Richard's Online Journal
The Beast With A Billion Plotlines
On the one hand, it’s great to have new Futurama. On the other, more angsty, ungrateful hand, I can’t help but think it would be even better to have new, old Futurama. These new movie/episode hybrids are… I don’t know. They look like Futurama, they sound like Futurama, but they don’t smell right. They don’t taste right. When you slide your tongue into their tight, moist, welcoming crevices, there’s a bitter aftertaste where once there was strawberries. You understand, right?
“People of Earth! Has anyone seen my pants?”
The main problem I have with both Bender’s Big Score and Beast With A Billion Backs is that regular Futurama was such beautifully written TV. It was one of those shows you watched to see how to write good comedy. The stories were strong, the ideas often brilliant, and it absolutely nailed the character beats that make it more than just a half hour of giggling and insanely obscure geek jokes about Quantum Leap. There was a tenderness to it, and a sense of heart that Simpsons lost well over a decade ago, and the likes of Seth McFarlane and Family Guy can’t even touch. I still well up at the ending of Luck of the Fryish, and I refuse to watch Jurassic Bark ever again.
By comparison, Beast is… Robot Chicken.
No, really. There’s so many plotlines in this thing, all snapping around with whiplash speed, that there’s no time for anything to breathe. The pacing is shot to hell by the need to be both a movie and a series of episodes, and some just plain insane twists. After about eight years of the show’s core romance being Fry and Leela, it’s insane to bring in a new girl, Coleen, just to give Fry someone to spend most of the plot moping about. After locking Bender out of the main storyline early on, his role for the next hour becomes little more than Operation: Give Bender Some Screen Time.
The whole thing manages to be manic at the same time as insanely drawn out. Instead of a plot, it’s a canvas for the writers to throw a million funny ideas at in the knowledge that some will stick. That’d be fine for some shows, but this is Futurama. Futurama should be a beautiful, many-tentacled thing. It should be wonderful…
Fry discovers the secret truth of love: There’s someone for everyone. Else.
It’s not that the movies are lazy, or even that they’re no good. They’ve got their moments. There’s some great visual gags, and some really nice touches, and I can’t hate anything that puts Fry, Bender and co back on my screen.They’re just not… not my Futurama. They’re something else. Diet Futurama, with extra sugar thrown in to try and compensate. Futurama: The Next Generation, written by Brannon Braga. Futur–
You’re right, I went too far there. I apologise.
Still, I can’t help but be slightly depressed. I wanted Futurama back, but the only chance of that happening is for these hybrids to do well. But if they do, the odds that we’ll see more of the originals instead of more of the hybrids are… Ah, crap.
Doo doo. Doo doo do doo doo. Boop-a-doop-doop doop do-doop doop doop bong…