Futurama Season 7 Discussion Thread

[Christopher]

"Viva Mars Vegas" was fun. Who doesn't love a good casino-heist story? This was a good episode for Amy and Zoidberg, a pairing I don't think we've ever seen explored before, even though it's a natural given the opposite economic extremes they come from. I loved how Zoidberg handled his brief wealth; sometimes he's the wisest character on the show. (Although I would've set aside that billion.) And Amy came off as pretty smart and assertive, and I really liked the reveal of her true intentions at the end. Too often, comedy shows depend on reveling in their characters' flaws and dark sides, and Futurama has certainly indulged in that more often on Comedy Central than it did in its original run, I think; but this was an episode that let us see its characters in a better light than usual, and that was great.

However, it's evident that Lauren Tom isn't able to get her voice to sound as high and girlish as she used to. But then, Amy's eleven years older now too, so maybe it's okay that she's starting to sound more like her mother.

A good run of episodes lately. It's like they burned off the weak ones in the first half of the season and saved the strong ones for later. I hope so, since next week the last two episodes of the season are airing back-to-back.

[RPJOB]

Christopher wrote:

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I should've seen that one coming. (Instead I was half-expecting it to turn out that the "older son" was named Ogden and had been adopted by a family named Wernstrom!!)

But what does it say about the Farnsworths that they apparently had two estranged sons who never wanted to speak to them again? I mean, if they were on good terms with one of their sons, then they wouldn't have been confused about which one the Professor was.

That would have been fun except Wernstrom is established as being much younger than Farnsworth in his first appearance. If Bender hadn't mentioned the other brother showing up at the end perhaps Wernstrom could have been revealed as being the younger brother after we found out that Farnsworth was the older one. Still, 50 to 60 years is quite a span to have two children.

[Ar-Pharazon]

Christopher wrote:

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"Viva Mars Vegas" was fun. Who doesn't love a good casino-heist story? This was a good episode for Amy and Zoidberg, a pairing I don't think we've ever seen explored before, even though it's a natural given the opposite economic extremes they come from. I loved how Zoidberg handled his brief wealth; sometimes he's the wisest character on the show. (Although I would've set aside that billion.) And Amy came off as pretty smart and assertive, and I really liked the reveal of her true intentions at the end. Too often, comedy shows depend on reveling in their characters' flaws and dark sides, and Futurama has certainly indulged in that more often on Comedy Central than it did in its original run, I think; but this was an episode that let us see its characters in a better light than usual, and that was great.

However, it's evident that Lauren Tom isn't able to get her voice to sound as high and girlish as she used to. But then, Amy's eleven years older now too, so maybe it's okay that she's starting to sound more like her mother.

A good run of episodes lately. It's like they burned off the weak ones in the first half of the season and saved the strong ones for later. I hope so, since next week the last two episodes of the season are airing back-to-back.

Yeah, I noticed Amy's voice was too smooth sounding, especially during her speech. It's like Lauren wasn't even trying.

Also, there's still 13 more episodes for this season, probably starting in January.

[Christopher]

Well, "season" can mean different things depending on whether you're talking about production or broadcast -- as Futurama fans should know, given the show's broadcast history on FOX. Comedy Central's promo for next week's episodes billed them as "the 1-hour season finale." So yes, I'm aware that it's halfway through the production season, but it's the end of the summer broadcast season for the show.

[Ar-Pharazon]

^ See, they just confuse us even more with that.

Season 6 was split up as well, but both halves comprised the same season, even though they sold the blu-rays as two sets.

Which reminds me, I still have to get "volume 6".

[Christopher]

I've long since learned to think of production seasons and broadcast seasons as two different things, especially where animation is concerned. FOX dragged out Batman: The Animated Series's two distinct production seasons over something like five broadcast seasons -- 55 episodes of season 1 the first years, the last 10 episodes of season 1 the next year, then season 2 broken up into 5, 10, and 5 episodes in the next three years, with the rest just being reruns. So Futurama's case was hardly unique. And it's common these days for cable series to have production seasons that are split into summer and winter broadcast seasons, or even to be split across two consecutive years as with Eureka once or twice. And even when they're technically half-seasons split between summer and winter, they still get touted as "seasons" rather than half-seasons, or at best as "summer season" and "winter season."

[RPJOB]

Star Trek Voyager also produced The 37's for the first season, intending it to be the final episode, but it was broadcast as part of the second season. Not exactly the same but similar enough to show that it's not that unusual.

[RJDiogenes]

And, of course, Babylon 5 produced the series finale at the end of season 4 before they knew there would be a season 5 and then held on to it.

[Christopher]

Well, the season rallied for a while there with some good ones, but the 2 episodes that wrapped up the summer season last night were both pretty mediocre. "31st Century Fox" was decent, but uninspired and rather predictable. It was notable mainly for a guest appearance by Sir Patrick Stewart and for some decent gags here and there, like the various sci-fi costumes they tried on in the uniform store -- Dune stillsuits for the whole gang, then Fry as a TOS redshirt, Amy as a Spaceball, Leela as Barbarella (I think), and the Professor in Sean Connery's bizarre Zardoz getup.

"Naturama" was kind of pointless, feeling more like the kind of "three out-of-continuity-tales" episode they'd do on The Simpsons, since it really didn't have anything futuristic or sci-fi-ey about it. Just a weird one all around.

[Mr Light]

I really did not care for "Naturama". That was definitely the worst episode of the season, perhaps since the revival. It wasn't cute or funny, it was just pointless.

[Temis the Vorta]

Yep. Pointless.

[RPJOB]

Christopher wrote:

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Well, the season rallied for a while there with some good ones, but the 2 episodes that wrapped up the summer season last night were both pretty mediocre. "31st Century Fox" was decent, but uninspired and rather predictable. It was notable mainly for a guest appearance by Sir Patrick Stewart and for some decent gags here and there, like the various sci-fi costumes they tried on in the uniform store -- Dune stillsuits for the whole gang, then Fry as a TOS redshirt, Amy as a Spaceball, Leela as Barbarella (I think), and the Professor in Sean Connery's bizarre Zardoz getup.

"Naturama" was kind of pointless, feeling more like the kind of "three out-of-continuity-tales" episode they'd do on The Simpsons, since it really didn't have anything futuristic or sci-fi-ey about it. Just a weird one all around.

I was thinking Amy was the moon shuttle stewardess from 2001.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nvWgMkmFQC...Stewardess.jpg

Naturama was sort of meh but I did like Mutual of Omicron.

[NrobbieC]

Both of them made me chuckle.

More Hedonism Bot was needed.

[Temis the Vorta]

Hedonism Bot as a salmon was the only good joke in the whole episode.

As for the other one, I did like the Zardoz gag followed pretty quickly by the Springsteen gag (the billboard, which maybe you needed a DVR to see...)

[RJDiogenes]

^^ I loved the Jersey Turnpike gag, being a big Boss fan.

I thought the Fox episode ("Fox news, everyone!") was pretty good. There were some multiple and convoluted levels of parody in there. The "Naturama" episode was just plain weird and bewildering, but strangely fascinating. It was kind of pointless, but with ten zillion episodes of Futurama out there, I don't mind if they occasionally do something experimental or ill-advised.