Past-o-Rama: Luck of the Fryrish

Look up any list of the best Futurama episodes ever, and amongst the top rankings are probably the really emotional ones. The series had heart from the very beginning, but it really started to plumb the depths of feelings as it went along, as the characters became greater established. Leela’s loneliness thinking she’s the last of her species, Bender’s snarky facade briefly dropping to display actual emotion, these moments only work because we’ve grown to love these guys. Season 3 contains a fair share of powerful episodes that are incredibly memorable and feel emotionally resonant: Fry’s love note in space that won Leela’s heart being destroyed before anyone gets a chance to see it, Bender meeting “God” the space entity, even moments stuffed within crazier episodes like Bender’s yearning to be remembered or Fry’s realization that fear has brought his found family together during Xmas time. But to me, the granddaddy of them all in the original FOX run of the series is “Luck of the Fryrish,” the tale of two brothers who never saw eye to eye before it was too late. Yes, “Jurassic Bark” is the more famous example, but I think “Fryrish” is more successful at really getting to me. As much as I love dogs, and the ending to “Bark” is an absolute gut punch, it really is pretty depressing, and a dour note to end an episode on, versus the final reveal in “Fryrish” coming off as more uplifting and sweet.

The episode opens back in the 20th century with Fry’s birth, being placed in a crib with a colorful mobile of a spaceship cruising around a bunch of planets, which of course is very prescient (and very adorable.) We also meet his older brother Yancy, who is shown to be very jealous of his little brother. As we keep cutting back to past events as the Fry boys get older, Yancy has made a habit out of copying his brother to one up him, whether it be shooting hoops or street dancing. We can see how this is incredibly annoying from Fry’s perspective, but also see that these are two young brothers who are just naturally prone to getting into squabbles. On top of that, you can picture Yancy harboring a sizable chip on his shoulder for not being the only child anymore, and taking it out on his little brother. Interspersed with this new relationship, we also get a more developed look at Fry’s past: we meet his parents, an ex-military father obsessed with doomsday prepping (“Better keep your hands off these bananas. Gonna need them when the radiation turns us all into monkeys,”) and a mother who is so apathetic towards her children she barely even notices her own son’s birth. Between meeting Fry’s immediate family and the absolute dump of a house he lived in, it just further emphasizes how lucky it is that Fry got his second chance at life in the future.

One of Fry’s only saving graces in the past was his discovery of a seven-leaf clover, which seemed to give him incredible luck whenever called upon. Meanwhile, we see modern day Fry in the future plagued with incredibly bad luck, leading him to yearn for his old good luck charm. He, Leela and Bender travel to the underground New York ruins to his old home to open the safe Fry kept the clover safe in, only to discover it’s missing. They then stumble upon the statue of “Philip J. Fry,” first man to walk on Mars, with a seven-leaf clover in his lapel. Fry is enraged, believing that Yancy changed his name and stole his beloved clover after he went missing in the past. Just as Fry felt his brother was always trying to one-up him, now it seems like he’s stolen his entire life from under him. Learning about all of other Fry’s fabulous exploits, from his lavish fortune (made after striking oil in the bathroom of the mansion he had won in a lottery) to leading up the hit rock band Leaf Seven (a joke I feel stupid for never getting up until now), all our Fry can see is all of the stolen opportunities his brother took from him. Learning where his brother is buried, Fry vows to take back what’s his by digging up his body and recovering his rightful clover. Before our final scene, we flash back to Yancy on the eve of his wedding, the absence of his brother still looming over the family. He opens Fry’s record vault in the basement, and is absolutely astonished to find the clover hiding inside, dropping into his hand like a ghost from the past. It’s at this point I start to get a little emotional, even though I’ve seen this shit dozens of times, just off of Yancy’s shocked gasp at this ultimate reminder of his little brother’s past. Tom Kenny does such a great job in this role; despite being best known for incredibly over-the-top characters, he also nails it when it comes to playing regular schmoes like this.

