Season 11 Episode 1

Futurama and its grand return

The episode starts where we left off at the last ending, where Leela and Fry had been moving around the universe while time had stopped for everyone else. Of course, the Professor has found them. He lets them know that if they want to, he can reset them back to the exact moment time had frozen. It was a really sweet moment of them affirming they would love to do it all again with each other.

As promised, time unfreezes and thus begins to reboot jokes (this happens every time I leave it to you to decide if they are good). They have their first meeting post-unfreezing. We find out the year has gone from 3000 to 3023; 23 years have passed. With the time freeze, Fry is upset, feeling like he hasn’t accomplished anything. Being that 23 years have passed since he has come to the future. Now, he feels like he has to accomplish something to feel more complete. He decides to binge every TV show ever using the fourth largest streaming service, Fulu. Leela feels conflicted about supporting Fry’s ambitions and not putting him down. This was a huge toss-up for me because sometimes Leela does indulge Fry, but I didn’t think to this extent before despite trying to push it on to Hermes to try and get Fry to stop. She gives in and agrees to help as best she can with this goal.

Fry nearly completes this goal within the next frame and brings up that he only has one show left. All My Circuits (The first one that was canceled) had 13,000 episodes and was impossible to do by just normal means. The professor suggests Fry try Binging, a device that goes into the brain’s cortex and plays nonstop to maximize viewing. This would come with a suit and chair for both waste and vats attached to the chair to help keep him alive. Months go by as he approaches finishing, and the professor reveals that when he ends, he could die. He will not be able to handle reality.

This makes Leela and Bender go to Fulu to pitch the idea of bringing back the series to help keep Fry alive. One problem is that Calculon was in Robot hell. This was solved quickly as the Robot Devil made a deal: they could have him for a fee. Thus, the show begins production, and this turns into shenanigans. They have to film at 2x the speed because Fry had a knob that increased the viewing speed. Writers dying trying to write, Bender takes over as the writer for All My Circuits, the director has a heart attack, Leela takes the director’s role, bisexual love tetrahedron in All My Circuits, and Bender is the greatest thrown in the show. This leads to Fry getting closer to the final episode, where they spring a plan to slowly push Fry back into reality by having the stars of All My Circuits perform in front of him as the show plays.

As they near the end of the scene, Bender’s makeshift horse that he has given a lit cigar. Lights the dynamite tetrahedron (signifying the vapid and rapid love that each of the stars of All My Circuits has made), which lights Fry in the bodysuit on fire. Everyone rightfully freaks out. Amy has the bright idea of dumping one of the vats of battery acid onto Fry, attempting to help. This would then turn Fry and the whole chair to ash.

Leela and everyone rightfully freak out and cry the whole time. Only to have Fry walk in and mention that he had left that chair two days ago. Crying that he failed, and Leela promised not to support his stupidity again. This leads to Fry ending the episode by talking about binging responsibly and shows need to be canceled every few years and closes the episode.

Wow…wow…One of the major drawbacks of this episode was this because this plot point already seems weak for a Futurama episode, and this is the only storyline, the A plot of the episode. I don’t think this idea should’ve been the lead, let alone the plot for the return episode. Saying all that, Futurama does have misses like any form of media, but this one felt like it massively missed the mark. I am holding out hope for the next few episodes and want to give it time to establish its identity, but it feels like it will fall into a lot of bad habits many reboots have in the past. I do not understand the core of what made these characters and the world around them unique. Anyway, I’m holding out hope for next week!