New episodes of Futurama in 2023 – this was not even predicted in The Simpsons. Taking part in the adult animation boom of the ’90s (also with “Family Guy”, “South Park”, “Beavis and Butt-head” and “King of the Hill”), the show was forever in the shadow of “Simpson.” As the first-born cartoonist Matt Groening, the yellow residents of the town of Springfield have always gotten more attention—”Futurama” stumbled and contemptuously twisted, while the “Simpsons” raced (and are still racing) nonstop in a straight line. The project lasted at least four seasons on the Fox channel, often did not even have a permanent time slot, and as a result, did not wait for the next extension – it was not even officially closed.
Soon, however, Fox made up his mind by media sales and paid him to shoot four feature films. This is how Bender’s Big Snatch, The Beast with a Billion Backs, Bender’s Game and Into the Wild Greens were born. Comedy Central channel joined the lawsuit, shortened the feature lengths to a full-fledged fifth season, bought the rights to the series from Fox and decided to renew it. Two more seasons emerged (fans consider this the most successful) in the end, when Futurama got its third finale.
It was 10 years ago. Futurama, which was disliked by 21st Century Fox and not appreciated by Viacom, the owner of the Comedy Central channel at the time, is experiencing its third resurrection under the wings of Disney today. The Hulu online cinema, which has become another haven for Futurama, is for some reason selling the new season as the eleventh season, in fact the eighth: on the one hand, complete chaos for the show, where, at the suggestion of co-writer David Cohen, the math has always been strictly followed, on the other hand, it is a complete fit into the crazy Futurama spirit.
However, mathematics is the tenth (eleventh?) item. Another thing is more urgent: Due to the eternally suspended state and broadcast interruptions, Futurama has been locked into a rather rigid sitcom framework, in which heroes with big squeaks lend themselves to evolution. Futurama was clearly cramped inside – in that sense, the show was the geeky antipode of The Simpsons. Not only did the series talk about the chosen family instead of the biological family, it also combined direct and straightforward satire with philosophical reflections (what does it mean to be a man? and to be a god? What’s left after us?). This allowed “Futurama” to literally become a cult and gain a more loyal audience compared to the same “Simpson”. In many ways, however, the project was forced to stall: The writers, frankly, would have been happy to humanly enhance Fry and Leela’s romantic streak, but instead turned it into a mess.
The purpose of the next reboot is to fix the current situation. Things look really different inside the show now (in any case, Fry and Leela’s relationship seems like a really normal one): Groening and Cohen’s growing confidence in the future is palpable. It’s not entirely clear where it came from, however, as things are worse than ever outside of the series, namely the film and television industry, so Futurama (like everything else) is in a much more precarious state than ever before.
Still, Futurama feels the need to account for all the missed informational incidents, and even considers its own backlog as an entirely separate story. That’s why it’s considered meta-ironic to joke about their prickly destinies, the new streaming reality in general, and the “Black Mirror” in particular, from the brink. Meanwhile, “Zerkalo” has also recently relaunched and started making jokes about the broadcast. It’s just here that Charlie Brooker recounted that the actors’ nightmare came true (who watched the first episode and went on strike with the writers), Groening and Cohen’s lines seem a bit flimsy: jokes about endless content go to milk when that same content is burned from platforms, and remakes for new seasons have lost all meaning – both lengthy and changed their minds.
Regardless, the new Futurama picks up exactly where we said goodbye to the old one. Professor Farnsworth frees Fry and Leela from the time loop and restarts the universe. Hermes complains bewildered: It feels like we’ve been rebooted. The reunited heroes find themselves in 3023 and continue their lives as if nothing had happened. In addition to binge watching, the first six episodes of “Futurama” are joked about: crypto mining; “Dune” by Denis Villeneuve, parodyed on a cat tray; Amazon and the “amazonization” of anything and everything; trump (where without it). The titles of upcoming episodes, which no one has seen yet, hint at the so-called “culture of cancellation” (worrying), the coronavirus pandemic, and the rise in anti-vaccine sentiment (no worries here). Among all these neologisms, only the sixth Christmas episode, “I Know What You Did Last Summer” seems to be a nod to the past, where the slasher’s motives are dusted with the song “Jingle Bells” (the episode is dedicated to the memory of rapper Coolio, who died that year). He could have left in any of the previous seasons of Futurama, but it will reach the audience only at the end of August.
In the finale of the streaming episode, the series sets the bar for itself through Fry: “Don’t restart the show. [прежнего] There will be no quality. Based on the six episodes given by the critics, it’s impossible to say whether Futurama followed that instruction (episodes that passed on the show after the first season were not uncommon, but these were used with individual diamonds). However, the word “disappointment” has already been occupied by another Groening project, and after all, Futurama has always depicted a future “neither here nor there”: certainly not a happy paradise, but not a terrific dystopia, just “normal”. Here it is, at least “normal”. We’ll find out the rest soon.