Futurama (Hulu)

I don't know. Parts of it I really liked but some of it was sour as hell.

I felt the episode went TOO far in portraying Leela as a lonely loser at the beginning. It was mean. The episode picks up a bit at book club with her making real friends. Then Phoebe dies and it's cruel again. Then it turns out Phoebe was a robot (and Chelsea), and I feel less bad, but also a little jerked around. Then the women all kill her and I feel uneasy. The best that can be said for the end of the episode is Leela seemed to have kept her friends. The season has been doing wrong by Leela, and if you want to argue this episode did too, yeah, but that's nice.

I laughed at Hermes being excited at the atmosphere at the concert being pre-danked. I took pleasant note of it because it was literally the first time I laughed this season.

I like that the men had a real book club, and that Fry read the wrong passage at the funeral while the right one was under his nose earlier in the episode.

I'll tell you what bothers me. Chelsea's evil laugh as the computer turns itself on after Leela leaves the room. It bothers me because it doesn't make sense with that specific ending, and misleads the viewer about both her intentions and what is going on. It's bad writing, is what it is.

I won't lie. Out of the five episodes this year, this was the best so far. And yet Futurama used to be a lot more to me than "Mildly enjoyable". But the truth is the past four were so bad I didn't mind this so much. I mention all the time I'm not picky. But I don't like the fact that the show being so bad this year has lowered my expectations. Lowered expectations lead to lower standards. And that's not good. 3 stars.

Pretty bad.

Also should point out that I didn't laugh once. That's probably even more concerning than the shady story. 1 1/2 stars.

I was enjoying the episode, but I kept reminding myself as it was going that not a single episode this season has had a good ending. And yes, that turned out to be the actual problem.

The 2001 opening was genius.

On the one hand, having Kyle MacLachlan cameo is perfect for the coffee episode (although I also would have accepted Anthony Stewart Head). But I was shocked how off-model his design is. I, Matt Zimmer, a known shitty artist, can draw a better looking Kyle MacLachlan than this big budget TV show did. Usually the Groening designs work with celebrities. My gut feeling is they simply didn't even try here.

I laughed at the bit where Hermes wonders if they should go, and the Professor sarcastically says he wants to wait until he's older. Goddammit, Farnsworth isn't given that kind of wry commentary and quips anymore. And he wasn't prone to getting a ton of that back in the show's prime either, so I appreciate that moment's realness even more.

The management strike was a funny idea, but went nowhere because this show and this episode are always all over the map.

Which is the main problem of both the episode and the ending. It can't decide what it's about. Which means I'm less invested in it than I should be. It was an acceptable episode that the shitty ending simply made unacceptable. That's frustrating. 3 stars.

The Orphanarium stuff on the show is always SO fucking cruel. I tolerated it until now, but it's just too mean, and not funny.

Good on the show for putting up Bart Simpson as an example of a character that is not cute (when Zapp looks into a mirror at his similar design he is also put-off). But I noticed the Professor didn't put up MAGGIE Simpson. Because she actually IS cute.

I'm questioning whether the quality of the show has indeed dipped more than previous seasons, or if I've simply outgrown it. The Orphanarium stuff hints at the latter. The show used to do similar jokes back in the day, but they only hit me wrong now. I suspect I have grown in the future while Futurama has not. 2 stars.

I was super impressed at how Levar Burton and Neil DeGrasse Tyson were used in the wraparounds, but honestly, these segments sucked ass. I appreciated Tyson's bit at the end of the final one, but outside of that one thing, every single segment was unfunny and stupid. Why are they parodying this specific thing anyways? It makes NO fucking sense.

Futurama always gives a Star Trek actor playing themselves good shit to do. Burton carried on that tradition. But it's a problem if every part of the episode NOT involving him and Tyson sucks donkey balls. The show should NOT be this bad. Ever.

This show has stopped being a parody of kids mysteries. At this point it has become a parody of itself. 1 1/2 stars.

It was both a good episode, and good sci-fi. The ending was a little disappointing, but it was also very sweet.

The show can clearly make a good episode if they put their mind to it. Will they bother next season? Let's find out. 4 1/2 stars.

I think under normal circumstances, I'd tolerate that. If that had aired ten years ago on Comedy Central, I'd shrug. But it's the season premiere, and David X. Cohen wrote it. Really? He comes down from on high and this is the best he can currently do? Shit.

I was one of the few Futurama fans who was excited Futurama was coming back to Hulu. John DiMaggio fucked up my excitement with his bullshit, but the truth is I was one of the few Futurama fans who thought it was a great idea. And despite the fact that I was clearly wrong, I could have been right if the show had understood what it needed to do.

