Comedy Series Review: Futurama

Created by the Simpson's Matt Groening and David X. Cohen, this series about life in the 31st century was one of FOX's many successful animated sitcoms, although production was in later seasons carried out for Comedy Central. The series follows Philip J. Fry, a pizza delivery-boy from the late 20th century who accidentally fell into a cryogenic tank on new year's eve 1999 which freezes him for 1000 years, thus he ends up in the year 3000 on January the first, mere minutes after midnight. The series follows his new life in the 31st century, trying to adapt to all the changes and deal with the loss of his old world. The series is wildly popular, won 6 primetime emmys and several other award and has found its way to the Internet in the form of several popular memes.

Alongside Fry the main characters include Turanga Leela, Professor Farnsworth, Bender, Amy Wong, Hermes Conrad and Dr. Zoidberg. They are also the crew of Planet Express, the delivery company owned by Professor Farnsworth. Professor Farnsworth is said to be extremely old, with his age most recently being mentioned to be 170 years old, and he ages along with the series. He used to be the oldest member of his family, until Fry came out of cryogenic preservation. Fry, being a distant uncle of the professor, is currently the oldest member of his family.

Fry and Leela

Fry's love interest is Leela. She's the captain of the Planet Express ship, although the used to be a career placement officer at the cryogenics lab, where she implanted a chip into the hand of fresh defrostees to identify which jobs they were best suited for. When Fry refuses to have his hand chipped, he flees and Leela follows him. After meeting Bender, a humanoid bending robot who just deserted his job, they are all hired as the new crew at Planet Express, since the old crew just died on a dangerous mission. The matter of former Planet Express crews dying becomes sort of a running joke in the series, with Professor Farnsworth sometimes assigning jobs to them which have cost the previous crews their lives. At one point the crew meet a previous crew, which was believed to be dead, stuck inside a giant four-dimensional space whale in the Bermuda Tetrahedron, which Leela manages to pilot back to Earth by the power of sheer obsession.

Leela is first believed to be an alien, although no-one knew where she came from. She was raised in the Cookieville Minimum Security Orphanarium where her parents abandoned her with a note covered in mysterious symbols to give the impression she was an alien. Eventually Leela finds out she is in fact a mutant, but as mutants are not allowed on the surface, her parents decided to give her up to the orphanarium in hopes she'd have a better life as an alien orphan.

Dr. Zoidberg is an old army friend of the professor. Also he is the only surviving member of the first crew of the Planet Express, having escaped from the whale by escape-pod. Zoidberg as a character is modelled after Jewish stereotypes, although most of his characteristics are not distinctly Jewish. He is an atrocious doctor with poor understanding of basic human anatomy, although he believes himself to be an expert. He is otherwise poor, unsuccessful with females (even of his own species), smelly and altogether disgusting. Also his manners – especially his table manners – are non-existent. He is not mean-spirited or of bad heart, just helplessly incompetent in just about everything. He often lies about his wealth and status and tries to appear of higher standing than he really is. This is something more people in his family do, so it's uncertain if its a Zoidberg thing, or a family or species characteristic.

Bender Bending Rodriguez

Bender is a bending unit robot fuelled by alcohol. He is generally an inconsiderate, selfish robot, although he does develop a close friendship with Fry. A humorous characteristic he has, is his dependence on alcohol. If he goes without alcohol for too long he grows weak and starts rusting around his mouth and chin, giving the impression of a beard. He more or less looks like a human would after drinking too much alcohol for a prolonged period of time often would look in a sitcom.

Futurama has aired 140 episodes. In 2013 the series had it's finale, but the producers have indicated they would like to continue or to make a film to conclude the series. Futurama has a huge fan base around the world and the episodes are still broadcast around the world by Comedy Central. The series has survived a cancellation before and many fans are hoping for a return of the series. Fingers crossed!