Sweet zombie Jesus, is it the season finale of Futurama already? *Sigh* Goodnight, dumb prince. Well, at least until next summer.
Good news, everyone! Your whinging and endless online petitions finally paid off on June 24, 2010 with the splendiferous return of Futurama, and it was almost as if it never left.
Futurama is and has always been a show for nerds, by nerds, about nerds. We live in geek-laden times, but, as every argument about the failures/successes of Comic Con will prove, not all geeks were created equal. The people behind Futurama (David X. Cohen, Matt Groening, Jeff Westbrook, Kristin Gore, etc.) are the best kinds of geeks, the kind that can both appreciate and mock their beloved tropes. And, at the end of the day, that’s precisely what Futurama is. How many other shows would be nerdy enough to create an unstoppable army of between one million and two million zombies or successfully pull off an “In The Year 2525” parody? Heck, how many shows would split up their only two relatively stable couples (Kif and Amy, Fry and Leela) only to reunite them after dabbling in robosexuality and body swaps?
But we nerds get it. We relish it. We thrive on it. And we screech an all-mighty maelstrom if it gets taken away (I’m looking at you, ABC and FOX… don’t think I’ve forgotten about Wonderfalls, Firefly, Pushing Daisies, and Better Off Ted… you’re still on notice). And while this season hasn’t been as crazy high-larious as Futurama 1.0, it has been all kinds of worth it. Now to start calling people crapscallions…
In the season premiere, the Professor susses out the mess left by the DVD Into The Green Wild Yonder with a rack of skeletons and robot duplicates. Fry builds a Leela-bot and, yes, that works out in exactly the way you don’t think.
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“My love is stronger than a vast majority of explosions.”
“That’s all. Oh, also, I’m covered in severe burns.”
“So, what of it?”
“Well… why is… those things?”
“You mean you don’t remember?”
“Nope, nothing. It’s like when I passed out in college except nobody drew magic marker penises on my forehead.” - “Fire all weapons and open a hailing frequency for my victory yodel.”
- “Only one thing can keep him alive. Possibly this thing!”
- “Why does everything I date run away?”
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“I love Fry. This Fry.”
“I love Leela. Any Leela.”
In the second episode, Leela and Zapp Brannigan get high and get it on in order to repopulate the Earth after the V-GINY Death Star censors the planet for indecency.
- “My instincts are to hide in the barrel like the wiley fish.”
- “The long dramatic corridor… that’s never a good sign.”
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“We can avoid humanity’s mistakes!”
“Like the tuba!”
Fry makes an ass out of himself while trying to win a bet against Bender by uploading a video of Leela and her Susan boil. Also, Mom unleashes techno-zombies. For about 30 seconds.
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“Is there an app for kissing my shiny metal ass?”
“Several!”
“Oooo.” -
“Since when is the Internet all about robbing people of their privacy?”
“August 6, 1991.” -
“Is all the work done by the children?”
“No, not the whipping.” - “These old doomsday devices are dangerously unstable. I’ll rest easier not knowing where they are.”
- “Not swimming in barf might ease my conscience.”
You’d think something as horrible and asinine as Prop 8 would’ve gotten its due, but only Futurama so handily knocks it down to the muck of inanity from whence it came. Amy and Bender fight for robosexual (and ghost/horse) marriage.
- “Oh the humanity! Also Bender.”
- “I’ve just learned that my final words are, ‘Back to you, Linda.’”
- “We can’t compete against that much stock footage of clouds!”
- “Look! A single mother! Let’s get her!”
- “The path to robot hell is paved with human flesh.”
Fry and Farnsworth end up on Planet Vinci where Da Vinci whines a lot about not being as smart as everyone else. One of the meh-er episodes of the season, though it did remind me how good Fry looks with excessive facial hair.
- “His intelligence is just a little… different-y.”
- “Prepare for pleasantries!”
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“Trevi! It’s the Trevi Fountain! There can be no question!”
“But Professor—”
“There can be no question!” - “I suppose if I have an achilles heel, it’s because I bought it at that same auction.”
- “I sent Bender to get a copy of The Last Supper. […] Everyone at Kinkos was an idiot so I just stole the original.”
Hermes and Bender spend some quality time together tracking down the inspector that left him mortal. And blow up a Mexican village.
- “Until now, I thought giant cubes were exciting.”
- “I did like the part where they screamed.”
- “They have phones in booths now? Finally, now I don’t have to lug this cell phone around.”
- “That’s a calculator. I ate it to gain its power.”
