Rent Futurama: Series 1 (1999)

Futurama: Series 1 review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

With the success of The Simpsons, it was bound to happen sooner or later that Matt Groening and his team would pull their efforts into a new show. Seeing as how The Simpsons were nearing its tenth season, it seemed that the time was right for another Simpsons-style animated series. Thankfully, Futurama was far from the standard animated sitcom formula. Rather than being another show about the family unit, this series focused on single characters in their twenties. Oh, and it takes place in the future.

The premise becomes instantly engaging for the exploits of Fry, a down-on-his-luck pizza delivery boy. After being duped on New Year's Eve, he accidentally stumbles into a cryogenic freezing chamber. The passage of time transports him from New York City in 1999 to New York City in 2999. Things are much different in the future; people use tubes as transportation, robots drink beer, and spaceships are ever-present. It may seem disappointing to Fry that he traversed time to only end up as a delivery boy once more but it doesn’t. After all, he’s a delivery boy in the future, delivering all across the galaxy in a starship.

There are a number of unique characters working alongside him. His only living relative, Professor Farnsworth, is a grumpy and sometimes horny old man who runs the delivery business. Leela, a cyclops, is a recently fired woman who takes the job as a ship captain, acting more or less as the straight man of her underdog crew. Also on the crew is Bender, a recluse robot that is prone to parties and vulgarity, never wasting a chance to belch fire. Rounding out the delivery business is Amy the inept intern, Hermes the dry Jamaican accountant, and Zoidberg the lobster creature who acts as a doctor not familiar with human anatomy.

The sci-fi setting allows for a variety of bizarre stories to come about. The crew takes a trip to the moon that has been turned into an amusement park and Fry runs afoul of some farmer and his robot daughters. Fry moves in with Bender at his apartment but since he’s a robot Bender’s apartment is about the size of a small closet. Even for taking place in the future, the show also finds ways to integrate pop culture into the stories, as when one alien race invades Earth because they can’t get new episodes of an Ally McBeal parody.

The first season does struggle a bit to find the right timing but the teeth of the series is quite clear. Within the very first episode, Fry nearly dies when he mistakes a suicide booth for a phone booth, made all the more hilarious by Bender attempting to kill himself as well. Characters are savaged in pretty gruesome manners of vaporization and lopped-off limbs. Needless to say, the humor gets pretty dark at times, even as the show slowly tries to find its tighter timing of comedy. The satire is also quite strong with the savaging of work culture, war, patriotism, and pop culture. And the best part is that since all of this takes place in a fantastical future, there’s practically no rules for what can happen in these episodes.

Futurama was not exactly a successful show. Crowded out by the competition of Family Guy and King of the Hill, the show struggled in the ratings. Only after arriving on DVD and having reruns airing on Adult Swim did the cult status of the show take off. What’s rather marvelous about such a show is the consistency. The first season of The Simpsons and Family Guy are almost unrecognizable or forgotten by the fourth season. Futurama remained as wild and creative in this season as it did in any other season. Well, except for the Comedy Central revival but that’s another story.