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I probably won't bother if DiMaggio is out, but the only way the revival remotely works is if the focus shifts to Fry and Leela's married (and possibly family) life. Another round of pop culture and political parody 10 years later would be brutal.
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Feb 21, 2022 06:05
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YeahTubaMike posted:Ooh, I'm curious -- which ones? Off the top of my head, my least favorite originals are Time Keeps on Slipping, Jurassic Bark, and The Honking. The one where Bender pretends to be a woman to compete in the women's olympics has aged poorly. Also "Bender Should Not Be On TV" was pretty bad outside of the all-time Calculon line "That was so terrible it gave me cancer."
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Feb 23, 2022 04:08
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Chairman Capone posted:I guess I'll be contrarian and say I think the soap opera scenes with Calculon in Bend Her are really funny. It's ok, I liked Yo Leela Leela.
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Feb 23, 2022 19:02
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Like I said before, the best way for the new season to go is if they shift the focus to Fry and Leela as a family. You even have those tar pits as a plot device so you don’t have to change the animation or make the characters look older, but a revival 23 years after the pilot has to see the characters grow somewhat. As many others have pointed out, the comedic tropes that the show used 20 years ago won’t fly today, and the political/cultural landscape has changed more in the last 9 years than the writers could’ve ever imagined. The one constant is that when they wrote the show with some heart, it was generally very good, so stick with that and wacky science and have fun exploring new depths of the characters. I don’t know about everyone else, but I definitely do not want the same show as 10 or 20 years ago, fun as it was.
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Mar 2, 2022 05:17
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Aces High posted:I did a rewatch last year and the CC episodes are a slog until Fry and Leela actually became a couple, then it got a lot better because after 4 seasons, 4 movies and TWO "finales" of them going down the will path it is frustrating as poo poo to just walk it all back like they did for the CC start. We got good stuff but even when they became a couple we still got stupid poo poo like the human zoo episode. That episode was worth it for the line "You know who else I hate? That monkey I haven't seen in years: Gunter!"
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Mar 2, 2022 20:56
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It was slightly awkward when Leela said "our friend," but they openly called Leela his girlfriend, and the whole episode was based around her actually being supportive of Fry's stupid goal which she never did as his friend. Anyway, the episode was in line with median CC episodes quality wise. Not memorable, but not offensive either. It'll be interesting to see what they have beyond the initial Groening taking the piss episode. I lol'ed at the quick "PC crowd" gag.
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Jul 26, 2023 08:26
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Pretty forgettable episode, but not terrible. The big stuff just wasn't there, but there were a couple little touches I liked. The phones being answered by touching their nose was one of those little "ridiculous future tech" gags that were common in the original run. I also loved one of the kids reading a Ladybuggle comic when Amy was at the height of worrying they loved Leela more. The Yo Leela Leela episode is definitely my favorite Futurama ep that most people hated, so I dug that callback. The voice actors being so much older is kind of Simpsons level distracting now, though. I know it's not what the studios want, but I would love if the writers had the balls to actually age the characters up a little bit and transition to family-based sitcom instead of a work-based sitcom. They have the tarpit plot device to keep the characters looking the same, but a big part of the series' charm is the characters have some degree of growth over time (with some occasional resets). We'll see if Amy's kids are a staple or if they're never seen again. It'd be nice if they stuck around because it doesn't really make sense for her to be a wild party girl in her mid 40s. The ending obviously pointed in the direction of Fry and Leela having a kid together, so it'll be interesting to see if they actually go there. A wedding/pregnancy finale would be a welcome change from "this time we're together for real."
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Aug 3, 2023 00:54
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Fry was in mid 20s when he was frozen, so he'd be about 48. It's never stated, but because of their connection I assume Leela is about the same age. Amy was a recent college grad in Season 1, so she's 45-ish. I can't remember the Professor's exact age, but there's a first run episode about him hitting a cutoff age where he would be shipped off to a big box "nursing home" planet. I think he was like 160-170, so he's pushing 200 now. Hermes never gets an exact age, but given his career bureaucrat status and teenage son, he'd probably be about 20-25 years older than Fry/Leela/Amy. If I could remember what Olympics he competed at, that would narrow it down even more. So he's approaching retirement age by 21st century standards at least. Bender and Zoidberg don't have the same aging conventions, although they each have some dedicated backstory episodes. Anyways, you always have the tar pit plot device they introduced in Season 3 or 4 to keep them looking the same, it's the mental/soical/emotional growth that matters.
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Aug 3, 2023 17:52
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This one definitely felt like CC episode. A couple decent jokes, but the plot was dated and too many contrived "remember this character" jokes. It wasn't on the level of the offensively bad CC episodes that have been listed, but definitely in that Season 6/7 instantly forgettable range.
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Aug 11, 2023 03:41
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With Parasites Lost being a top 10-ish episode for me, I was leery when I saw the title, but this episode wasn't too bad and had some of the best jokes of the Hulu run. I think what continues to hamper the new episodes are too many forced callbacks instead of new material. Some of the jokes were in line with the original run, though. The 3D crossword, "always be X," "At least one of you has manners," etc.
