Futurama Season 7 Discussion Thread

[The Nth Doctor]

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.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

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]

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]

^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]

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.

 

[TemporalFlux]

"Bots and the Bees" was garbage. "Farewell to Arms" was brilliant.

There. It has been said.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I liked both the new episodes! I was worried it would be really hit or miss like last season, but so far, so good.

What are the odds that Fry & Leela's arms will come back to haunt everyone, after being merged with V'Ger in the depths of space?

So everyone is complaining about the implausibility that we've never known that robots can reproduce, yet Earth and Mars coming so close together with no gravitational perturbations at all, that gets a pass?

I don't mind if the plotlines are implausible and insane. When have they ever not been? I just don't want them to suck out loud, and that was happening too often last season (and even worse before that, when they were doing "movies.")

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

I liked both the new episodes! I was worried it would be really hit or miss like last season, but so far, so good.

What are the odds that Fry & Leela's arms will come back to haunt everyone, after being merged with V'Ger in the depths of space?

So everyone is complaining about the implausibility that we've never known that robots can reproduce, yet Earth and Mars coming so close together with no gravitational perturbations at all, that gets a pass?

Or their robot versions will find the arms and come back as Borg

 

[Bob Morton]

The longer this show goes on, the more it plays fast and loose with past continuity.

They even ignored in-episode continuity, when the Professor cut open Ben's head to install the bending card, rather than just open the hatch they showed earlier. Dammit!

I haven't watched the second episode yet but the first one had some pretty funny one-liners and scenes. The above example not included.

 

[Nightowl1701]

^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.

That's something that bothered me about Futurama. In cartoon sitcoms like this (Simpsons, Family Guy, Flintstones, Jetsons), the passage of time (or lack thereof) is excusable since no calendar year is given. But this show explicitly started in late 2999, and the show has counted in "real time" ever since (the season opener says it's now 3012).

So 13 years since Philip J Fry woke up in the future, yet our cast hasn't aged (or are trying very hard to look/act like they haven't aged). Would it be so bad if Cubert and Dwight were grown up, Farnsworth was a talking head in a jar (or on a robot body), Amy's slutty party-girl lifestyle was starting to fight a losing battle with maturity (isn't she supposed to be married to Kip?) or Zapp found himself promoted to Admiral and trying to find ways to escape his desk job and get back on his ship? Incorporating time into this show could open up some intriguing story possibilities.