Futurama

What can be said about this series that hasn't been said already?  While overshadowed The Simpsons, Futurama remains a hilarious, nerdly love letter to science fiction tropes and cliches.

The jokes are brilliant.  The characters are hilarious and varied.  The music, art and direction are all top-notch.

But I think what really sets this show apart from anything else is the incredible attention paid to paying nerd homage to math, physics, and above all else the great stories that have come before.




If, somehow, you've yet to watch Futurama (and really, if you haven't, stop reading this blog and watch it IMMEDIATELY), the plot is simple.  Philip J. Fry (voiced by Billy West) is a lowly pizza delivery boy in the year 1999.  On New Year's Eve (the infamous Y2K scenario), Fry accidentally falls into a cryogenic capsule and is defrosted 1000 years later.  From there, he is employed by his great-great-great-great-grand-nephew, Hubert Farnsworth (West again).  Together with the cyclops Leela (Katey Sagal) and the uncaring bending robot Bender (John DiMaggio), Fry works as a delivery boy for Planet Express, and occasionally saves the universe.

It's a great, multi-layering of jokes within jokes that is the perfect way to cater first to a public demographic, and then a sweaty, pimply, bespectacled demographic that gets everything the first demographic doesn't. 
For every pop culture reference there's five obscure geek references trailing along behind it.  And they're never lampooned in a way that seems mean-spirited or cruel.  On the contrary, this show tells us why we love those old sci-fi tropes and gives even more reason to enjoy them.

However, Futurama was always at its best when it successfully married serious storylines to comedy.  Episodes like "The Sting", "Jurassic Bark", or "The Late Philip J. Fry" (all of which took home Emmy awards) demonstrated that comedy can be found even in serious situations, and conversely that heavy emotion can be found in comedic situations.




A lot of the success of these "dramedy" episodes can be attributed to the very, very strong writing of protagonist Philip J. Fry.  Fry brings a lot to the table for audiences to grab onto:  he's the everyman, the fish out of water, stranger in a strange land.  He's not too bright, but that actually helps his success; it gives us something to project over, to play off of.  He doesn't make us feel inferior.  Above all else, Fry is extremelly loyal, and this is best projected in his relationship with Leela.

It's fair to say this relationship really is the heart of the series.  When Fry first arrives in the year 3000, Leela reaches out to him as a kindred soul.  From there, their romance has been on again / off again for the entire series, but it has never felt boring or worn out.  The creators keep giving us something new and exciting to explore in their dynamic.



Futurama was axed from Fox, only to be revived first as a short series of TV movies, then yet again on Comedy Central.  Comedy Central sadly doesn't have the powerhouse distribution or subscription rates of Fox, but that has hardly affected the series' success.  In fact, rumours have been circulating that Fox will try to buy the show back in the near future...

Few shows have the claim to fame of being critically and commercially acclaimed before, during and after a cancellation.  For a show that spans past, present and future in several episodes with terrific results, no finer accolade can be said of Futurama.