For all things Futurama
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Billy West is 72, and Katey Sagal is 70. They're trying to voice 20yo's. There is a limited amount of content we're going to get out of them. I'm also sure the budget wasn't was it once was for the VA's or the writers.
I'm happy that we're getting more content. Even mediocre content has gems in it. I do wish they'd stray away from current issues as it takes them so long to produce episodes at this burn rate that the content is a bit aged by the time we're watching it.
I remember thinking the same things on the last renewal for Comedy Central. Now, over time they grew on me. There are still things I don’t like about them. There are whole episodes I skip, but there are also a lot of really good jokes that I didn’t catch the first time when my hopes were sky high.
They have a few good jokes here and there, but the overall plot for the majority of the episodes are just so lame. Even all the way up to season 10 things like NFTs crypto, and COVID would have been a one off joke not the entire plot of the episode. The eyePhone episode is subtle compared to how in your face these new seasons are with "current" events. And these new seasons are just fanfare mixed with topical bullshit. "Hey, remember all the characters from the show and their catch phrases? Now watch this episode about NFTs or an episode about the King of Space that feels like it was written for a completely different show."
I've been falling asleep to Futurama for almost 15 years and I've seen every episode dozens of times (I'm literally watching season 3 in the background right now as I procrastinate on sleep). I even watch it when I'm working out. But when it reaches season 11, I just restart the series. Which is a shame because there are some decent episodes in the new seasons. But I'm kind of avoiding them like the plague after I watched half of season 12 and found myself more pissed off than entertained.
Yep, and if I remember correctly there are two more season to come :-(
The original series runs didn't have that many "topical" episode plots. That's become the go-to for the new seasons, and some of the topics are already too old to be topical in the way South Park has pulled off. Initial run topical episodes I can think of:
And I think those were still very light connections to current events and more parodies, compared to eyePhone, cryptocurrency, NFTs, fast fashion, antivax…
The VAs have been aging, too, and I feel like their hearts aren't in it either. I'm going to assume this is a cash grab -- Disney is good at extracting as much value out of IP in the short term; from their perspective, there's only upside to cranking out some more Futurama.
The fashion episode was garbage
There was a fashion episode? I can't remember it. That little impression it made on me.
Yep, Prof became a celebrity fashion designer, completely off the rails....
Yes, they are not good
Each revival has had its ups and downs, but these last 2 seasons have likely been the final nail in the coffin for me.
We're at the point of celebrity episodes. That's right around the time I stopped watching The Simpsons 😔
The new seasons have been lackluster. I think one of the main issues is that the show did a lot to wrap up the majority of the main character arcs prior to the cancellations. Fry and Leela are the central characters, often trading off the position as the audience stand-in. And there is basically zero room left for character growth. We know how the Fry/Leela love story arc ends, we've seen it. Kif and Amy have also hit the end of their main character arcs. They are married, have kids, and mostly are settled into domestic life. Bender is Bender. A core part of his character is his resistance to growth. So, even when they drop a backstory on him and try to give him growth, it just feels out of place. That only leaves background characters to work with. But, since it takes the focus off the main characters, it makes things feel like a money-grab spin-off.
All that's left is the sort of 90's sit-com style, "story of the week" where nothing really changes and we all learn whatever moral lesson the writers wanted to foist on us this week in 22-minutes, plus commercial breaks. We all want "more Futurama"; but, I think the problem may be that there isn't "more Futurama". The stories are done, we just keep hanging on because of nostalgia, and the producers keep making it because of money. There are going to be good bits here and there. But, what we are seeing is what we are going to keep getting.