in look or feel, but they are six years older, so maybe that accounts for the difference you perceive.
Not as funny as it used to be, but each episode was funnier then the previous one, so I’ll probably keep watching.
:dubious: It’s on basic cable and Comedy Central repeats the new episodes several times over the course of the week. Basic cable is a whole different ball game that a major broadcast network.
That was definitely a low point. On top of everything else, Futurama should NOT be doing topical jokes. It completely ruins the feel of the show. However, the most recent episode was much much better than the preceding ones (although the Fry/Leela sentimentality seemed tacked on and forced). Hopefully they’ll get back on track.
I haven’t noticed any change in the look or sound of the show. It is all the same actors, as has been said.
Fry and Leela are in a relationship, but neither of them are any good at it. Fry is forgetful and selfish, and Leela is emotionally inequipped, as always, and they’re just stumbling through it. It’s rarely the focus of the episode, but it is continuing off-screen.
One thing that I’ve noticed with each of the new episodes, and I never get into a “New Episode” Thread early enough to think my observation won’t just be buried:
None of the new episodes seem to have a strong B Story to me.
No well defined B Story anyway. Each of the episodes has a few things going on that you could maybe describe as a B Story, but the best of the original run always had both a good A Story and a good B Story.
The most recent episode had the strongest B Story of the run (no details since Cisco’s still behind a few episodes), but still it wasn’t too strong.
I’ve been pretty happy with the run so far, but I think the “essentially one story per episode” thing is part of what’s holding it back from classic status.
I think this is correct.
Also, compare the voice actors’ performances from the start of season 1 to the end of season 4/5 (depending on who’s counting). Slight changes over time. Compare again the voice performances in the movies after the actors had had a few years off.
I agree that the voices are slightly different again, but I don’t find it distracting.
I never liked Fry and Leela’s relationship. Leela doesn’t want Fry unless he has someone else and then she’s jealous. Their “relationship” is too dysfunctional to find funny.
As for the new episodes, Amy really has become slutty. And it seems out of the blue. The rest of the characters seem to be pretty much their usual selves.
She wanted a monogamous relationship with Bender, and went back to Kif when they broke up. If anything she might be better.
If you leave out In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela I don’t think too many of the complaints about the series being different hold up. (And that episode wasn’t bad either, in my opinion, it’s just that the ending does not sit right with viewers. And it didn’t work for me either.) I compared the Susan Boyle and goat vomit jokes to Family Guy, too. Those were pretty bad. But I still like the first episode and I think the last two have been excellent, and they are as good as anything they did in the original run of the series. I can’t say I’ve noticed any difference in the voices, but it’s possible there have been some little changes because of time or the layoff.
It’s true that they have gone back and forth about Fry and Leela. We didn’t know where things stood after she slept with Zapp again, and then the last episode was based around their relationship in a way that was kind of similar to Time Keeps on Slipping. I agree we’re supposed to think that stuff is going on ‘off camera’ but in reality these kinds of things aren’t that clear cut; you’d see either romance or tension between them at the office based on how things are going. I guess they don’t want to interfere with the comedy but instead it interferes with the relationship. Because of the amount of time we’ve spent with these characters, that cheapens things a little. But it’s always been that way with the show, and when they’ve dealt with the relationship, like in the most recent episode, they’ve done very well.
There were two DVD movies after that! Bender’s Game and Into the Wild Green Yonder. At the end of the last one, Leela has finally admitted that she loves Fry, and they kiss.
In “The Duh-Vinci Code,” there’s a very casual exchange where Fry asks Leela if she wants to join the “mile deep club,” and she says yes. I think the line was as funny as it was because we aren’t constantly aware of their relationship, and for most of the series she would have said no.
If I might remind you, in the first thread about this episode we recollected that the original run contained numerous topical jokes, including;
*Everyone gets a $300 tax rebate
*A conference on global warming in Kyoto, Japan
*AOL being impossible to sign on to, full of ads, and perverted chatrooms where men pretend to be women
*The season finale of “Single Female Lawyer” being a big deal
*The presidential candidates agree with each other on all the big issues
*The rise to stardom and self-destruction of teen pop star “Wendy”
*A full-episode “Iron Chef” parody
Yeah. Anyone who thinks that “topical jokes” is something antithetical to Futurama probably didn’t watch it during its original run. The original episodes were loaded with current pop culture references - but current for 1999 through 2003. Remember, this is a show that has a bizarre “head museum” story mechanic explicitly to bring current-day celebrities and public figures into the Year 3000+. iPhone jokes are pretty much par for the course once we’re talking 2010 Futurama episodes.
I’d agree that the Susan Boyle stuff wasn’t funny, but to say that’s because it was a pop culture reference rather than just a bad, Family Guy-esque piece of writing is misdiagnosing the problem.
That being said, with regards to the OP: the new season has been getting better and better, and I’d rank the last three or four episodes at the same quality level as the original run. The most recent episode (“The Late Philip J. Fry”) is one of the best episodes the show has ever produced - including the original run. From what you describe as your favorite elements of the show (Fry and Leela, laughing and crying in equal measure), I think you’d love it.
Good sci-fi is always talking about the present, and the real world, no matter when or where it’s placed, but hopefully it’s a little bit more thinly veiled than the Susan Boyle and iPhone references. The original series wasn’t immune to akwardly unveiled and current pop-culture references, but the list above isn’t a very good example of offenders, IMO. Tax rebates, crappy tv dramas, presidential election shenanigans, pop stardom, etc, could all very easily still be issues in 1,000 years, at least within commonly acceptable scifi-fantasy-comedy continuity.
So could instant infamy from the unfettered access allowed by advanced communication technologies or early adopter zombie-ism, which are what the Boyle and iPhone jokes are if you boil them down (no pun intended) to their essentials the way you just did for the $300 rebate, “Single Female Lawyer,” and Wendy jokes.
Again, I agree that the Susan Boyle bit was uninspired and unfunny (although personally, I thought the eyePhone stuff was a hoot - and this from someone who just bought an iPhone 4). But it’s no less “thinly veiled” than the pop culture references from the original run. It’s unfunny because it’s a crappy joke, poorly executed, and drawn out way too long, not because it’s an obvious poke at a recent pop culture phenomenon.
