Futurama

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ianungstad
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Re: Futurama

#51 Post by ianungstad » Mon Oct 11, 2010 1:02 am

There were three standout episodes this season. The time travel episode was probably second best overall. My favorite episode was the one where they kept switching bodies.

About half the episodes from the recent season have been shockingly poor. It's nice to have the show back but they need to weed out the bad writers. It's odd to have a show this wildly inconsistent where one episode will be terrible while the next being one of the best of the series.

There's potential here.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Futurama

#52 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Oct 11, 2010 1:25 am

I thought the time travel episode stood up with classics like Jurassic Bark, Roswell that Ends Well, and The Sting as an all-time best. The body switching ep was okay, and certainly one of the better ones of the season, but it's the episodes that manage to work in an emotional element and a standalone plot that isn't trying to parody something in current-day pop culture that will always live on for me.

ianungstad
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Re: Futurama

#53 Post by ianungstad » Tue Oct 12, 2010 4:29 pm

Not only is the quality of the writing all over the place, they can't seem to keep their basic plot points straight. Fry and Leela are dating in one episode, just friends in another, in others they don't seem to even like each other. It's inconsistent to say the least. Q-Bert also seems to appear and vanish as a character depending on who's writing the episode. David X Cohen as a showrunner should be on top of this. He could be doing a better job, IMO.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Futurama

#54 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Oct 12, 2010 4:38 pm

ianungstad wrote:Not only is the quality of the writing all over the place, they can't seem to keep their basic plot points straight. Fry and Leela are dating in one episode, just friends in another, in others they don't seem to even like each other. It's inconsistent to say the least. Q-Bert also seems to appear and vanish as a character depending on who's writing the episode. David X Cohen as a showrunner should be on top of this. He could be doing a better job, IMO.
And he should resist as hard as humanly possible divurging into social commentary. The worst episode of the season was the iPhone parody thing, whatever that was. It had the vibe of the worst kind of modern-day Simpsons episode. You would think that the writers would find it freeing to have a show set a thousand years in the future, enabling them to create plots that don't require them to be topical and/or chock full of pop culture references. Unless they're done right of course, like the brilliant early episode A Fishful of Dollars, when Fry realizes he's a billionaire and uses the money to attempt to recreate his 20th century lifestyle.

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Kirkinson
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Re: Futurama

#55 Post by Kirkinson » Wed Oct 13, 2010 12:26 am

mfunk9786 wrote:The worst episode of the season was the iPhone parody thing, whatever that was.
I would go even further and call it the worst episode of the entire show, ever.
ianungstad wrote:Q-Bert also seems to appear and vanish as a character depending on who's writing the episode.
Hasn't this always been the case with Q-Bert? I thought it was an intentional joke, like Scruffy. In any case, I agree that the new season was wildly inconsistent, but there were enough gems to make me immensely happy that the show is in production again. The time travel episode was indeed up there with the best ever, a perfect conglomeration of everything that makes the show special. That, the body-switching episode, and "A Clockwork Origin" really made the season for me.

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knives
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Re: Futurama

#56 Post by knives » Wed Oct 13, 2010 12:37 am

The evolution episode also managed to be great if just for, "I don't want to live on this planet anymore." Outside of the Ipod episode I wouldn't say there was an honestly terrible episode in the bunch and this is probably just growing pains from being out of episode practice so long. I'm sure we'll get more Benda's next season.

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domino harvey
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Re: Futurama

#57 Post by domino harvey » Mon Dec 20, 2010 7:23 pm

Bad news everybody, my order from Fox just arrived and the Blu-ray set is unbelievably in flimsy slot holder things like the SD-DVDs of the first two movies. Thank God for Blu-ray's scratch-proof coating

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mfunk9786
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Re: Futurama

#58 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Dec 20, 2010 8:04 pm

I've reached the point, with Blu-ray, that I don't care whatsoever about paper sleeves. A bit of cardboard will do absolutely nothing nefarious to a Blu-ray disc the way it might have to a DVD. I have no problem with this packaging.

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swo17
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Re: Futurama

#59 Post by swo17 » Mon Dec 20, 2010 11:10 pm

I don't know what magical fairytale land you guys are living in, but I've had no shortage of problems playing Blu-rays from Netflix that have even the slightest scratch or smudge.

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domino harvey
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Re: Futurama

#60 Post by domino harvey » Fri Mar 25, 2011 5:17 pm


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Re: Futurama

#61 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Fri Jun 24, 2011 2:10 pm

Premiere aired last night, how was it?

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knives
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Re: Futurama

#62 Post by knives » Fri Jun 24, 2011 2:17 pm

Terrible, I'm pissed at myself that I missed the interesting looking Wilfred for this. Won't make this mistake next week.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Futurama

#63 Post by mfunk9786 » Fri Jun 24, 2011 3:28 pm

I was under the impression that there were two new ones last night?

