Futurama: Season 11 - Episodes 1-6

A long time ago, I described Futurama's final episode as one of the best series endings ever made, and for a long time it looked like this was the definitive end for Futurama - a show that has been known to be resurrected time and time again. Of course, it was naive to think that the fun was over in this reboot-dependent TV era and now Matt Groening's iconic future comedy has come back to life after ten years. I have now seen the first six episodes of the eleventh season and am somewhat conflicted about Futurama's return.

It's to be expected from a show that has just been thawed out; the muscles haven't quite warmed up, the memory isn't quite there, the words don't quite come out. It's a shaky start that picks up exactly where it left off last time, with Professor Farnsworth fixing Fry's mess and everything going back to normal. A little too familiar, perhaps. The first six episodes recycle many highlights from previous seasons and lack sass and wit, with the writers relying heavily on contemporary phenomena such as NFTs, bitcoin, streaming culture, anti-vaxxing, cancel culture, and so on. Futurama has previously embraced contemporary phenomena to add a sci-fi twist, but the show is at its best when it focuses on more timeless stories.

Anyway, the first episode revolves around streaming, which, in Futurama's world, is magnified to a hundred when Fry decides to make it his life's mission to watch everything that's ever been streamed - which, of course, has deadly consequences when his bodily functions risk short-circuiting. The second episode is alarmingly sad, with Amy becoming the mother of her three new frog babies with Kif. I probably laughed twice in total during these two episodes (like when the swamp "took care" of the tadpoles), which was not very promising for future episodes.

However, things get better after the third episode. There are Dune parodies and an episode making fun of the Amazon empire. There's also the obligatory Christmas episode, where Bender and everyone's favourite lobster, Dr. Zoidberg, try to solve a mystery involving time travel and paradoxes (which are commonplace on this show). These episodes may not reach the show's best moments, but there's still time for the eleventh season to reach its infinite humour potential.

In the end, I really enjoyed couch potato Fry and his return to the TV screen, despite my initial misgivings. I didn't laugh much (the funniest was the Dune parody), but it was also nice to see Leela, Conrad, Bender and the rest of the gang again. The voice acting is still top notch and I hope Futurama finds its way back to the clever and deeply emotional centre that the cult series is so famous for.