Zapp Brannigan loses interest in Leela and instead turns his attentions towards her mother, Turanga Munda.Futurama follows the comic exploits of Fry, a pizza delivery boy, who was accidentally cryogenically frozen in 1999, and awakens in the year 3000, finding much has changed, and, yet, is seemingly familiar. Together with an assortment of alien, robot, and human friends, he works for an intergalactic delivery service, Planet Express, run by his descendant nephew, and finds many adventures along the way.The cult animation classic "Futurama" has returned from the past, and it doesn't seem to have lost much from either its edge or its attitude.While it's been on break for eight years, creator Matt Groening's "other show" - he also does something called "The Simpsons" - returns with the core cast intact.Philip Fry (voiced by Billy West) is still a 25-year-old career pizza deliverer who accidentally underwent cryogenic freezing on Dec. 31, 1999, and woke up a millennium later at Planet Express, which delivers on a larger scale.
His girlfriend, Leela (Katey Sagal), is also back and while she isn't quite as dominating as Sagal is on "Sons of Anarchy," she's got some of the same anger management issues. She also has just one eye.
His sidekick is the robot Bender (John DiMaggio).
This welcome-back episode is not, however, a character drama. It's more a broad social commentary, satirizing our ongoing gender stereotypes by contemplating what we'd do if, say, we all suddenly had different "parts." Or no parts.
The second is to turn the delivery plane into a commercial airline, which enables Groening to run off a long string of airline jokes - like the flight attendant reminding passengers that if the plane accidentally should go back in time, they should not kill their parents.
All is going well until the pilot falls asleep, the plane runs out of fuel and they crash on an unknown planet where they meet a character who pulls himself together from a pile of rocks.
It turns out that on this planet there are no genders, and that's when the real jokes start kicking in. This character sees how Earth men argue with Earth women and decides to see what would happen if 1) every Earthling suddenly was tranformed into the opposite gender, or 2) gender characteristics, including "parts," were simply eliminated.
But Groening has never relied heavily on subtlety, and his strong suits, like timing and tone, keep things moving.
Most heartening, this "Futurama" doesn't feel like an exercise in nostalgia, like some old rocker returning for a greatest hits tour.
Don't get me wrong, I like the Simpsons, but there is just something about Futurama that I like more. It irks me to see people who hate this show and are glad it is cancelled. If you don't like a show just don't watch it...to many shows have gotten a premature axe these days mainly cause television networks haven't realized no show is going to have the ratings of shows from the past. I am sure to all those who hated the show, there have been shows you liked that have been cancelled as well.
This one about a pizza boy frozen and waking up in the future was for me quite enjoyable. Which is the kiss of death right there, because if I like a show, it usually does get cancelled and it usually does have a pretty good following, but for some reason the networks still somehow think all shows should average 20 or more million viewers or its a failure.
His girlfriend, Leela (Katey Sagal), is also back and while she isn't quite as dominating as Sagal is on "Sons of Anarchy," she's got some of the same anger management issues. She also has just one eye.
His sidekick is the robot Bender (John DiMaggio).
This welcome-back episode is not, however, a character drama. It's more a broad social commentary, satirizing our ongoing gender stereotypes by contemplating what we'd do if, say, we all suddenly had different "parts." Or no parts.
The second is to turn the delivery plane into a commercial airline, which enables Groening to run off a long string of airline jokes - like the flight attendant reminding passengers that if the plane accidentally should go back in time, they should not kill their parents.
All is going well until the pilot falls asleep, the plane runs out of fuel and they crash on an unknown planet where they meet a character who pulls himself together from a pile of rocks.
It turns out that on this planet there are no genders, and that's when the real jokes start kicking in. This character sees how Earth men argue with Earth women and decides to see what would happen if 1) every Earthling suddenly was tranformed into the opposite gender, or 2) gender characteristics, including "parts," were simply eliminated.
But Groening has never relied heavily on subtlety, and his strong suits, like timing and tone, keep things moving.
Most heartening, this "Futurama" doesn't feel like an exercise in nostalgia, like some old rocker returning for a greatest hits tour.
Don't get me wrong, I like the Simpsons, but there is just something about Futurama that I like more. It irks me to see people who hate this show and are glad it is cancelled. If you don't like a show just don't watch it...to many shows have gotten a premature axe these days mainly cause television networks haven't realized no show is going to have the ratings of shows from the past. I am sure to all those who hated the show, there have been shows you liked that have been cancelled as well.
This one about a pizza boy frozen and waking up in the future was for me quite enjoyable. Which is the kiss of death right there, because if I like a show, it usually does get cancelled and it usually does have a pretty good following, but for some reason the networks still somehow think all shows should average 20 or more million viewers or its a failure.