Futurama Season 12 Review
MORBO DEMANDS LESS TOPICAL HUMOR!
Posted:
Jul 27, 2024 6:00 pm
Futurama season 12 premieres Monday, July 29 on Hulu.
When Futurama emerged once more from the black hole of cancellation last summer, there was something different about it. Not visually different: Beyond the brief moment in the opening credits when the first four letters of its title read âHulu,â the animated comedy created by Matt Groening and David X. Cohen was basically indistinguishable from its old self (or selves, if one were to separate its golden age on Fox from its two previous revivals on DVD and Comedy Central). And the show sounded pretty much the same, too, thanks to the eleventh-hour salary negotiations that guaranteed no one other than John DiMaggio would be voicing the lovably amoral, alcoholic robot Bender. The change was more a matter of sensibility, and of what targets this space-age satire was locking in the crosshairs of its ray gun after a quarter-century on and off the air.
To be fair, no run of Futurama since the first has quite replicated the showâs original-recipe, almost chemically pure hilarity. But what stuck out about last yearâs Hulu-commissioned new episodes was an unusual straining for topicality. A comedy that once seemed content more generally spoofing the absurdity of the present through the lens of the future was suddenly taking ultra-specific, 22-minute jabs at cancel culture, bitcoin, and COVID. Of course, unless youâre the South Park guys, making an episode of a cartoon takes a little time. And so the irony of Futuramaâs sudden flirtation with contemporary commentary is that it was actually woefully late to the party, like a talk-show host stepping out of a cryptogenic tube to spit 18-month-old punchlines.
Futurama Season 12 GalleryâHuluramaâ hasnât entirely shaken this obsession with the talking points of the recent past. The season 12 premiere splits its focus between a half-baked Mexican homecoming for Bender and a subplot involving the inanity of NFTs. The episodeâs writer, Eric Horsted, builds to an amusing final critique of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, wondering aloud why anyone not running on computer code would want to own a long string of numbers. But again, didnât that bubble burst months ago? Whatâs next, a Barbenheimer reference?
Fortunately, this is about as of-the-elapsed-moment as season 12 gets, at least judging from the six episodes made available to critics in advance. While a later installment involves both a possessive chatbot and a lazy, belated spoof of Fyre Festival, the showrunners seem less intent this year on delivering a state-of-the-world address. Not that this is the strongest crop of episodes otherwise. Fans will have to pin their hopes for a post-revival classic like “The Late Philip J. Fry” or âMurder on the Planet Expressâ on the back end of the season.
Flashbacks to delivery boy Fryâs life and childhood in Old New York have served, in the past, as reliable evidence that thereâs a heart tickling away within Futuramaâs chugging joke machine. Built around painful memories of an old birthday party, âQuids Gameâ initially seems like itâs aiming for the softer side of the showâs formula, previously exercised in origin-story tearjerkers like âJurassic Barkâ and âThe Luck of the Fryrish.â But, per its title, this new episode oddly ballasts its sentimentality with a dark, even mean-spirited 31st-century Squid Game parody that drops Fryâs entire social circle into the clutches of big-headed aristocratic aliens forcing them all to play a life-and-death competition with major casualties. Ultimately hinging on our heroâs heretofore unrevealed aversion to cheating at any cost, itâs one of the most tonally weird half-hours of the whole series.
It would be unwise to expect greatness from Futurama this far into its run.
Other episodes, like one that finds Bender chasing his libido into bullfighting (or, sorry, bugfighting â itâs the insectoid cattle of Mars that end up charging at his waving cape), are pure filler. So itâs nice to see the showrunners havenât totally abandoned more structurally, conceptually complicated stories. “The Temp” spans two decades, cutting back to the aftermath of ancient season 3 premiere “Amazon Women in the Mood” to introduce an unsung cog of Planet Express. The episode stops short of the Frank Grimes-style autocritique it threatens to become (say, arenât these space-traversing coworkers kind of assholes, to each other and everyone else?), but it does provoke some entertaining cognitive dissonance before we get the full picture of whatâs going on.
It would be unwise to expect greatness from Futurama this far into its run. The showâs stubborn survival is improbable enough. About the best a steadfast fan can probably hope for is some approximation of a solid installment from the first three seasons. “Attack of the Clothes” fits that profile well, packing a new career path for the Professor, a loopy celebrity cameo, a fun sci-fi wrinkle, an environmental conscience, and parodies of Frankenstein and Planet of the Apes into 24 minutes. The episode also comments on the fashion industry without feeling the need to, say, reference something from the 2023 Met Gala. Timeless is usually better than timely, perhaps especially for a sitcom with the capability of spanning the entire length of human history and beyond.
VerdictBack on Hulu for an improbable 12th season, the miraculously un-cancelled animated sitcom Futurama isnât quite firing on all cylinders. Thankfully, there are fewer episodes this year determined to comment on recent events, though we do get a very late Fyre Festival parody. Nonetheless, the first six episodes this year are an uneven crop, with more forgettable filler than big laughs. Maybe theyâre saving the late-classics for later this year.
mediocre
Though it blessedly boasts fewer âtimelyâ episodes this season, Huluâs revival of Futurama remains a mixed bag.
A.A. Dowd
