Futurama

1990s tv comedy series

Pizza delivery boy Philip J. Fry was accidentally frozen in cryogenic pod for 1000 years and in year 3000 he comes back to see the completely different face of the Earth.

Very original idea put together with great sense of humour produced remarkable animated series - Futurama was mixing scifi elements with comedy and unique style of The Simpsons. A slacker, Philip J. Fry, accidentally ends up in year 3000, where nothing is how it was back in year 2000. As employee of courier company Planet Express he has the whole universe to see and completely new technology to learn.

At the beginning Futurama was just amazing show - fresh, with original characters, original setting, plenty of original ideas for episodes and that lasted for about two seasons. After that, unfortunately, the series became really uneven - some episodes were good, some were average and some even completely unnecessary. Just like in case of other series created by Matt Groening, The Simpsons and Disenchantment, after a while the formula gets stale and instead of shaking things around he just pushes on even though the shows are running out of steam.

In case of The Simpsons after 10-12 season it was obvious that the show should end, because it was just going through motions without having anything interesting to say. In case of Futurama it took him 2-3 seasons to run out of good ideas, in case of Disenchantment even less. He got stuck in the same place, with the moment Fry has been put into cryogenic pod, used several times over and over again, so Fox finally pulled the plug after Season 4. Later Comedy Central picked up the show for additional Futurama, but it was again cancelled after Season 7.

The problem with Futurama is similar as with The Simpsons - the same characters and same situations cannot be funny when they are overused. After Season 3 not much of the content can be called fresh, original or even remotely entertaining - it is again going through the motions without having anything interesting or new to say. While up to Season 4 there were very good episodes (although more and more seldom), what was after that was mostly just abysmal.

Matt Groening and David X. Cohen created a great show, unfortunately they don’t know when to give up. The first cancellation, after Season 4, was correlated with dropping level of scripts and overuse of same situations, yet even 10 years later Groening and Cohen still implement jokes that ridicule Fox TV for that decision. I mean, really, it’s not healthy to hold a grudge that long and to be so disconnected from reality.

Since Season 3, even though there were literally whole universes to discover and use in the show, the scripts use the same about 20 characters that keep returning no matter if it is or isn’t interesting. After Season 3 Futurama never came even close to the level of first episodes, which were just amazing and became just a distant copy of original with very little to offer.

Rating	7.6
Funny	7 / 10
Entertaining	4 / 5
Characters	5 / 5
Nonrepetitive	3 / 5