After being cancelled in the early 2000s, Futurama continued to grow as a cult favourite. The cartoon, from Simpsons creator Matt Groening and David X Cohen, revolved around a 21st century guy who accidentally wound up in the year 3000. With a rapid fanbase and growing DVD sales, the show was able to be brought back from the dead with an order for 26 new episodes from 20th Century Fox. With return imminent, hardcore fans are thrilled, casual viewers and those who had never watched might be wondering why this particular show is worthy. It never had the critical success of the Simpsons or South Park, or the obsession from college students across North America like Family Guy, but Futurama has its own place in the animated world.
Premise
The show starts New Years Eve 1999, as Philip J Fry, a pizza delivery boy with a pathetic life, is accidently cryogenically frozen to be de-thawed 1000 years later. He awakens just as the clock strikes midnight in the year 3000 and is forced to adjust to his new life in the future. He finds a distant relative (greatx30-nephew to be exact) and gets a job as – a delivery boy. There, he meets a group of outsiders who become his friends – a foulmouthed klepto robot named Bender, Leela, a kick-ass orphan cyclops, Dr Zoidberg, a sad sack crustecean-like alien, and spoiled rich girl Amy Wong who may or may not actually do any work, round out the crew. Their inter-galactic space delivery system sets up them for adventure and comic foils, although the show does not follow a strict procedural format.
The Future
The year 3000 isn’t quite as different as some of us may picture – the heads of former presidents and celebrities are kept alive in jars, robots deliver our entertainment news, and brand names and aggressive advertising are everywhere you turn. This New New York is similar to our current world, which is where the heart of the humour lives. Futurama acts as a satire, where although the characters are living in a world years ahead of ours, the daily life reflects and parodies our own. “The End of the Universe” has become a tourist attraction, with gift shops and telescopes, and commercials are broadcast into dreams, which upsets Fry. In his day, commercials were “only on TV and radio. And in magazines, and movies, and at ballgames, on buses and milk cartons and tshirts and bananas and written in the sky. But not dreams!”
Humour
While Family Guy appeals to the often low-brow college humour crowd, and South Park relies on social commentary, Futurama was unique with its blatantly geeky humour. Many jokes and references involved math, politics, science, and science fiction. Bender has a reoccurring nightmare about the number 2, a binary joke, and political figures Richard Nixon and Al Gore have had recurring roles on the show. For many, the show worked on multiple levels – the surface level is your basic comedy, with hilarious outlandish characters (supporting character Zapp Brannigan is a prime example) and quick-witted dialogue. Below that, lay the levels of parody and irony where our conventions about the future are challenged. Fry expects the world to be overrun by aliens, and rejoices at the idea of being in a spaceship like movie heroes, only to learn the future is just as mundane as his past.
The Return
Now that the show is ready to come back, fans might be uncertain as what to expect. Although the straight-to-DVD movies did well, the critical feedback was not as postive as the show itself had been. There is also the possibility that Futurama will suffer the “Family Guy syndrome”, wherein many agree that the new episodes were no match for the show pre-cancellation. However with experience and gifted creators behind it who promise they still have story to tell, Futurama could carry us well into the next few years, if not the next thousand.
