What is Futurama about?
The series tells the story of Philip J. Fry, a 25-year-old trapped in a dead-end job as a pizza delivery boy. When by accident is cryogenically frozen on December 31, 1999 and wakes up a thousand years in the futureyou have a chance to start over.
In an advanced and peculiar society, with dystopian touches and a lot of humor (black on many occasions), he starts working at the space courier company Planet Expresswhich delivers packages to the five quadrants of the universe.
There you will find companions like Leela, the captain of the ship delivery with one eye, or Bender, a drunk robot with the worst of humans and machines, although with a good metal heart deep down.
The series explores themes of popular culture, relationships, technological advances and social evolution with an acidity, emotion and adult humor that are second to none. In fact, it has produced some of the best episodes and gag of history from the television.
And I’m not exaggerating.
The origin and history of the Futurama series
the already historic Matt Groening Y David X Cohen (screenwriter of Beavis & Butthead either The Simpson) proposed the idea of futurama to Fox, but did not receive much support, as the characters and setting were quite unusual.
But they gave it the green light and the series began airing in 1999.
futurama It was always a free verse. Both for the better, because it allowed the creation of some of the best episodes in living memory, and for the worse, because the series had a very unstable run.
The Fox treated her with little care, changing its broadcast, without fans being able to find it. In fact, Groening remembers her as one of the worst experiences of your life, since the chain saw it as too adult, ironic and on the edge for its audience. Her constant interference and fights with Groening are already mythical.
That, and that it wasn’t focused as a marketing committee series, meant to please the masses, made its audience resented and will be canceled in its fourth season.
The (first) revival of Futurama
As reruns of the series were always successful, ComedyCentral ended up ordering more episodes, at first, four longer for DVD. However, it would take the form of a new season in the usual format.
This fifth incarnation began airing in March 2008 and so on until its cancellation in 2013again almost definitive, after the broadcast of the second batch of episodes of its seventh season.
However, it has already been announced that there will be a new one.
How many seasons does Futurama have?
In case all the previous mess has not been clear, since the series revives and dies like in a zombie movie, Futurama has 7 seasons and another on the way for 2023which will do a minimum of 8 seasons.
What is known about the new season of Futurama?
Not much at the moment, except that Hulu has confirmed the order of 20 episodes and it’s official.
The vast majority of actors who voiced the main characters (with the exception of John DiMaggio, the voice of Bender, at least at the time of writing this), as well as the original animation studio, have also clarified their return. Rough Draft. Highlight their official statement with the news.
“It is a real honor to announce the triumphant return of futurama one more time before it is abruptly cancelled.
Who are the main characters of Futurama
The series is plagued by a series of unforgettable characters, led by:
- Fry. A pizza delivery man lost in the futurelazy, without goals and very little intelligent (for being a diplomat), but with a huge heart.
- Bender. Fry’s metallic best friend. A rude robot who meets Fry when he mistakes a suicide booth for a phone booth. Bender was going to use the suicide booth on himself and that gives an idea of the tone of the series.
- Read it. The captain of the ship Planet Express She is a one-eyed mutant orphan from the sewers of New York. The voice of sanity almost always, she is a romantic tension with Fry, but they do not formalize their relationship until the sixth season.
Accompanying the main characters, we have:
- Amy Wong. Typical rich daddy’s girlwho works as an intern at Planet Express without needing it.
- Hermes Conrad. accountant and bureaucratin love with the thousand procedures for everything that needs to be done in a future as Kafkaesque as the present on that subject.
- Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth. Descendant of FryCourier company owner and mad genius scientist, who is losing his mind due to his age and eccentric temperament.
- Zoidberg Dr.. A crustacean alien, resident doctor of the company, bizarre and extremely stupid. His doctor’s degree is actually in art history.
Plus, of course, a host of spectacular supporting cast like Zap Brannigan, as well as a handful of celebrity cameos.
What are the most mythical episodes of Futurama
It’s hard to convey why futurama It is one of the best animated series, you really have to see it. Emotion and laughter go hand in hand in many episodes, with phrases and gag (sometimes planned far in advance) that have gone down in history.
Some of those chapters and moments are:
- jurassic bark. Impossible not to start here, since you have to see it with the Kleenex close. Second chapter of the fifth season, probably the most remembered and mythical because it is the fry dog episode. We say no more. If you have seen it, you will have already made yourself sad. If you haven’t seen it, it’s TV history.
- war is hell. Season 2 Episode 17. Fry and Bender join the army to get a discount on gum and end up in the war. One of the funniest, no doubt.
- less than a hero. Episode 4 of season 4. Many chapters have a message in the background, tenderness or emotion. This is pure comedy without more, in which Fry and Leela become superheroes and Bender joins for the sake of it.
- Fry and the Slurm Factory. Which basically is a hilarious remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
- a god among us. In which Bender becomes the god of some little aliens.
The truth is that I could be citing almost all the episodes. In addition, she has left a lot of lines for the story, totally quotable in many situations, as in the case of The Simpson.
Expressions like: «Good news, guys…» or «Well, now I’m thinking of setting up my own amusement park, with casinos, and whores», are common references.
Curiosities about Futurama
And in case you thought you were an expert on the series, here are some fascinating facts about futurama that very few know.
- The Futurama Writers Are True geeks and it shows in the affection and the jokes. In fact, they are so nerdsthat one of the creators, David Cohen, participated in mathematical competitions and another screenwriter, Ken Keeler, a doctor of mathematics, invented a new theorem just to solve a plot of the script.
- The episode of the Fry dog that we have named, and that was called Seymour, It is based on a true story. The one with the Hachikō dog who waited for his owner at the train station every day. There is a Richard Gere movie on the subject and I ate it at the cinema. Don’t make the same mistake and save yourself.
- despite the meme Why not Zoidberg? that phrase is never said in the series.
- Philip J. Fry owes its name to Phil Hartman, comedian close friend of Matt Groening. He was going to be the voice of Zap Brannigan, but he passed away before he could do it.
- And going back to the dog (and I promise that’s the last reference), at first, the writers were going to do something similar, but with Fry’s mother. However, even they felt that it was too much.
Fox would have blown the fuses even more with that, but Futurama is one of those unrepeatable series, which combines extremely intelligent humor with large doses of references geeky.
And now, with his future return (and abrupt cancellation, probably), we are going to revisit his endearing characters knowing everything about the series.
Where you can see?
Currently the series is available exclusively on Disney +, although there is a detail that can completely make you dizzy. On the Disney service (Star, to be exact), it offers a total of 10 seasons of the series, something that does not match if we take into account that there were 7 seasons that were officially launched throughout the history of the series. What happened? Well, it is simply a mess of categorization between the seasons of Fox and Comedy Central, but what matters is that there are each and every one of the chapters that saw the light a few years ago.
