Warning: For anyone who didn’t catch the 2 hour return of Futurama Sunday on Comedy Central, then do not read any further.
It’s interesting to think how accepting people have become of primetime cartoons. Probably because of the general dumbing down of society. Sure The Flintstones ran from 1960-1966, but come on, we can all admit that The Flintstones not only totally blows, but because of the general nature of that first half of the 60’s drawing on the 50’s it is also incredibly dorky. Canned laughter… in a cartoon? Which of course was only made so much worse by Scooby-Doo, don’t get me started.
But thanks to The Simpsonscartoons are now paving a way for dirty mouthed, bathroom humor, and all sorts of other gutteral moments that no “live” show would ever dare come close to. There was even an episode in Family Guy where Peter Griffingoes to a hospital and informs a guy that he has AIDS via Barbershop Quartet. That is some seriously fucked up stuff. And all in primetime Sunday! Incredible. I wish Friends would have thought up this stuff. I can see Chandler singing to Monica right before they get married that he has AIDS and that now she’s infected. It would’ve been genius!
So Futurama is back again, just like how Family Guy took a couple of years off only to make a more triumphant return on FOX. Is Adult Swim possibly the most powerful show in the cartoon universe? I have to give it to Rupert Murdoch’s hypocrisy, for being an ultra-conservative Republican and then allowing the crudest of crude cartoon shows to appear on his channel. It’s amazing that they haven’t stolen
South Park from Comedy Central yet.
The four part mini-series (that was originally released as a DVD), called Bender’s Big Score, is nothing out of the usual for Futurama. Nudist aliens, spam email, aliens taking over the planet because of the spam email, etc, etc.
I’m still debating the opening scenes of the the episode were ridiculously unnecessary or ridiculously great. The Professorproclaims that Planet Express has been “canceled by the Box company two years ago”. They take a whole bunch of shots at Fox, calling out the executives incompetence, and then throwing them in a meat grinder to make an all-purpose powder that makes it’s return continually throughout the movie. I think I read that FOX released this as a DVD, but otherwise would be some serious bridge burning. Except for the fact that almost every cartoon on FOX makes derogatory references at it, so maybe it’s not that unexpected.
If there has always been something great about Futurama it’s the total absurdness that it approaches futuristic concepts. This episode bludgeons concepts of time travel like an Eskimo does to baby seals. But who cares, it’s a fucking cartoon! Lighten up nerds.
There was some semi-addressing of the relationship between Fry and Leela, even though its a tease. With time travel Fry grows up and learns the lesson of “if you love something you must let it go”, with the twist of letting it go to his future self, the wrinkled, bald, and sexy Lars. This is all very gay.
Also, I love how the secret of time travel is a tattoo of Bender’s face on Fry’s ass. Beautiful, especially because they offer no explanation on it whatsoever.
More then anything this marks the beginning of new episodes coming out on Comedy Central and since they’ll be on cable I’m hoping for an exponential increase of dick and fart jokes… my personal favorites. Not to mention, Comedy Central will give a steady diet of replayed older episodes.
Now that I think about it, has any of these recent Primetime Cartoons started off as good as Futurama? No one shows old Simpsons episodes they’re that bad and the first go around of Family Guy episodes are lacking the “not-giving-a-fuck” quality that has made later episodes so incredible.
Oh wait, I just remembered the first episode of South Park where Cartman sets his cat on fire from a fart. Talk about a show making a dive downward in the humor department.
