Futurama Season 7 Discussion Thread

[Emh]

I'm surprised no one has started a thread on this. Season 7 of Futurama premiered today with not one, but two episodes! Two wonderful episodes!

The Bots and the Bees:

Ignoring how Bender doesn't know about robot babies or robot sex prior to the conception of Ben, this was a classic Futurama episode. It was both a funny and poignant episode that adds another layer to Bender's character. I hope we see Ben again in the future.

A Farewell to Arms:

I'm a sucker for the end of the world episodes (Hermes: "Is it just me, or is the world ending more often these days?") so it's no surprise I loved this. The Leela/Fry romance gets more development with a touching ending and a new twist to the Hemingway title.


This reminds me, I still need to get Volumes 5 & 6 on DVD.

[Disruptor]

They were okay episodes. (Spoilers)

The literal reset button in the first one just seem pat for a show. If they replace Ben's memory card with a bending card, shouldn't he be near mindless like Bender was when the bureaucrat stole his personality chip? "I am Bender. Please insert girder."

"A Farewell to Arms": So what happens to Mars now? And funny "arms" is an anagram of "Mars". Wonder if that was intentional? I'd guess so.

Strangely both episodes had Fry turning colors.

[Emh]

Heh, I didn't even notice "arms" was an anagram for "Mars." If intentional, then that's two different alternate takes on the title.

[Christopher]

Both okay episodes, nothing spectacular. The longer this show goes on, the more it plays fast and loose with past continuity. In previous episodes, Bender didn't have a mother and father; he was built in a factory, and his mother -- every robot's mother -- was Mom. And Mom is a dictator who intentionally programmed her robots to adore her as their mother and creator. There's no way she'd tolerate a robot design that would allow them to procreate independently and feel filial affection toward any mother figure besides Mom herself. So while "The Bots and the Bees" had some cute gags in it, I just don't really feel it fits in the Futurama universe.

"A Farewell to Arms" was also kinda fun but a little too silly and overdone. It feels like the show is stretching more to come up with plots.

[ToddKent]

Quick question: I recorded them but haven't watched them yet. Are they two episodes back to back (with credits, etc) or two episodes played together as one long episode?

[Christopher]

^The end credits for the first episode were showed at the bottom of the screen during the beginning of the second episode, so they overlapped a bit. But that's pretty common practice for a lot of cable stations even for totally unconnected shows.

[Ar-Pharazon]

I remember having to adjust my DVY to -+5 minutes because of Futurama last season.

It kept starting early.

I enjoyed both episodes last night. Glad it's back baby.

[The Green Mushroom]

I liked both episodes, but the whole baby thing came out of nowhere. Was there ever any possible shred of a hint that robots came from anywhere but Mom's factory? I would have bought this in the first season, but not the seventh.

Though on the bright side, it does explain why they have child robots running around all over the place.

[Christopher]

The Green Mushroom wrote:

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Though on the bright side, it does explain why they have child robots running around all over the place.

Except that Ben took only 13 days to grow into an adolescent, but Tinny Tim has been a "child" for over a decade. This episode pretty much threw all the old rules about robots out the door.

[Disruptor]

Interesting points.

Robot procreation may not have been designed by nor desired by Mom. But perhaps "artificial life finds a way."

Tinny Tim may have been created to look like that perpetually.

Speaking of time passing, next time we see Cubert, the Professor's clone, he should be physically an adult. I also noticed they didn't show Hermes' son in his brief scene at home.

[Christopher]

^Well, yeah, but that should've also been true in Cubert and Dwight's appearances in the movies and the previous season, but they were still stuck in perpetual preadolescence even though it was explicitly 8-9 years after we first saw them.

[ManOnTheWave]

Yikes! Missed it.

[JD]

I missed the last few minutes of Farewell to Arms, but I thought both episodes were pretty good.
I do that The Bots and The Bees treatment of "the bots and the bees", was a little odd. I thought in the past they'd treated robots as if they were all made in a factory and always looked the same.

[RandyS]

Christopher wrote:

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^The end credits for the first episode were showed at the bottom of the screen during the beginning of the second episode, so they overlapped a bit. But that's pretty common practice for a lot of cable stations even for totally unconnected shows.

Really? TV now shows the end credits of one show at the bottom of the start of the next show?? I quit watching broadcast TV after ENTERPRISE ended, so I'm behind a little. Since then, every new (or old) show I've seen has been on DVD, a wonderful invention, in my opinion, and hearing this just reaffirms my viewpoint.

I guess I'll being seeing this new season of FUTURAMA this Christmas when the DVD comes out, just like the last two years....

[Christopher]

RandyS wrote:

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Really? TV now shows the end credits of one show at the bottom of the start of the next show??

As I said, it's a practice employed by some cable networks. Cartoon Network is one, TNT is another. Maybe I overstated how common it is. The majority of networks (the ones I watch, anyway) do it differently, showing a promo during the end credits.