by pageian:
Futurama was an animated sitcom that premiered on Fox in March of 1999. The show was short lived, lasting only four seasons before syndication and eventually being reborn in 2007 with a series of four movies aired on Comedy Central. The show was picked up again for what will be a sixth season which will begin airing in mid-2010.
The series revolved around the Phillip J. Fry, a twentieth century underachiever who was cryogenically frozen at midnight, December 31, 1999. Fry was unfrozen a thousand years later in the year 3000 where he meets up with Bender, a mischievous robot, and Leela, a one-eyed cyclops. The three of them turn to Fry's only living relative, 149 year old Professor Farnsworth who is something of a mad scientist and operates a package delivery service in order to fund his experiments. Working for the Professor at the package delivery service, Planet Express, is Hermes Conrad, a bureaucrat, Amy Wong, intern, and Doctor Zoidberg, the staff doctor. Fry, Leela and Bender become the crew of the Planet Express ship and handle deliveries for the company, Leela being the captain, Fry the delivery boy (the same job he held in the 20th century), and Bender doing various jobs and eventually becoming the ships cook (despite the fact that as a robot he had no sense of taste).
The show was created by Matt Groening of The Simpsons fame and shares many characteristics with that show. Despite the short run of the series as originally conceived it is generally considered to be one of the "smarter" animated shows when compared to "The Simpsons" and the likes of "Family Guy" and "American Dad". Being set in the year 3000 allowed for a great deal of leeway in terms of characters, social and urban settings as well as plays on sci-fi material not available to other cartoons. The creators and writers of the show didn't want to completely abandon topical material from this century however so they came up with a plot device that allowed them to incorporate current events and people, the technology to preserve heads in a jar. Famous people from the past were preserved as heads in jars of liquid and were often central to episode plots, such as President Nixon being elected Earth President and Lucy Lui being used to clone robots. Given the range of material Futurama could call on, past and future, it's no surprise that the show gained a loyal cult following, especially within the sci-fi community.
There were many running gags within the show and later episodes relied on material from past episodes, giving the show a sense of continuity and growth not often associated with other animated shows. For instance, the Fry character is eventually revealed to have been intentionally frozen by a race of cute Niblonians, pet like creatures who have been around since the beginning of time, in order to eventually save the universe from a swarm of malevolent brains intent on it's destruction. Leela progresses from being a one of a kind cyclops with no known origin to eventually finding out that her parents are a pair of loving mutants who live in the sewers of New New York. Leela was the least mutated mutant ever born so her parents secretly left her at an orphanarium in the city in order that she might have a normal life compared to the other mutants. These characters, as well as the others, are built upon gradually throughout the series, piece by piece, eventually weaving a complex storyline that needs to be followed from the beginning in order to fully understand storylines in later episodes. Though it's not completely necessary to watch the episodes in order it is beneficial in order to understand inside jokes and references in later episodes.
Futurama was very well written and thought out, the humor in the show often relied on irony and was sometimes setup well in advance. Plots or characters were often introduced in the beginning of an episode and then not referenced again until the end, when it would all come together in a surprisingly satisfying way. The show was nominated for and won many awards, including and Emmy for "Outstanding Animated Program" for the 2002 episode "Roswell That End's Well".
Despite not always showing up well in the ratings Futurama was generally considered to be one of the better animated shows of it's time which eventually helped bring it back to television. Futurama was picked up for 26 new episodes in 2009 which are slated to start running on June 24th, 2010 at 10 P.M. on Comedy Central. All of the original cast are slated to come back and voice the characters. The four DVD movies that were released starting in November 2007 were a bit lackluster compared to the original shows but that may be due in part to the fact that each movie was designed to be eventually cut into four separate episodes each which hampered the overall quality and continuity of each movie. The movies have yet to be release in their episodic format so it remains to be seen how well the individual episodes will turn out. Many of the original writers are returning for the 26 new episodes, which will constitute the sixth season, so it's reasonable to expect the show to return to the creative high's it reached during it's first four seasons run. Groening and the staff appear to be enthused about the show going forward, we can only hope that the network feels the same way and that Futurama refinds it's creative excellence and enjoys a long, sustained run.
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