Goodbye, "Futurama"

I went back and forth about whether I should write up a reaction post to the finale of "Futurama," as I've spent so many posts cheerleading the series before. However, it's been over a year since the last time I wrote about it on this blog, there are a lot of other episodes to talk about, and this finale feels like the real deal in a way that the other finales haven't, so I think I can justify this one. Some minor spoilers for the most recent seasons ahead.

Season seven of "Futurama," aired in two batches over the last two years. There's been a lot of debate over whether the quality of the show has dropped since it came back from its long hiatus, and whether season seven was as good as season six. My position is that "Futurama" has always had weaker episodes, and while the Comedy Central episodes were more inconsistent and had different sensibilities than the FOX episodes, they were still well worth watching weekly. Some of my favorite episodes, including body-switching episode "Prisoner of Benda" and time travel episode "The Late Philip J. Fry," came after the hiatus. I'm going to need a few rewatches to cement how I feel about the most recent season, but there have been some strong contenders, including "Murder on the Planet Express," a spoof on "Alien" and "The Thing," and the finale episode, "Meanwhile."

There's no denying that the show changed fundamentally. Fry and Leela became an official couple, and "Futurama" stopped doing episodes about how Fry was a fish out of water in the future. The sentimentality became more overt, spreading to some of the other characters. There was more attention paid to continuity. Characters like Zapp Branigan, Kif, and Cubert didn't show up as often. References to more current pop-culture started appearing. Some of this didn't work, such as the Susan Boyle episode and the one where we learn about how Zoidberg and the Professor first met. It often seemed like the writers were trying too hard or running short on ideas. Plots started coming off as more contrived and formulaic, or so off-the-wall that they didn't feel like "Futurama." There were two anthology episodes, "Naturama" and "Saturday Morning Fun Pit," satirizing nature documentaries and terrible Saturday morning cartoons respectively, that stick out as especially bizarre.

Still, there were plenty of good episodes and the writers came up with some great things to do with the characters. Zoidberg finally got the girl in "Stench and Stenchability," the weirdest remake of Charlie Chaplin's "City Lights" ever. "Lethal Inspection" gave us a reason to like Hermes and "Calculon 2.0" gave us a reason to like Calculon, briefly. We met the Professor's parents in "Near-Death Wish" and Scruffy's trainee janitor, Jackie Jr., in "Murder on the Planet Express." And the nerd in me loved that we'd occasionally still get references to older science-fiction stories like "Flatworld," "E.T.," "Twilight Zone," and "The Time Machine." Even the crummiest episodes had their good points. Whatever you want to say about "Attack of the Killer App," the social-media episode, it spawned the now ubiquitous "Shut up and take my money!" meme.

"Meanwhile," the last episode is a good example of all of the things I've always liked "Futurama." It takes a nerdy science-fiction plot device, time travel, and uses it to create absurd situations. In this case we have the Professor's time button, which only allows for time travel ten seconds into the past, and is abused by Fry and the rest of the gang immediately. The show isn't afraid of being weird and morbid and silly just for the sake of being silly. It uses the fact that the series is animated to show us something impossible, a quality I think many viewers take for granted. The show also deals with Fry and Leela's relationship in a way that is emotionally serious, even if very little else in the episode is. The last ten minutes of "Meanwhile" are likely meant to be a take on "I Am Legend" and other "last man on Earth" stories. However, "Futurama" takes the concept and uses it for goofy gags - and to show us just how strong Fry and Leela's commitment has become.

It was hard to escape the specter of the show hitting a plateau of mediocrity the way that "The Simpsons" did around its sixth season. So, it came as something of a relief to learn that "Futurama" has been cancelled. There are other avenues for its potential resurrection, including Netflix, and I certainly wouldn't say no to another movie or two, but this feels like a natural place to stop. The story gave us a happy ending for Fry and Leela (though a calculatedly open-ended one) and it was enough.

Time to bid a fond farewell to the world of tomorrow.
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