Twenty-four years after Fry (Billy West) first tumbled out of his cryogenic chamber, Futurama finds itself being reanimated once again. It’s reasonable to be skeptical about what sort of shape a series that’s been repeatedly brought back to life will arrive in. There’s also the question of what a reboot should be—that is, whether it should just seek to recreate the original series in the name of familiar pleasures or try to adapt it to changing times.
That question is especially pertinent when it comes to the sitcom, which thrives on familiarity and stasis—the reassuring sense that, regardless of what happens across 20 or so minutes, everything will be back to the way we found it at the start of the next episode. The thing that really makes this season of Futurama’s work is the balance it finds between the nostalgic and the new. And moments like Bender’s (John DiMaggio) obstinate response to being asked why he didn’t bring shovels for the Planet Express team’s latest assignment—“Oh, you said shovels? I thought you said take a break and do nothing”—make it feel like the series never went away.
The new season picks up precisely where the previous one left off almost exactly a decade ago. After spending an entire lifetime together in a world where time stood still, Fry and Leela (Katey Segal) have been given the chance to restore the universe to its usual Futurama state and start over again. At the time, this felt like a touching moment upon which to end the series for good, giving Fray and Leela a happily ever while also teasing their pursuit of a new adventure. But the conceit also works in Futurama’s favor all these years later because, with time having been frozen, rewound, and generally messed with over the course of that finale, the series now has an in-universe reason to play as fast and loose with its own timeline.
The show’s fourth season kicked off with an episode in which Amy’s (Lauren Tom) boyfriend, Kif (Maurice LaMarche), gives birth to a litter of tadpoles on his home planet before revealing that the family won’t be able to live on land for another 20 years. At the time, this meant that the series wouldn’t have to deal with Amy and Kif becoming parents, but now—20 actual years since “Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch” aired—treating the story as if the same amount of time has passed provides the perfect excuse to introduce a fresh handful of little green faces to the cast.
Returning to Kif’s home planet also offers an opportunity to bring back the Grand Midwife (Tress MacNeille) for a few more wonderfully deadpan line deliveries, and her re-appearance acts as a timely reminder of just how deep Futurama’s bench of hysterically funny supporting players has been from the start of its turn. The new season also makes room for the likes of Morbo (LaMarche), the bellowing newsreader, and the disembodied head of President Richard Nixon (West), characters who can steal an entire episode with a single line.
There are places in which the show’s age is beginning to show. The six episodes made available to press feature direct references, both major and minor, to NFTs, Amazon warehouses, and Ivermectin, which all already feel dated. That said, the endless possibilities of Futurama’s wide, weird universe means that some of these “ripped from last year’s headlines” topics can still play out in fresh, funny ways: An extremely clever and exceptionally silly episode revolving around Bitcoin, which initially feels like a “Simpsons did it” moment, takes the crew to a Wild West-themed planet where cryptocurrency operates as a literal gold rush.
Generally, though, Futurama’s satire works better when it isn’t so tightly tied to real-world reference points. It’s retro-futuristic world was able to speak to the early 2000s by homing in on bigger truths about the way that things mostly stay the same. For regular, working-class folks like Fry and the other crewmembers of the Planet Express, life in the 31st century is much the same as it was in the 21st, just with more robots. Or to put it in the words of Professor Farnsworth (West): “Everything will be exactly as bad as it has always been.”
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