Summary
Buckle up this will be a long one, this is my review of the Hulu season of Futurama.
Now first a little context, Futurama was and is my favourite animated series of all time, with American Dad a close second. I have watched Futurama all the way through more times than I can count and it has influenced my life in a number of ways. I like most people fall into the standard pattern, with one slight difference, I think that the Fox seasons were gold, I like the specials more so than some of the other fans, and I think that the Comedy Central run was fine but a massive step down.
The more I think over the new episodes the more I think they should never have been made, whether it was because they brought on new writers who didn’t understand the characters or whether it was because the show didn’t have solid ideas in coming back it remains to be seen but it could be either.
Really in my mind their were two major issues with this new season, firstly there is the fact it is obsessed with being topical, whether that is in talking about covid or cancel culture, which dates the episodes horribly and feels like the writers couldn’t come up with a new idea so they just went ‘what’s in the news’. Secondly, you have the fact that the series disrespects to an insane degree Fry and Leela’s relationship. You have Leela seemingly going off with other guys multiple times over the course of these episodes for no reason and at the end it will end with something like it was all a dream, it is awful.
I think the easiest way to review this season is to go episode by episode. The Impossible Stream as asinine and thinks it is far more clever than it actually is, it begins the long disrespecting of Fry and Leela’s relationship as well. Bad episode. Children of a Lesser Bog may well be the only good episode here, it carries over from the Fox era well adding a beautiful new chapter in that storyline and expanding out the side characters, it is a shame that it sets such a high bar as it makes everything else look like crap by comparison. How The West Was Won, is again the series needing to be topical and be like ‘aha crypto am I right kids’, are you beginning to notice a theme yet? Parasites Regained is entertaining again I like the classic call back and the Dune parody but it never really gets above okay. Related To Items You Have Viewed is an episode that you will forget about as you are watching it is dull, again the episode tries to do some classic Futurama science fiction but waters it down with topical references that amount to ‘Amazon bad’. I Know What You Did Last Xmas is one of the wors Christmas episodes as once again it takes the interesting concept of Robot Santa and makes it boring and dull, also Bender and Zoidberg don’t have chemistry. Rage Against The Vaccine and Zapp Gets Cancelled are both awful episodes and I think you can see why, it’s in the title, it is jokes that age horribly and that you have already hard at least a million times before, utter trash. The Prince and the Product is my most hated episode of the season as it flips off anyone who likes the Fry and Leela romance and then goes it was all a spell, it feels like the very worst kind of screw the audience story telling. All The Way Down is better, I would put it above Parasites Regained and below Children Of A Lesser Bog it does some interesting science fiction stuff and I like the questions it tries to explore, but it isn’t perfect.
So what’s that, three out of ten of the episodes this season are okay to good and seven are bad……. Yikes. If you are an optimist you could argue that it’s new writers trying to find their voices and old writers trying to get their groove back and that maybe the next half will be better but honestly I think that Futurama should have stayed dead and that pains me to say on a core level but it’s the truth.
Also a number of things carry over from the Comedy Central era yet Zoidberg’s girlfriend is not even mentioned, and that is one of the best episodes of the Comedy Central run, he is back to being pathetic and alone now and it feels like regression.
Overall, a massive shame.
1.5/5
Pros.
One good and two okay episodes
It is nice to see the characters back
Cons.
The need to be topical
The disrespect to Fry and Leela
Seven bad episodes
The new writers aren’t good
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Another Millennial Reviewer 