Those who get tweets from @ccinsider already know this, but Futurama has just been signed to another season!!!
That’s ON TOP of the 13 episodes still left on this season’s contract, scheduled to begin airing on June 23, 2011. The next season will also be 26 episodes, which makes for an awful lot of futuristic space-antics!
Without question, Futurama is the smartest show on television (other than perhaps “Into the Wormhole”, but we’re talking about two completely different things here). I find it amazing how many people think the show is really dumb and comparable to the other stuff one might find in a cartoon sitcom. But honestly, if you consider the really brilliant way the writers inject social or academic commentary into all the episodes I think you’d agree with me that there just aren’t many programs that can display that PLUS humor on so many levels. And yeah, I know right now some of you are thinking about the intelligent writing in BSG, Firefly, How I Met Your Mother, or House; but I would wager that none of those shows have writers with advanced math and science degrees!
(Okay, maybe Firefly — someone will have to find out for me.)
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Edit: So something I just thought of that should have been included in the first place… A while back I was with a couple of friends of mine, Tristan and Trey, and we were looking at a very cool-looking laser shining on a CD for a class science demo. For some reason that I can’t pull out of my memory now, Trey says, “Wow. It’s like there’s a whole universe in there.” To which I immediately mutter, “Baby, there’s a universe in all of us.” Now, I haven’t been around true Futurama fans very much in some time, and normally the people I am around would just ignore my obscure mutterings as a humor that only I would find funny. But this simple moment was made awesome when Tristan followed up with, “Get a job!” The three of us laughed very hard, while the group before us just stood awkwardly by waiting for us to get on with it. It is in these moments that I’m reminded that this show isn’t just a series of one-liners, but that it is a work — when taken in its entirety — that has constructed a culture of nerd-dom consisting of people who feel connected by the the characters and landscape of this fictional future. Any similarities to the fans of Star Trek isn’t lost on me, it’s just that a single line from Trek doesn’t usually draw a company of people to want to start reciting lines to each other. Any one piece of Futurama reminds us of the community that Matt Groening and David X. Cohen envisioned and then created. I am so glad that it was resurrected, and I hope it will continue to air for many years to come.
And I’m also grateful for friends like Trey and Tristan who keep me laughing!
Infinitewell 