Futurama's season 11 debut ruins that perfect series finale
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Futurama season 11, episode one spoilers below
Futurama is back, baby!
After a decade off air Fry (Billy West), Bender (John DiMaggio), Leela (Katey Sagal) and the gang return to our screens with more ludicrous hijinks.
Those of you who remember that perfect series finale may be wondering how the creators were going to top that magic. The answer is… they couldn't.
To be fair to Matt Groening and the crew, they set themselves a near-impossible task. Season 10's final episode was a satisfying end to the critically acclaimed show.
The episode saw Fry fiddle around with Professor Farnsworth's time-travel button one too many times, trying to prevent the inevitable as he tumbled down from a building.
The last attempt to save his life was a team effort which resulted in everyone and everything in the universe being frozen for all eternity, except Fry and Leela.
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After marrying, the newlyweds end up having a life-long honeymoon and grow old together. A literal lifetime of love in the midst of their foolhardy calamity (so very Futurama of them). Until the Professor (Billy West) reappeared.
Instead of being sliced in half by one of their turn-back-time attempts, like they thought, the Professor was "simply rotated into an orthogonal time that runs at right angles to [the present] one". Get it? It's simple science guys, come on.
In any case, he'd been tunnelling for decades trying to find the time button.
Once he'd retrieved the smashed-up, broken device from Fry, the Professor fixed it with a little "righty-tighty, lefty-loosey", granting them the ability to once more turn back time.
Before returning back to a time before time spun out of control, Fry asked Leela if she wanted to do this crazy thing called life all over again with him when he said "What do you say? Want to go round again?" And to the backdrop of emotive music she replied "I do."
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Tell us that wasn't the makings of an untouchable end to a show. It had the whole Futurama package, it was stupid, funny, utterly preposterous but gosh darn it, if the show didn't always know how to hit fans in the feels when they needed to.
Now the creators have tapped on their own time button and launched us into the year 3023. 23 years after the lowly pizza delivery boy first time travelled into the future and the series has crash-landed into meh-ville.
The creators ticked all the same usual boxes, leaning heavily into its own self mockery as it churned a storyline out which payed homage to the numerous times the show has been cancelled.
Like Futurama, the robot soap opera show 'All My Circuits' has a chequered past when it comes to cancellations. Still, it had been revived for the umpteenth time by "Fulu" executives in order to save Fry's life.
It's a whole thing. A whole silly thing that speaks to the general tone we're used to from Futurama.
In its own pithy way, the episode examined the whole binge-watching culture society has fallen into through Fry who has set himself the impossible and unnecessary task of watching every TV show ever made.
The selection is varied: Downton Crabby, Grey's Alien Anatomy, Stanley Tucci: Searching for Alderaan and Aliens vs Predator Vs Bluey (FYI we'd watch that) to name a few.
It even manages to (however intentionally) give a little nod to the struggles of the writers of shows which feels perfectly timed.
However, while there were definitely some laughs to be had and some clever insights, the episode felt rather uninspired, as though the averageness of it didn't justify unpicking such a beautiful end to give us more of the same.
The show has certainly found its original voice and tone but in a world oversaturated with so much content (as they're continuously reminding us), we were hoping for an episode that was more standout, not one that rehashes the same conversations we've been having during its 10-year hiatus.
We were looking for something inspired, which took what it has always done so well and elevated it for a fresher, more exciting feel.
This is, however, just episode one and there is of course room for the season to grow but for now, things are feeling a little like Bender's beer, stale. Unlike Bender though, we're not quite ready to spit it out just yet.
Futurama streams on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK.
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