AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
edited July 2011
I actually thought it was a pretty weak episode. Worst of the new three so far, anyways. That's not to say it was all bad, mind you, but it weren't great.
I enjoyed it. It's nice when they explore Bender's overly sensitive side.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
edited July 2011
The episode's biggest failings were:
- Billy West, after two very good episodes, has gone back into the weird version of Fry's voice that plagued the last season intermittently. It makes Fry sound more immature and idiotic, as if that's what was needed.
- The plot discards most of the cast save Fry and Bender, and I can rarely think of another episode that does that. Even Godfellas' B-plot was about Fry and Leela, not just Fry alone. As well, the central tenet of the plot just has Bender acting very out of character the entire episode for no real reason other than to motivate the story along. Fry isn't even a character in this one, just some guy who things happen to. So, taken in total, you have a story with no B-plot, only one real character, and no stakes or emotional arc.
- The set-up with Fry not knowing what "Parade Day" is doesn't make sense anymore since the show has already established that, unlike The Simpsons, Futurama has a (vaguely adhered-to) timeline and continuity, with it being the year 3011 this season. It worked when the show had an episode about "Freedom Day" because Fry was new to the future; doesn't make a lot of sense after 11 years to suddenly become aware of a major holiday.
- Fry is slowly going down the Homer Simpson route of becoming increasingly dumber and less relatable. Not on such a sharp trajectory, and with a good deal of baseline stupidity as a precedent already, but Fry's definitely becoming less "naive goofball" and more "retarded simpleton" as the seasons wear on.
There were a couple of funny moments but so far those are three weak episodes.
Eh, I liked the first two enough. They were light and didn't have much to them, but they were funny enough. Really, my only gripe about the Neutopia episode was how long it took getting around to the gender-switch moment, and then once they got there, how little they did with it.
- Fry is slowly going down the Homer Simpson route of becoming increasingly dumber and less relatable. Not on such a sharp trajectory, and with a good deal of baseline stupidity as a precedent already, but Fry's definitely becoming less "naive goofball" and more "retarded simpleton" as the seasons wear on.
But Fry having a severe mental disability has already been a major plot point in several episodes.
- Fry is slowly going down the Homer Simpson route of becoming increasingly dumber and less relatable. Not on such a sharp trajectory, and with a good deal of baseline stupidity as a precedent already, but Fry's definitely becoming less "naive goofball" and more "retarded simpleton" as the seasons wear on.
But Fry having a severe mental disability has already been a major plot point in several episodes.
He's his own grandfather.
And we seem to get into this debate every Futurama thread.
The show has established that Fry isn't very smart and he has a genetically-based learning disability/brainwave anomaly. But it also has established that he's not functionally retarded, which sometimes writers of this show seem to forget. He's naive, overly-confident, a doofus, a dork, and vaguely dumb, but he's not defective human being in the intelligence department.
Episodes like "The Why of Fry," "Time Keeps On Slippin'," "The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings," and "Bender's Big Score" show that Fry is more than capable of rational and even intelligent thoughts and acts, so ret-conning him to be a bigger schmuck than he is already is really jarring.
The only established mental deficiency Fry has is his brainwave disorder and general doofy-ness. Making him stupider doesn't make him a funnier character.
They can make Fry as stupid as the situation demands (indeed the entire damn cast) - and they frequently did so during the strongest episodes. Consistency isn't the issue - it's the quality of the comedy.
I'm fine with episodes not having B-plots (I actually thought Futurama managed to avoid a lot of these), an extended cast, and being massively inconsistent within their own universe and characterisation, as long as it serves the comedy foremost.
I know I've said this before, but the principle problem with the new episodes is just that they're heavily underwritten. They mostly have strong concepts and talented actors to execute them, but it feels as if the writers didn't have the same manpower and luxury of time as they had on the original run. Jokes fall flat, time is wasted on basic exposition, and the show just doesn't have the same feel of cramming in jokes in every available nook and cranny.
My understanding of how the Simpsons, Futurama, American Dad et al were written at their peak is that they had a single writer for the episode, and that this writer's script was then unleased on a roomful of talented people working crazy hours to make it as good as it possibly could be - the end product was often unrecognisable. I just can't believe that Futurama has the budget to do that anymore - not compared to being the follow-up to The Simpsons at Fox anyway.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
They can make Fry as stupid as the situation demands (indeed the entire damn cast) - and they frequently did so during the strongest episodes. Consistency isn't the issue - it's the quality of the comedy.
