Futuramavol6

Futurama volume 6 (2011)

Futurama is one of those shows that wasn’t treated right by the network and just never had a chance (though to be fair it was on for a few years). It kept getting preempted by Football on the Fox network so often that viewers just never got into the habit of watching it. When it was cancelled I thought it was gone for good. But the loyal fans of the show managed to convince Fox to bring it back, though this time on cable. Volume 6 is a collection of 13 of the new episodes.

If you haven’t watched the show before let me fill you in on the details. Phillip J. Fry is accidentally frozen and then thawed out far in the future. He finds a distant relative and goes to work as a delivery boy. Along with Fry we get a robot named Bender (because he bends stuff), an alien named Zoidberg, and a mutant named Lela. There are other characters as well, but most of the stories revolved around these 4 as they deal with the crazy and sometimes hilarious future.

Let me start off by saying that I was one of those viewers that liked the show, but didn’t keep up with it. Heck it wasn’t until it started to air as reruns on the Cartoon network that I caught up with what I had missed. This is important to note because I wasn’t terribly impressed with the new episodes. Don’t get me wrong they aren’t bad. Each episode had a couple of funny bits in them, but I sort of expected that the show’s return would be at least be up to the quality of the original run. Hell these episodes aren’t even as good as the short 4 episode runs that Comedy Central released as movies (Bender’s Game, Beast with a Million Backs). The comedy falls flat for me and they seem to fall back onto gags and jokes that they already touched on. As a fan I was very disappointed.

I do want to leave on a positive note. Of the 13 episodes there are 2 that I rather enjoyed. Law and Oracle is a funny twist on that Tom Cruise movie Minority report with Fry working as a cop in the future crimes division. There are some very funny and snarky jokes in this one. The other episode that I enjoyed is the last of the season. Is called Reincarnation. With this episode they tell a very simple story with 3 different styles of animation. You have old school black and white (think Steamboat Willy), followed by some old school Nintendo cut scenes, and then is finished up with Anime. These are all well done and the voice actors get the styles spot on. This might be one of the better episodes of the entire series and is up there with the best.

My final thoughts are that the new season is mediocre at best. 2 good episodes out of 13 isn’t a very good average. But I’d rather have this then no Futurama at all, so beggars can’t be choosers.

2 ½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer