Season Review: Futurama Season 12 (Episodes 1-6)

Overview:

Good news, everyone! After two cancellations, three networks, and 12 seasons (or eight production seasons — take your pick), Futurama is back, baby! Fry, Bender, Leela, and the whole Planet Express crew are ready for more 31st century shenanigans. They may not be any wiser or more worldly, but audiences wouldn’t have it any other way. Between pilgrimages to Mexico, deadly party games, jealous AI, and a fashion apocalypse, there’s plenty to keep Futurama busy this season. After two cancellations, three networks, and 12 seasons (or eight production seasons — take your pick), Futurama is back, baby! Fry, Bender, Leela, and the whole Planet Express crew is ready for more 31st century shenanigans. They may not be any wiser or more worldly, but audiences wouldn’t have it any other way.

Oh, and the finglonger is back. Rejoice!

Our Take:

There have been understandable criticisms over “Nu Futurama” when it comes to its tendency to cling to modern ideas that inevitably leave the show feeling impossibly dated. Granted, this was present in the original Futurama, but there was a certain artistry to how these concepts were interwoven into the series’ storytelling. Futurama’s various revivals have gotten clunkier in this regard, with some extremely regrettable examples such as “Attack of the Killer App,” “In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela,” and “Rage Against the Vaccine.” Despite these missteps, I’ve still been fairly impressed with Futurama’s caliber of comedy and writing and not put out by these awkward ideas. Unfortunately, Futurama’s 12th season really feels as if it reaches the bottom of this barrel with the majority of the season’s episodes exploring “ripped from the headlines” plotting that include NFTs, ChatGPT, the Fyre Festival, fast fashion, and Squid Game. 

These are not inherently flawed ideas for Futurama to explore and they could all bear fruit with the right angle and level of care. However, it’s definitely not encouraging when the first two minutes of the season premiere are literally spent explaining the concept of NFTs to the audience while everything else screeches to a halt. It’s not only tired and lazy, but it’s executed in an incredibly poor fashion that punches down and presumes the audience are ignorant and uninformed, rather than the intelligent writing that fueled Futurama’s golden years. Unfortunately, this energy persists through the entire season, which results in what’s quite possibly Futurama’s weakest season to date. That’s not to say that there aren’t strong jokes, rewarding surprises, and satisfying character-driven stories throughout the season, but it’s become increasingly difficult to champion Futurama’s latest firmware upgrade as its Hulu seasons just add more noise to static, rather than innovate and inspire like this show once did. At this point, it’s hard to not just turn to Solar Opposites for cutting edge sci-fi comedy on Hulu.

Futurama’s 12th season, in many ways, feels cut from the same cloth as The Simpsons‘ later years where disappointing plot setups manage to segue into more rewarding storytelling once the episode gets out of its own way and quits trying to be so topical. Season 12 does fall into more of a natural rhythm as it goes on and there are still some entertaining developments that feel like vintage Futurama, even if everything doesn’t fully come together. This season explores genuinely fun material, like dueling book clubs, guilt-filled questions over barbaric buggalo violence that masquerades as entertainment, and a playful heist parody. Futurama just occasionally struggles to connect these disparate dots. The Squid Game parody episode, “Quids Game,” in particular is so poorly paced and structured. The whole thing just feels like a bunch of disjointed sketches that don’t really get a chance to build any momentum because the episode keeps unnecessarily jumping back and forth between timelines. Glimpses of Fry’s youth used to be rich opportunities to learn more about this disaffected character’s stolen past, but this season of Futurama goes for cheap laughs that circle around the same idea like a cruel game of musical chairs. It plays like a passionless autopilot version of “Where No Fa Has Gone Before.” It might be the series’ worst episode.

This season also attempts to dig deeper into its cast’s history and what makes them tick. There’s a considerable examination of Bender’s lineage in Mexico, customs from Fry’s dysfunctional childhood, and Leela’s quest to find genuine female friends. Insightful character introspection is a great way to breathe new life into the series and its characters, but only if there’s actually something to say. Many of these backstory-laden episodes come across as hollow and do more damage to the characters than good. Futurama’s 12th season admittedly attempts to do something interesting with the episode, “The Temp,” which creatively recontextualizes Planet Express’ past. However, what could have been an all-time classic Futurama episode in the past now just feels generic and passable. It’s the season’s highlight and it’s still a fairly forgettable Futurama installment.

Season 12 does a good job at dividing its storylines between Futurama’s cast so that these aren’t purely episodes that revolve around Bender and Fry. Everyone gets their due here, which does help Futurama feel like a proper ensemble where each character serves an important purpose. However, there are certainly dangers to sharing this wealth when a story may be better off just serving particular characters instead of needlessly shoehorning the entire Planet Express crew into the mix. Futurama also takes greater strides to integrate and take advantage of Amy and Kif’s sullen teen kids –Axl, Mandy, and Newt – who are now in the mix and no different than second generation characters like Dwight and Cubert.

Fry, Bender, and Leela get the most to do this season. However, it’s Professor Farnsworth who stands out as the season’s surprise secret weapon and MVP. He’s perfectly utilized throughout these episodes and is responsible for most of the season’s best dialogue. Futurama’s established cast continues to shine. Unfortunately, the new single-use characters that are introduced all feel quite superfluous. None of them stand out the same way that past episodic Futurama figures have and it’s unlikely that any of them will become supporting players that are on the same level as Clamps, Hedonism Bot, or even Barbados Slim.

I’m a pretty big Futurama apologist and this is the first season that I’ve actively disliked. If you were critical of the first Hulu season, or even the Comedy Central years, then it’s quite unlikely that these ten episodes are going to win you over. That’s not to say that there’s nothing to enjoy in these ten new episodes or that they’re not without their certain charms. It’s becoming harder for the quality content to outweigh what doesn’t work and it increasingly feels like Futurama’s best days are over, despite the series’ ability to maintain some of its older writers. This futuristic comedy — ironically enough — may be better left in the past.