I'm fine with episodes not having B-plots (I actually thought Futurama managed to avoid a lot of these), an extended cast, and being massively inconsistent within their own universe and characterisation, as long as it serves the comedy foremost.
I know I've said this before, but the principle problem with the new episodes is just that they're heavily underwritten. They mostly have strong concepts and talented actors to execute them, but it feels as if the writers didn't have the same manpower and luxury of time as they had on the original run. Jokes fall flat, time is wasted on basic exposition, and the show just doesn't have the same feel of cramming in jokes in every available nook and cranny.
Agreed.
Futurama has occasionally futzed its own continuity, certainly in no one more than Bender and his origin story, but it's always been to serve the comedy. And I'll forgive a lot as long as the comedy is solid and the character isn't drastically and needlessly changed.
As for being underwritten, that's exactly how I would characterize last night's episode, and to a lesser extent, the "Neutopia" episode as well. Basically last night's episode was a one-sentence concept stretched out without really any embellishment or stakes: "What if Bender was a ghost?" From that point on, it just doesn't go anywhere. What if Bender was a ghost? What is the comedic imperative from that? Do we explore the robot afterlife? Do we examine everyone's reaction to the death of a beloved friend?
No, we just have a weird episode where Bender keeps trying to kill Fry, and where Fry encourages this by making a racist observation.
And from that point, at the very beginning of the episode, the joke goes nowhere.
Yeah, I'll also concur that this episode was probably the weakest of the three so far. It's an odd counterpoint to Neutopia... while Neutopia just kind of meandered around all over the place and never really went anywhere, this episode has a very defined arc. Yet Neutopia was absolutely crammed with golden comedy moments, while this one didn't have nearly as many.
It certainly wasn't bad; I enjoyed it overall. But it was fairly weak nonetheless.
- The set-up with Fry not knowing what "Parade Day" is doesn't make sense anymore since the show has already established that, unlike The Simpsons, Futurama has a (vaguely adhered-to) timeline and continuity, with it being the year 3011 this season. It worked when the show had an episode about "Freedom Day" because Fry was new to the future; doesn't make a lot of sense after 11 years to suddenly become aware of a major holiday.
It's entirely possible that he was on another planet or otherwise out in space on the previous ten Parade Days.
Yeah, I'll also concur that this episode was probably the weakest of the three so far. It's an odd counterpoint to Neutopia... while Neutopia just kind of meandered around all over the place and never really went anywhere, this episode has a very defined arc. Yet Neutopia was absolutely crammed with golden comedy moments, while this one didn't have nearly as many.
It certainly wasn't bad; I enjoyed it overall. But it was fairly weak nonetheless.
Well, no one wants to watch an arc where there aren't any real stakes, there's no emotional engagement, and the characters act unlike themselves.
A big part of the problem is that Bender is a lot like Zoidberg in that when you center a story around him, you have to give a strong motivation, and you have to have a lot of people reacting to him. Zoidberg and Bender on their own are horrible people with few redeeming qualities, so they have to engage with likable people and drive the story forward with stakes.
Good examples: "Why Must I Be A Crustacean in Love?" There's no B-plot, it's all about Zoidberg's quest to mate back on his homeworld. But in doing so, he enlists Fry's help in a very Cyrano de Bergerac fashion while Leela helps she-crab Edna to better understand Zoidberg, and then it all reaches a climax when Zoidberg accuses Fry of stealing the girl away. Those are legitimate stakes, and that's a plot that despite being centered on one character, involves several characters and depends on dynamic relationships.
Bad examples: "That's Lobsterstainment!" Zoidberg spends the entire episode cavorting around with the previously unknown Harold Zoid and the third-tier character Calculon. Again, there's no B-plot, but here is doesn't work because it doesn't involve the central cast in a meaningful way, and the stakes are irrelevant to the show's greater narrative. Who cares if Zoidberg makes a movie with Calculon and Uncle Zoid? So what if he does?
There's a sort of C-plot in Lobstertainment with Leela and Fry getting stuck in the tar, but it doesn't amount to much in the end and overall the episode is pretty bad. The Freedom Day episode suffers from Zoidberg being the lead much in the same way this most recent episode did with Bender where the main character acts one way at the start (both involving being offended by something and getting revenge) and then he changes his mind at the end and atones with an underwhelming redemption.
Also I didn't find Fry that unintelligent in this episode. Really he didn't have much character in the episode at all: Bender could have been haunting anyone really since all Fry did was scream and/or cower for most of the episode.
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Zilla36021st Century. |She/Her|Trans* Woman In Aviators Firing A Bazooka. ⚛️Registered Userregular
edited July 2011
Anyone else thinking the writer(s) have been playing Ghost Trick on the DS?
Any episode with Calculon in it is worthwhile, and I thought the script about a father and son who are both president and vice president was really funny.
2 episodes with propellors in space? WTF futurama you are better than this.
That the Amish ship made completely of glass, wood and powered by two oxen on a treadmill which escaped earth gravity flew through space with propellers was your issue with the ship? :P
Also I didn't notice that Fry's voice had shifted. Sounded the same as it always did to me.
Would like some explanation of Fry and Leela's standing with each other. I have no idea if they're still together and they just don't, like, want to bash the audience over the head with it (I could see Leela's placement in the hospital room as a subtle reference to them still being an item) or if it's just oddly dropped.
It seems weird if it was dropped considering they still do the whole Continuity thing, actively referencing the plot of The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
2 episodes with propellors in space? WTF futurama you are better than this.
That the Amish ship made completely of glass, wood and powered by two oxen on a treadmill which escaped earth gravity flew through space with propellers was your issue with the ship? :P
Also I didn't notice that Fry's voice had shifted. Sounded the same as it always did to me.
Would like some explanation of Fry and Leela's standing with each other. I have no idea if they're still together and they just don't, like, want to bash the audience over the head with it (I could see Leela's placement in the hospital room as a subtle reference to them still being an item) or if it's just oddly dropped.
It seems weird if it was dropped considering they still do the whole Continuity thing, actively referencing the plot of The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings.
It's the curse of a show who wants to toe the line between having deep continuity and having longevity. The general rule of television is that you can successfully appeal to one method or the other, but rarely both.
But yes, I'm a little miffed that the writers themselves seem so inconsistent with Fry and Leela's relationship. You have episodes like the EyePhone episode where Fry puts out open invitations to booty calls right before episodes like "The Late Phillip Fry" where Fry opens the episode already in a dating relationship with Leela.
I don't need constant movement on their relationship on the show, but some continued acknowledgement of their at-this-point mutual attraction and connection would be nice. The show regularly seems to remember that Amy and Kiff are married, even if it's not referenced every episode, so they're certainly capable of appealing to some sort of continuity.
I mean, Christ, last season Fry and Leela actually had consensual sex with each other. Granted, in the bodies of Zoidberg and Farnsworth, respectively, but hey.
It's about time some of you have come around to the dark side.
Now, I've actually enjoyed these 3 episodes more than any of the last season, but the same problems with season 5 still remain. And I still say it's one of the same problems as the Simpsons. The new writing teams are essentially writing fan fiction of characters they grew up with.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
It's about time some of you have come around to the dark side.
Now, I've actually enjoyed these 3 episodes more than any of the last season, but the same problems with season 5 still remain. And I still say it's one of the same problems as the Simpsons. The new writing teams are essentially writing fan fiction of characters they grew up with.
I don't know if I'd go that far, but I will admit both season 5 and what's been shown of season 6 have been remarkably deep in weird little winking nods to the original 4 seasons. Hedonism Bot was all over season 5, and rarely for any good reason other than to make a passing gay-panic joke.
Futurama has a deep enough cast of recurring characters to actually write decent stories about them, but I'd rather the writers either write a story for a character or come up with a new one. Using them repeatedly as one-off gags, especially the same one-off gag each time, gets really stale.
The problem with that theory is that the new writing team on Futurama is, for the most part, the old writing team. The last three episodes were written by writers from the original four seasons (hell, J. Stewart Burns, who wrote the episode that won an Emmy, wrote "Neutopia"). They should know how to write these characters because they helped characterize them in the first place. Why they seem to be missing the mark now... I don't know.
man i thought season 5 was great. there were a few exceptionally weak episodes, sure (ugh iphone), but it also featured some of my favorite episodes of the entire show (lethal inspection, prisoner of benda, late philip j fry)
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Donkey KongPutting Nintendo out of business with AI nipsRegistered Userregular
edited July 2011
That fucking cat episode was probably the lowest the series has ever sunk.
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Thousands of hot, local singles are waiting to play at bubbulon.com.
That fucking cat episode was probably the lowest the series has ever sunk.
I want to somehow mount a defense against this accusation, but I'm having a hard time coming up with a worse episode, in-total.
Lobstertainment is a close runner, as is this week's episode. But since Harold Zoid and The Robot Devil are significantly more funny than Professor Katz, I'd still give "That Darn Katz!" the worst-ever medal.
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Wouldn't that demand a cameo of the Kardasian's Heads? Rather than just talking about it?
No? In the past they'd name call celebs by talking about their heads.
Wow, I don't remember those episodes. It's been a while.
I'm glad Scruffy's getting used more, but not too much.
"A greater tragedy my eyes have never seen. Welp, into the terlet."
"Look it up!"
I concurr.
Indeederoony
-zapp's arm being controlled by kif
-this saturday will now be known as... fryday!
-not my armpits! winter is coming!
etc
I enjoyed it. It's nice when they explore Bender's overly sensitive side.
- Billy West, after two very good episodes, has gone back into the weird version of Fry's voice that plagued the last season intermittently. It makes Fry sound more immature and idiotic, as if that's what was needed.
- The plot discards most of the cast save Fry and Bender, and I can rarely think of another episode that does that. Even Godfellas' B-plot was about Fry and Leela, not just Fry alone. As well, the central tenet of the plot just has Bender acting very out of character the entire episode for no real reason other than to motivate the story along. Fry isn't even a character in this one, just some guy who things happen to. So, taken in total, you have a story with no B-plot, only one real character, and no stakes or emotional arc.
- The set-up with Fry not knowing what "Parade Day" is doesn't make sense anymore since the show has already established that, unlike The Simpsons, Futurama has a (vaguely adhered-to) timeline and continuity, with it being the year 3011 this season. It worked when the show had an episode about "Freedom Day" because Fry was new to the future; doesn't make a lot of sense after 11 years to suddenly become aware of a major holiday.
- Fry is slowly going down the Homer Simpson route of becoming increasingly dumber and less relatable. Not on such a sharp trajectory, and with a good deal of baseline stupidity as a precedent already, but Fry's definitely becoming less "naive goofball" and more "retarded simpleton" as the seasons wear on.
it was all bad
Eh, I liked the first two enough. They were light and didn't have much to them, but they were funny enough. Really, my only gripe about the Neutopia episode was how long it took getting around to the gender-switch moment, and then once they got there, how little they did with it.
But Fry having a severe mental disability has already been a major plot point in several episodes.
He's his own grandfather.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
And we seem to get into this debate every Futurama thread.
The show has established that Fry isn't very smart and he has a genetically-based learning disability/brainwave anomaly. But it also has established that he's not functionally retarded, which sometimes writers of this show seem to forget. He's naive, overly-confident, a doofus, a dork, and vaguely dumb, but he's not defective human being in the intelligence department.
Episodes like "The Why of Fry," "Time Keeps On Slippin'," "The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings," and "Bender's Big Score" show that Fry is more than capable of rational and even intelligent thoughts and acts, so ret-conning him to be a bigger schmuck than he is already is really jarring.
The only established mental deficiency Fry has is his brainwave disorder and general doofy-ness. Making him stupider doesn't make him a funnier character.
I'm fine with episodes not having B-plots (I actually thought Futurama managed to avoid a lot of these), an extended cast, and being massively inconsistent within their own universe and characterisation, as long as it serves the comedy foremost.
I know I've said this before, but the principle problem with the new episodes is just that they're heavily underwritten. They mostly have strong concepts and talented actors to execute them, but it feels as if the writers didn't have the same manpower and luxury of time as they had on the original run. Jokes fall flat, time is wasted on basic exposition, and the show just doesn't have the same feel of cramming in jokes in every available nook and cranny.
My understanding of how the Simpsons, Futurama, American Dad et al were written at their peak is that they had a single writer for the episode, and that this writer's script was then unleased on a roomful of talented people working crazy hours to make it as good as it possibly could be - the end product was often unrecognisable. I just can't believe that Futurama has the budget to do that anymore - not compared to being the follow-up to The Simpsons at Fox anyway.
Agreed.
Futurama has occasionally futzed its own continuity, certainly in no one more than Bender and his origin story, but it's always been to serve the comedy. And I'll forgive a lot as long as the comedy is solid and the character isn't drastically and needlessly changed.
As for being underwritten, that's exactly how I would characterize last night's episode, and to a lesser extent, the "Neutopia" episode as well. Basically last night's episode was a one-sentence concept stretched out without really any embellishment or stakes: "What if Bender was a ghost?" From that point on, it just doesn't go anywhere. What if Bender was a ghost? What is the comedic imperative from that? Do we explore the robot afterlife? Do we examine everyone's reaction to the death of a beloved friend?
No, we just have a weird episode where Bender keeps trying to kill Fry, and where Fry encourages this by making a racist observation.
And from that point, at the very beginning of the episode, the joke goes nowhere.
It certainly wasn't bad; I enjoyed it overall. But it was fairly weak nonetheless.
It's entirely possible that he was on another planet or otherwise out in space on the previous ten Parade Days.
Well, no one wants to watch an arc where there aren't any real stakes, there's no emotional engagement, and the characters act unlike themselves.
A big part of the problem is that Bender is a lot like Zoidberg in that when you center a story around him, you have to give a strong motivation, and you have to have a lot of people reacting to him. Zoidberg and Bender on their own are horrible people with few redeeming qualities, so they have to engage with likable people and drive the story forward with stakes.
Good examples: "Why Must I Be A Crustacean in Love?" There's no B-plot, it's all about Zoidberg's quest to mate back on his homeworld. But in doing so, he enlists Fry's help in a very Cyrano de Bergerac fashion while Leela helps she-crab Edna to better understand Zoidberg, and then it all reaches a climax when Zoidberg accuses Fry of stealing the girl away. Those are legitimate stakes, and that's a plot that despite being centered on one character, involves several characters and depends on dynamic relationships.
Bad examples: "That's Lobsterstainment!" Zoidberg spends the entire episode cavorting around with the previously unknown Harold Zoid and the third-tier character Calculon. Again, there's no B-plot, but here is doesn't work because it doesn't involve the central cast in a meaningful way, and the stakes are irrelevant to the show's greater narrative. Who cares if Zoidberg makes a movie with Calculon and Uncle Zoid? So what if he does?
Also I didn't find Fry that unintelligent in this episode. Really he didn't have much character in the episode at all: Bender could have been haunting anyone really since all Fry did was scream and/or cower for most of the episode.
That's where I'm meeting Uncle Zoid for lunch to discuss my Hollywood dreams. Next time you see me, don't be surprised if I've eaten.
*whoop whoop whoops into restaurant*
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
That the Amish ship made completely of glass, wood and powered by two oxen on a treadmill which escaped earth gravity flew through space with propellers was your issue with the ship? :P
Also I didn't notice that Fry's voice had shifted. Sounded the same as it always did to me.
Would like some explanation of Fry and Leela's standing with each other. I have no idea if they're still together and they just don't, like, want to bash the audience over the head with it (I could see Leela's placement in the hospital room as a subtle reference to them still being an item) or if it's just oddly dropped.
It seems weird if it was dropped considering they still do the whole Continuity thing, actively referencing the plot of The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings.
It's the curse of a show who wants to toe the line between having deep continuity and having longevity. The general rule of television is that you can successfully appeal to one method or the other, but rarely both.
But yes, I'm a little miffed that the writers themselves seem so inconsistent with Fry and Leela's relationship. You have episodes like the EyePhone episode where Fry puts out open invitations to booty calls right before episodes like "The Late Phillip Fry" where Fry opens the episode already in a dating relationship with Leela.
I don't need constant movement on their relationship on the show, but some continued acknowledgement of their at-this-point mutual attraction and connection would be nice. The show regularly seems to remember that Amy and Kiff are married, even if it's not referenced every episode, so they're certainly capable of appealing to some sort of continuity.
I mean, Christ, last season Fry and Leela actually had consensual sex with each other. Granted, in the bodies of Zoidberg and Farnsworth, respectively, but hey.
Now, I've actually enjoyed these 3 episodes more than any of the last season, but the same problems with season 5 still remain. And I still say it's one of the same problems as the Simpsons. The new writing teams are essentially writing fan fiction of characters they grew up with.
I don't know if I'd go that far, but I will admit both season 5 and what's been shown of season 6 have been remarkably deep in weird little winking nods to the original 4 seasons. Hedonism Bot was all over season 5, and rarely for any good reason other than to make a passing gay-panic joke.
Futurama has a deep enough cast of recurring characters to actually write decent stories about them, but I'd rather the writers either write a story for a character or come up with a new one. Using them repeatedly as one-off gags, especially the same one-off gag each time, gets really stale.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcnMDM5wA7k
I want to somehow mount a defense against this accusation, but I'm having a hard time coming up with a worse episode, in-total.
Lobstertainment is a close runner, as is this week's episode. But since Harold Zoid and The Robot Devil are significantly more funny than Professor Katz, I'd still give "That Darn Katz!" the worst-ever medal.