Fry, Leela and Bender arrive at the orbiting cemetery, finding out that the other Fry is buried in the World Heroes section (“I should be the one in that grave!”) But uncovering the monumental gravestone reveals the truth, as we see in flashback: Yancy bestowed Fry’s clover to his firstborn son, as well as Philip’s name, in honor of his much loved and even more missed little brother. Philip J. Fry is actually Fry’s nephew, “named for his uncle to carry on his spirit,” as his epitaph reads, the living embodiment of Yancy’s love for him. It’s such a wonderful twist ending that feels rightly earned, and serves as a great reevaluation moment for Fry. As terrible as his life in the 20th century may have seemed, there were also bright spots too, ones that he may not have ever really thought about before. But in a way, none of that really matters anymore, since everyone he ever knew back then is long dead, so there’s no making amends, no mending fences, all he’s left with is his own feelings, with no one to share them with who would truly understand. All Fry can do is lovingly place the clover back on his nephew and reflect on how much his brother really cared about him. Similar to Fry’s naivety about the future, there’s only so many years they could play out Fry’s homesickness about the past before he would naturally need to be well acclimated in his new present, but it’s really harrowing to think about the trauma Fry has gone through in being frozen. It doesn’t make for a lot of knee-slapping comedy though, but they certainly do try (and largely succeed) at making you laugh and tear up at the same time, just like this show’s own big brother was so masterful at.

The writers would use this flashback formula again next season in “Jurassic Bark,” aka “the dead dog episode,” which I also love, to be clear, but I appreciate the twist ending of “Fryrish” more than getting my heart ripped out knowing Fry’s dog waited a decade in hopeless misery for him to return. It’s so devastating that they sort of retconned it with “Bender’s Big Score,” as we see that a time duplicate of Fry stayed in the 21st century and cared for Seymour into his old age. The revival seasons would take two more cracks at digging into Fry’s past, with somewhat mixed results. Season 6’s “Cold Warriors” looks back at Fry’s relationship with his militant father, with him attempting to win big at the science fair, despite lack of encouragement from his old man. Meanwhile in our future, Fry comes down with the common cold, all but unheard of in the 31st century, causing a biohazard panic. It doesn’t hold the same impact as “Fryrish” or “Bark,” but it’s a pretty solid episode, with the final scene of Fry’s father relating to him that he’s only tough on him because he wants him to grow up resilient is ultimately pretty sweet. Season 7’s “Game of Tones” proves less successful, trying to do a similar sympathetic reframing to Fry’s mother, whose only joke up until this point has been she is a terrible mother who barely even acknowledges her children. It is interesting in that it’s the only one of these four episodes to not feature flashbacks, rather we see past events directly through Fry’s memory, with him experiencing gaps of information based on what he was or wasn’t around to witness. But the ending where Fry and his mother have a tearful reconciliation, while viscerally affecting in concept, doesn’t completely work given what we know about Fry’s mother. Deep down, I’m sure she loved her son, but there was no believable turn or explanation from her previous characterization like there was with her husband’s episode. It’s not a bad episode, but definitely the weakest of the four.

Production season 3’s twenty-two episodes would end up airing over the course of two years on FOX, with the 2001-2002 “season 4” only cranking out twelve new episodes. Constant pre-emption thanks to the World Series kept the premiere episode, the Emmy-winning “Roswell That Ends Well,” from airing until December, until the season limped along until April of the following year. FOX had clearly stopped caring about the show, but still wouldn’t officially pull the plug on it, even after the fourth production season was completed and the producers were met with radio silence as to whether they were getting a fifth season pick-up. In this brief period, the show was floating around in this weird stasis, where it seemed all but assured that it was done for, but nothing was confirmed as of yet. All us fans could do was hold on to the falsest of false hopes that maybe, just maybe, a miracle could occur.