It needed to wrap things up. It needed to make the "first" Hulu season, the FINAL season ever. I had seen how successful Disenchantment wound up utilizing serialized storytelling, and I got this idea in my head that we could potentially get a five hour movie as great as Bender's Big Score, along with the series finale we always deserved and were always denied.

But, no, the producers are too boring to be that ambitious. They'd rather spend a bunch of seasons on the air underwhelming us with standalone shit like this.

Futurama isn't this currently bad because it has to be. It's this currently bad because it CHOOSES to be. That's all this shit really boils down to. Futurama had the potential to kill it on streaming and use the binge nature of the format to its fullest. But no, "How about Bender gets tall?" instead. It's SO fucking unnecessary at this point. 2 stars.

I imagine in the many years I've reviewed the show I must have mentioned once or twice that this show has just the best theme song eva, but just in case, uh huh. And the few extra beats at the beginning for the Hulu credits make things even cooler.

The episode? Eh. The end about how the data was from 2025 was ostensibly a classic Futurama ending. But I dunno, maybe I'm past classic Futurama endings? It didn't hit me the same way the show used to, despite the idea and intention behind it being similar.

I also like Farnsworth scoffing at the notion of teaching science through cartoons. I see what they did there.

At first I was confused why they were using Professor Banjo instead of Wernstrom, but nope, there Wernstrom be. They just saved him for the second rug-pull.

I seriously considered last season that after all of the awful Orphanarium jokes I might simply have outgrown the series. Me being underwhelmed by that "classic ending" says that's probably it. 3 stars.

I read the Hulu description and I knew I wouldn't like the episode. "Fry is crushed to discover Leela is not his soulmate."

That's not a real problem. It's a TV problem. And although I am not the guy always chasing realism in my fiction, if you are gonna hand me a fake TV problem, don't make it totally lame.

Lrrr might be satisfied by dreck with TV problems like Single Female Lawyer. But I'm not Lrrr. Although I sometimes think I'd be happier if I were.

Also, have you SEEN Ndnd? Total snack. 2 stars.

Magnificent. I'm not going to say I'm grateful for the show returning just for that. But it DOES take a lot of the sting out of how mad the Hulu episodes are making me.

And that's the thing about Futurama. It's not really sci-fi. It's math-fi. Those are the nerds the show always trolls for.

I loved Danica McKellar's appearance. I especially love that she says heck instead of hell. I would have been disappointed otherwise.

The only reason this is not getting the full five stars is truly perfect Futurama episodes always pack an emotional wallop. But it's not like the episode isn't already amazing without one. 4 1/2 stars.

Time to talk about screens. I'm gonna talk less about this episode, and more about screens.

I don't own a cell phone or an iPad or a screen. I am very much an outlier in society there. When I stream, I watch Hulu on a website on my computer hooked up to a TV for a monitor. When I do my laundry I sit in front of the machine for 2 and a half hours and simply collect my thoughts and chill. No screens (or even books). Boredom is a value I hold dear.

Is this all because I'm old-fashioned?

Nope, my 89 year old dad has a cell phone he plays games on. That ain't it. It's probably to do with the fact that I currently hate and resent my computer.

When I was a teenager and wrote and drew my comics, my tools were a pencil and a piece of paper. That's it. The comics were shit and the delivery system low-class (although frankly so were the stories) but I had a refreshing amount of freedom there.

Since I got my computer, I've perfected how I write and create comics. I now need my computer, my printer, and my scanner to create my work.

And I resent the hell out of it.

My comics still technically look like shit, but I won't get a screen because I know it will be fucking USEFUL there, and I don't want to have to depend on yet ANOTHER device to get shit done. Because I'd use it, because that's what it's for. It's not because I'm old-fashioned that I resist screens. It's because I'm fiercely independent about my work, and refuse to compromise any more of it out of my own hands than it already is. The Un-Iverse tends to look like shit because I want to be the only person and thing responsible for it. I'd rather that be the case than the backgrounds, vehicles, and objects look good. I'm stubborn that way.

For the record, in The Un-Iverse Snipes exist. That is NOT the Universe where adults lie to kids about random bullcrap.

Phil Hendrie returns AGAIN as a Waterfall decades later, and yes, he dies. I have to say, they probably should have just kept the gag retired after Into The Wild Green Yonder. That was actually a pretty perfect resolution there, and I didn't need anything else.

Donald Duck is in the opening credits because what the fuck is the merger for if not that specific thing? Marvel getting the X-Men back seems like a secondary perk to that.

Computers are useful. I know this and hate them for it. Screens are even MORE useful and for this reason I fear and avoid them at all costs. 3 1/2 stars.

Okay, the episode is crap. You know that, right?

