Original release date: August 7, 2023

The premise: When the price of bitcoin skyrockets, the Planet Express crew head out west to mine for precious thallium in an effort to pay off the Professor’s considerable debt to the Robot Mafia. Continue reading “143. How the West Was 1010001” →

Original release date: July 31, 2023

The premise: Amy and Kif’s children finally emerge from the swamp, and the two must finally deal with being parents. Continue reading “142. Children of a Lesser Bog” →

Original release date: July 24, 2023

The premise: Yearning to actually do something meaningful with his life, Fry vows to watch every single TV show ever made. But he soon discovers that binge-watching in the future holds more risks than he thought. Continue reading “141. The Impossible Stream” →

It’s (former) series finale time, and now it’s finally time to talk about Fry and Leela. The seeds of their romantic future were planted way back in the pilot, with Leela being inspired to quit her miserable job thanks to this free-thinking wildcard of a man from the past. But the ship teasing didn’t really seem to kick into gear until season 3, where we got multiple episodes devoted to Fry’s hopeless romantic attempts to win the heart of his beloved cyclops. It became such a revisited topic that the show quickly started to make fun of itself for stretching out the “will they/won’t they” for so very, very long. The DVD movies would continue this even further, but at last, they seemed to cut the bullshit once and for all with “Into the Wild Green Yonder” ending with Fry confessing his love to Leela and them kissing. But the revival premiere “Rebirth” seemed to hit the reset button AGAIN thanks to a robot duplicate Leela, with the real Leela pumping the brakes on things with Fry for the time being. Then, at long last, almost unceremoniously, the two were made a canonical couple by the seventh and (formerly) final season, where we saw bits and pieces of them actually as partners. The Fry/Leela saga was thought of as so important to the series that it was a major component, if not the main component, of all four series “finales” we’ve had so far. But here’s the thing: I never really got Fry and Leela. I’m not quite on board with their relationship, but at the same time, I am. Continue reading “Past-o-Rama: Meanwhile” →

Great science fiction has always held a mirror up to our modern world, but making the analogues too specific to a moment in our present runs the risk of becoming dated. This especially becomes the case when your 31st century series gets rebooted nearly a decade after its original run, and the futuristic setting ironically has to re-adjust itself to the advancement of our new present day. Rewatching the original four seasons, one of the big things that made it feel locked in time was its mocking of how dumb cell phones are, which was definitely in vogue in early 2000s comedies. Fast forward ten years and smartphones have become an unavoidably vital presence in society now. Having “Attack of the Killer App” be one of the first new episodes feels like a rectification for this, giving our characters access to a whole world of iProducts, with the futuristic bent being that the phone gets installed directly in their eyes. Sure, it was trendy to riff on Apple at the time, but people’s crippling addictions to their devices and social media, and companies using personal data to exploit is still incredibly relevant today. Leela’s mutant boil being a Susan Boyle parody? Not as relevant, but I’m not as bothered by it as some fans are. The following episode “Proposition Infinity” was also ripped from the headlines, based off the then-current raging debate about gay marriage, and named after Proposition 8, the 2008 California legislation to ban it in the state. But societal prejudice is always going to be present in some form, and the demonization of new kinds of groups will probably become even more arbitrary, as pointed out by Bender in that episode: a union between a ghost and a horse is okay, but between a human and a robot is not? The issues are pulled from today, but they are smartly adapted to fit the world of the show. There seems like there’s some apprehension about the new Hulu reboot that the show might feel too locked in the current moment, and with upcoming episodes titled “Rage Against the Vaccine” and “Zapp Gets Cancelled,” I can definitely see the worry. But the series has had a very good track record with these kinds of episodes at being able to toe the line between being relevant but not too specifically relevant that I’m hopeful they can hit that sweet spot once again. “Decision 3012” is a great example of this, taking a then-very current political story and putting a clever sci-fi spin on it that works to a really satisfying pay-off that feels very true to this show. Continue reading “Past-o-Rama: Decision 3012” →