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Aug 18, 2023 16:39
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Agreed that this was easily the best episode of the new season. The callbacks actually worked to advance the story, good character development with Fry/Leela/Bender and a plot line that was still topical and had a goofy sci-fi conclusion. "Why are you counting like me" and both Crushinator gags got me. Also, "our door's always open" followed by the ridiculously long series of closing doors.
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Aug 23, 2023 06:33
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This was a nothing episode plot wise, and I think we can all agree Futurama has gone to the time travel well too many times now. I did have a good laugh at the conclusion which was fittingly unserious for this episode. I'd also be happy if this was them actually killing off Robot Santa who ran his course after the north pole episode in S3. Best jokes aside from the finish were the various turducken recipes and Robot Santa singling out Mandy.
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Aug 30, 2023 05:58
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Some of the individual ideas of the reboot have been strong, but it seems like the writers (or network) are too afraid to commit to big changes even if it would give the show a much-needed freshening up so it didn't have to rely on an endless stream of callbacks for every episode. A show based around Leela as the new leader of DOOP while she and Fry navigate their relationship would've been interesting and set up the characters for a lot of fresh scenarios. Shoehorning the other characters in would require some creativity (except Amy, her journey into motherhood would play out exactly the same with Kif still in the same role), but it could be done.
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Aug 31, 2023 19:17
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That was easily the worst episode of the season because it did all things that have been slight to moderate drags on most of the other episodes (extremely dated "current events" jokes and shoehorning ~random~ call-back characters in a misguided attempt at fan service) to the most obnoxious degrees. Surely they could have come up with a better plot line to take advantage of the New New Orleans environment, which was fairly inspired I'll admit. Shame it was wasted on this. That said, the "do it again" gag on the spinning newspaper transition trope got me.
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Sep 6, 2023 06:03
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This definitely wasn't as bad as it could've been, but I thought it was pretty forgettable. I liked that they did emphasize some new characters like Dr. Kind and the Tactillians instead of digging up some obscure first-run characters to drive the plot. Both were pretty good. I think the biggest problem with the plot was the mere use of the words "cancel" and "woke" in 2023 immediately set off alarm bells that whoever is using them is an rear end in a top hat that's mad some people don't approve of their public bigotry. The episode was trying to thread the needle of not doing that, but also trying to land "PC run amok" jokes. Combined with a lot of flat jokes, it just ended up coming across as uninspired messaging-wise. Another thing that might have helped was cutting the whole first scene and just starting with the trial. We all know Zapp's an rear end in a top hat, we didn't need a scene to establish that. It would've left more time to use the fresh characters and hash out the rest of the plot a little better.
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Sep 12, 2023 05:19
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Yeah, they established in the first run that mutant culture is family name first. Her parents are named Turanga Morris and Turanga Munda.
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Sep 13, 2023 02:09
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First run Futurama mostly used culture references that were 10+ years behind the air dates. The theme of the far future using things from the viewer's past helped give more of the original episodes a "timeless" quality I think. Decisions like making the president Nixon instead of Clinton or W, having "classical" music be Baby Got Back instead of Real Slim Shady, sketchy business guy being Gordon Gecko instead of Bernie Madoff, etc were all smart choices that hold up years later. "What if life was more like a videogame" using Pac-Man, Space Invaders, and so on was much better than trying to make it about Halo. I'm trying to think of examples of "contemporary" pop culture humor from the first run. Al Gore being in the climate change episode stands out. The first Titanic episode was only a couple years behind, I guess?
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Sep 13, 2023 16:50
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Man, all the non what-if-machine trilogy episodes have been dire. I guess this one was slightly better than the Christmas and Saturday cartoon episodes, but that's a ground level bar. This felt like an episode designed to have a DVD commentary where the writers tell you that this episode is actually super meta all the supposedly huge fans of the show just don't get it, except DVDs don't exist anymore so they just made the glue scenes extra stupid to hammer the point home. The ending kind of felt like that old meme "Joke's on you, I'm only pretending to be (slur removed)." I will say I'm actually looking forward to next week's episode though. Seems they saved their one actual good sci-fi idea for the end.
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Sep 19, 2023 05:34
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It was still too coherent for AI. Also, based on the timeliness of these episodes, we shouldn’t expect a Chat GPT themed episode until fall 2025.
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Sep 21, 2023 00:07
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Last episode was really good as expected. It kind of overlapped A Clockwork Origin, but definitely felt like good Futurama. Fun, trippy plot littered with good jokes along the way. I really liked "the cooling fan's on fire." Ranking the episodes from this season: 1. All The Way Down 2. Related to Items You've Viewed 3. The Impossible Stream 4. I Know What You Did Next X-Mas 5. Parasites Regained 6. Children of a Lesser Bog 7. Zapp Gets Canceled 8. How the West was 1010001 9. Rage Against The Vaccine 10. The Prince and the Product Would anyone dispute the top and bottom 2? I could see a lot of variance in the middle since they were mostly forgettable and would likely come down to which individual jokes you liked best.
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Sep 27, 2023 05:43
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