But the truth is it's more against Scientology than The Simpsons ever got because they had to appease Nancy Fucking Cartwright. I sometimes think that show would be a LOT better than it is if most of the people making and acting in it weren't totally fucking awful people.

Anyways, despite the moral here being broad and hamfisted, there IS something to the notion of Farnsworth's beliefs being cult-like. The episode using the frame that science is a belief is bullshit, but the truth is the Professor isn't practicing science. He's engaging in orthodoxy and doesn't care where the science leads, which is the opposite of what a scientist should do. If the data suggests people are rising to Heaven, a scientist factors the theory in, especially with visual evidence like that.

And here is why I can't completely dismiss the idea of Farnsworth's stubbornness being cultlike. While I certainly haven't encountered any actual scientists like this, atheists? Oh, my yes. They get as pissed off at somebody believing differently than them than the most fundamentalist Godbotherer. I always thought atheism was cool because it involves the absence of belief, but I was wrong. Many of its claimed adherents did NOT get that specific memo. And speaking as an agnostic of no particular make and model, I DO notice that. And it pisses me off.

But I mentioned the episode is shitty right? Whether there is truth to the moral preached or not doesn't matter as long as the writers are doing something as stupid as suggesting the entire human fucking race can be caught and hauled aboard a single fishing boat. "But.. But... We're making an allegory!" And considering how dumb it is, the show sucks for it. 1 1/2 stars.

It's all right. But the resolution is limp-dick.

And it has to be. Fishy Joe is the Trump stand-in. And he repents and drops out of the race when that is something Trump would never do. But it's television and television demands wrap-up.

I have to say I was a little less impressed at the allegory of Leela expressing disbelief people would be dumb enough to believe obvious lies. That's a true moral, but one I've seen elsewhere. The thing that impressed (and depressed) me was Fishy Joe's press conference where he's promising horrible and unpopular policy proposals and getting cheers for them. Goddam, that's the world we live in. Every "I didn't vote for this!" is pure bullshit. They told us EXACTLY what was coming. I can't even actually fault Trump for that. He was pretty clear how miserable he'd make things for everyone. And folks fucking cheered and voted for it. I just can't even anymore. "I never thought the leopards would eat MY face!"

I thought the stuff with Bureaucratese was golden, especially him proving to be the greatest "bottleneck" ever. Never heard that term before, but it sounds totally insider, which this being a show made by nerds, means it ought to be. But while the show's Orphanarium jokes are way past their sell-by dates, their bureaucracy jokes are as on-point as they were on freaking Fox. The dude points them to a chair and says "Make yourselves uncomfortable. How may I impede you today?" Not as much effort was put into that bit compared to "The Bureaucrat Song (Even If It Isn't A Good Idea)", but it's just as effective.

The worst part about the Trump stuff is because it's television, there needs to be an extra rug pull and twist ending, and the lie is actually half-true. Which undercuts the entire moral. Because Futurama doesn't have enough integrity to stand by it. Gross jokes come first.

Pineapple pizza IS horrible. But I don't think people really understand why it is. Just speaking as a person who doesn't order out a lot of pizza, I consider it a treat. And I can also say that pineapple pizza doesn't taste bad. But the fruit also makes it taste entirely unlike pizza. While pizza is a treat I don't indulge in enough for my liking, I'm not going to add a topping that makes it taste entirely unlike the thing I like. It doesn't taste bad. But that isn't the reason it's horrible. It's because it's not pizza anymore. At least not going by taste.

Not loving the episode. At all. I was initially gonna give that three stars, but rereading that review, I think I just talked myself down to two and a half. 2 1/2 stars.

Hey, they didn't walk it back at the end. I give them credit for that.

But, yeah, it's pretty clear Maurice La Marche's voice can't properly do the Curly bit anymore. That's depressing, right? 3 1/2 stars.

Jambone is so cute that his horrible ending really bothers me. The worst part is it feels unnecessary and tacked on.

I love you, Bender. Shut up, Piggy, I know it!

Bender is the kindest person Jambone has ever known. Bender considers that the most horrible thing he's ever heard. As do I. Yikes.

Goddam this show is just so fucking MEAN sometimes. 2 stars.

Let's start with a short review of the episode. It's gruesome, mean, horrible, and I hated it. Done. See how easy that was?

I think I ought to next ponder about the release schedule. Did dropping all of the episodes at once help or hurt the show?

I think it was a big help. Week to week every shitty episode the previous two seasons delivered just made me madder and madder. But if I hated an episode here, I just watched another. Which is another reason the finale sucking so hard is just so damned INCONVENIENT.

But yeah, if Hulu is going to keep this up (against every fan's better judgment) they need to drop all the episodes at once from here on out.

Did I mentioned the episode was terrible? 1 star.