The Professor, Fry, and Bender get stuck in the future in a time machine that can only go forward, so they do the only two things they can: kill Hitler over and over again and drink beer while watching the universe end.
- “Has anyone seen Fry’s ass? It’s late for a date with my boot.”
- “Time? I can’t go back there!”
- “That was the old Fry. He’s dead now.”
Yet another unusual pairing: Amy’s doctoral thesis is highjacked by alien lolcats and Nibbler fights to save the world with a cute-off.
- “Amy, technology isn’t intrinsically good or evil. It’s how it’s used. Like the death ray.”
- “We’re not building something sinister if that’s what you’re implying. Now come on, something sinister won’t build itself!”
- “What do cats need with that much yarn and cobalt?”
- “The magma P.I. is 10,000 degrees selleck!”
- “The horse says, ‘Doctorate denied.’”
- “He’s one of those dog operated puppets that’s been designed for use by a cat!”
- “Say, do you know Obliteron? He pretends to be a hamster, but—”
Farnsworth leaves Earth after getting fed up with a bunch of moronic anti-evolutionists and ends up creating a robot planet. Zoidberg and Cubert get left behind and have the saddest father-son bonding moment ever.
- “Banana-swilling poop-slinger.”
- “This is Father-Man. He fights crime to earn the respect of Son-Boy.”
- “If this is anything like killing the pigeon on my balcony, we’ve got our work cut out for us.”
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“All these trees are robotic. I can’t believe how quickly they sprung up.”
“I can. Robots do everything fast including evolving and believing how quickly things spring up.” - “I’m not crazy. I created you all. And I came here in a homemade spaceship and lived in a cave. If you don’t believe me, ask my uncle.”
- “We’ve gotta save them! But the only weapon we have is my fan dance.”
Everyone (and I mean everyone) switches bodies. Scruffy and the automatic water bucket declare their love for one another, Amy eats everything in sight, and Fry and Leela finally hook up… in the most disturbing way possible.
- “Of course, it would all require split second robot timing. That’s where I come in. You see, I own a watch.”
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“As a man enters his 18th decade, he thinks back on the mistakes he made in life.”
“Like the heaps of dead monkeys.”
“Science can’t move forward without heaps!” - “We’re just the people this mind-switcher was made for by us!”
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“He steps forward, but moves backwards!”
“By the gods, he is a machine!” - “I have everything I ever wanted: money, wealth, riches…”
Lrrreconciliable Ndndifferences
Lrrr takes over Earth in a half-assed attempt at getting Ndnd to stop nagging him while Fry tries his hand at writing a comic book.
- “You’re taking a vacation from normalcy. The setting: a weird motel where the bed is stained with mystery. And there’s also some mystery floating in the pool. Your key card may not open the exercise room because someone smeared mystery on the lock. But it will open the Scary Door.”
- “I’m Lrrr, ruler of the planet Omicron Persei 8. Can I crash on your couch?”
- “What’s on the TV tonight? Oh wait, I don’t care, I have a date!”
- “Come, Nixon, introduce me to the kitchen staff so I may lay down the law on Lrrr’s low sodium diet.”
- “She is not the boss of you. I am the boss of you!”
- “Say goodbye to your forehead, because I’m gonna shoot you in it.”
Planet Express celebrates their 100th delivery (and the show’s 100th episode) with a massive Bender-thrown party. The non-robot crew get sentenced to time in the sewers leading Leela to head up a mutant revolt.
- “I’m ordering a hundred kegs, a hundred hookers, and a hundred Elvis impersonators who aren’t above a little hooking, should the occasion arise.”
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“I feel like I’ve ruined her life.”
“You did ruin her life!” - “Well, they’re with the CHUDs now.”
- “I trust the orgy pit has been scraped and buttered?”
- “It’s coming loose! Hand me some of that cruise director!”
- “Did you guys know I have a crush on Leela?”
- “Sorry, I tried to scream but I barfed.”
Comedy Central will re-air all 12 episodes this Saturday, September 4th, starting at 9 PM. The show returns on November 21st with a special holiday episode, “Holiday Val-U-Pak,” which brings back the “Anthology of Interest” three-minisode format. Season 7 kicks off in 2011.
Alex Brown is an archivist in training, reference librarian by day, writer by night, and all around geek who watches entirely too much TV. She is prone to collecting out-of-print copies of books by Evelyn Waugh, Jane Austen, and Douglas Adams, probably knows far too much about pop culture than is healthy, and thinks her rats Hywel and Odd are the cutest things ever to exist in the whole of eternity. You can follow her on Twitter if you dare…