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knives
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Re: Futurama

#64 Post by knives » Fri Jun 24, 2011 3:30 pm

Unfortunately yes. Neither were particularly good either.

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: Futurama

#65 Post by matrixschmatrix » Fri Jun 24, 2011 3:36 pm

Man, I saw the first couple episodes of last season, and they seemed acceptable but not great- I head conflicting things about whether it got any better than that. It sounds like I should stick to just the original four seasons?

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knives
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Re: Futurama

#66 Post by knives » Fri Jun 24, 2011 3:49 pm

One line from last year was amazing I must admit, but so far there haven't been any classic episodes yet.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Futurama

#67 Post by mfunk9786 » Fri Jun 24, 2011 4:10 pm

The time travel episode from last year (title is escaping me right now) was worth the entire mediocre rest of the season. But the iPhone parody one was an all-time series low, yes, even worse than the DVD movies

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colinr0380
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Re: Futurama

#68 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Jun 24, 2011 5:10 pm

I agree with mfunk on the time travel episode being the best one and the eyePhone/Susan 'Boil' parody episode being sub-par mostly due to being too dependent on transient 2009 pop culture and being one of the more flippant episodes overall. I did also feel a little disappointed with the robot evolution one as well, if only because the "Creation or evolution?" message seemed rather muddled (or toned down into a "well, everyone's correct in their own way" non-inflammatory position).

But overall I liked the 'Volume 5/Season 6' season, especially the Da Vinci Code parody/Fry and the Professor's trip to the Renaissance Planet episode and the Hermes/Bender origin episode one, even if both of those episodes felt more calculated than usual in the way that they narrowed the emphasis down onto a couple of the main characters who hadn't really interacted on a one-to-one basis getting implausibly thrown together on a journey. Though I suppose these more limited pairings have to be seen in the context of following on from that brain swap episode, The Prisoner of Benda, which has to stand as one of the more ambitious usages of the cast of characters in the whole series.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Futurama

#69 Post by mfunk9786 » Fri Jun 24, 2011 7:30 pm

The show is still worlds better than post-Season 10 Simpsons

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knives
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Re: Futurama

#70 Post by knives » Fri Jun 24, 2011 7:33 pm

I've got to disagree with you ans say that the end of the evolution episode had the most biting criticism of creationism: who created god.

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Brian C
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Re: Futurama

#71 Post by Brian C » Fri Jun 24, 2011 10:10 pm

Watched the two new episodes from last night, and thought "Neutopia" was dreadful. Questionable premise, lazily conceived setup, nothing terribly witty about any of it. "Benderama" was better, sort of a wasted opportunity but not at all painful to watch.

Thought both of them played like retreads of older episodes, though. "Neutopia" was reminiscent of (though clearly inferior to) "Amazon Women in the Mood" in its critique of gender politics. "Benderama" recycled the "what if there was more than one Bender" conceit from "The Lesser of Two Evils", although the earlier episode did a lot more with the premise.

Overall, a less than overwhelming start, but like others have said, nowhere near as horrid as the iPhone episode from last year.

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colinr0380
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Re: Futurama

#72 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Jun 25, 2011 7:03 am

Without having seen it yet and on just reading a little of the premise of Neutopia, some of it also sounds similar to the "Where No Fan Has Gone Before" Star Trek parody episode with the crew crash landing and being forced to fight to the death against each other, along with Zap Brannigan barging in at the last minute to 'save' everybody! (Plus perhaps the rock monster is a nod to the one in Galaxy Quest?)

ianungstad
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Re: Futurama

#73 Post by ianungstad » Sun Jun 26, 2011 4:22 pm

These were both terrible. I thought Benderama was just as bad as Neutropia. It looks like this season will be as inconsistent as last years. (Which I felt had 2 very good episodes, about 3 that I would give a pass and the rest were awful.) Meh.

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Brian C
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Re: Futurama

#74 Post by Brian C » Thu Jun 30, 2011 10:43 pm

Futurama = good tonight

ianungstad
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Re: Futurama

#75 Post by ianungstad » Sun Jul 03, 2011 2:55 pm

"Ghost In the Machine" was a pretty solid episode. Lots of belly laughs and clever gags. It lacked the emotional heft that comes with the great Futurama episodes. I would put it on par with the body swapping episode from last season. Solid work. I don't know how much lead time it takes to make an episode of an animated series but you think they would have overhauled the writing staff by now and dropped some of the dead weight. Even though this season looks to be very inconsistent, it' still miles better than the recent South Park episodes. (South Park, The Simpsons, and Family Guy are all well past their expiration date.)

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