Futurama Canceled Again | Hacker News Reader

Futurama Canceled Again

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I'm as big a fan as anyone, having watched Futurama since day 1. I was lucky enough to randomly bump into Billy West at Comicon 2010 and nervously muttered how much I loved Futurama, and he was especially gracious, saying fans like me were the ones who brought it back.

That being said, I felt that the new episodes never captured the quality of the original run. They tried too hard at tugging at our heart strings and never really felt legitimate, unlike the episodes like "Luck of the Fryish", "Jurassic Bark", etc. I thought the last season was actually bad, and the plots never made any sense, so I guess it was about time for it to end its run.

I'll give a dissenting opinion. I've loved the Comedy Central reboot. The material is quick and snappy in a way that the earlier seasons weren't, packing in rapid-fire jokes. And it still consistently throws in bits of real science and mathematics, like the famous brain-swapping problem and solution. The movies were uneven, but season six hit a new and sustained peak starting with the fourth episode.

I often felt like the earlier seasons got too caught up in their own worldbuilding and forgot the funny. "The Why of Fry" was my personal least favorite, retconning the entire premise of the show and Nibbler's nature, and straining on a single joke of Fry's stupidity for the entire episode. Other low points included the forced Amy-Kif relationship that had little comedy content and less meaning, Leela's retconned family, and any time filled by Zapp Brannigan's one-note attempts at jokes. Futurama can't credibly do gross-out or shock humor in a world where Family Guy cranks it up to eleven every week.

Futurama is best as a joke turbine playing off the future setting, and IMO strains for misguided impact whenever it brings up how Fry's family lost a son. I never bought in to the heartstring-tugging. The characters are too broadly drawn and fantastical to care about, unlike the Simpsons. The Comedy Central seasons seem to have figured this out, realizing that it's too late in the game for any more meaningful character material. Instead, the show has seriously stressed the pacing and density of the comedy, which for me really shines now.

retconning the entire premise of the show and Nibbler's nature

Opinions on humor are subjective, but I'd like to point out that this was set up from the beginning and not at all a retcon. For example we can see Nibbler's shadow in the first episode: http://theinfosphere.org/Nibbler%27s_shadow

Edit: link corrected thanks to meandthebean

Corrected link: http://theinfosphere.org/Nibbler%27s_shadow

The problem with Futurama's character-building was that they never had a precise plan on when to end the show, nor a precise plan on when to progress the characters. So the Leela-Fry pairing always has to remain on-again, off-again. Amy always has to remain a ditz and never end her internship (though I'm glad they finally let her have her PhD). The Professor is never going to actually die. Fry is never going to mature to the "Lars stage" of adulthood we saw that once.

You could call it Simpson's Syndrome: a comedy show without planned story-lines or definite end-dates will have a distinctly hard time developing its characters.

I thought the new series was much less timeless than the old ones. Sure, the older episodes had some things that were specific to the late 90s - early 00s, but many of the episodes held up extremely well, keeping their emotional impact long after initial airing (looking at you, Jurassic Bark). The revival, though, was way too topical, immediately taking on pop phenomenons like Susan Boyle and the iPhone.

Comedy Central is also to blame, in my opinion. The initial run was short and inconsistent. I had my DVR set to record any first-run episode, but I feel like i never caught any. A show can't succeed if it's never on the air.

I'm a huge fan myself (I've watched seasons 1-4 maybe 30 times each), and I agree with you. It did lose its magic after being cancelled the first time. The movies were ok, but it felt like a different show when it landed on Comedy Central; too topical and edgy and a bit scattered.

I agree with the hit/miss ratio of the last two seasons, but The Late Philip J. Fry and A Clockwork Origin are as good as anything in the first five seasons.

Fair enough, I still enjoyed it more than any new show out there. I guess YMMV, but I didn't feel as if they were running out of ideas.

It seemed to have become much more formulaic. Most of the new episodes follow the same pattern as The Simpsons. Random intro topic that leads to the main topic, often something in recent pop culture.

Same, I think it lost some magic somewhere along the way. The 4-part made-for-tv movies were lacking something and I think only a few of the episodes since then have been up to its previous brilliance.

It did have trouble getting its groove back, but it was still better than most other shows of its type. It's a sad day.

To be technically correct - the best kind of correct - the show has only been cancelled twice. In fact, to be even _more_ technically correct, it hasn't actually been cancelled, just not renewed.

People tend to confuse the times after the films where there were no new episodes to show and none in production with a cancellation, because the films themselves did not bring the show back to television. That's like saying Arrested Development is cancelled after the film is released, because no new film or television episodes has been ordered.

At the start of the commentary to Bender's Big Score, Matt Groening is asked if Futurama was ever cancelled or if Fox just "stopped calling". He replies: "Yeah, we got cancelled."

Yeah I've been reading the wikipedia section to see how many times it was cancelled because the title makes it seem like it was three times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama#Cancellation_and_revi...

I did the same. Whoever submitted this need to learn what "again" means.

I submitted this, and as far as I can tell I have a pretty reasonable idea of what "again" means. If you actually click the link, you'll see that it's the title of the original article, by Phil Plait.

Same story, submitted hours before (by me), is the actual primary source (follow the slate links to vulture then to my story), flagged

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5592733

http://insidetv.ew.com/2013/04/22/futurama-not-renewed-comed...

edit I'm not complaining, but it is a little bit frustrating to have it flagged then see a 3rd-level derived article show up. How can I prevent it in the future?

I'm the submitter (not the author) on this story. I searched for "futurama" before submitting, and didn't find anything related to this cancellation (or "not renovation", as some threads here would prefer).

I haven't flagged your submission (I've never flagged anything, around here). FWIW, though, I still find the article I linked to much more interesting that the EW one, because it focuses on the science and geeky aspects of futurama. I don't see it as "a 3rd-level derived article", but as "a scientist's take on the show and its cancellation".

Under that light, then, I'm not sure it should be prevented.

Edit: By "not sure it should be prevented", I don't mean that I think your submission should have been flagged. I mean that I think the same fact can allow for multiple submissions, and a derived article may be more interesting than the original source.

Absolutely no disagreement from me on anything you wrote here and sorry if I came across as diminishing the article you submitted. I was not, I was merely evoking a common thread in many thousands of HN articles where a great story is posted that is based off of a primary source, but somebody always asks for the link to the primary source. I think derived articles are not always "blog spam", and can usually offer interesting and unique commentary and insights above and beyond what's more or less a press release. Your submission definitely rises to that level. But it's irritating that the actual source of the news got killed (regardless of who submitted it).

In this case the opposite happened, but the primary source was killed. I know this is all a bit meta for HN, but even more meta, I'm finding it more and more frustrating to submit things as so many sites are now set to auto-kill.

Sorry if such and such news site is considered too biased, but it may be the only or primary source for a story. The autokill is also surprisingly biased in and of itself. For example, an article posted from Android Police will get killed, while an article MacRumors won't.

Fair enough, I agree that this (subconscious?) auto-kill is silly.

I'm going to guess that most people here will flag an Entertainment Weekly article just out of reflex. (I didn't, just saying).

Probably, just hoping the story was HN friendly enough (it apparently was) to overcome the source (I guess it wasn't)

> But if I had to pick one that idea laser-focused itself directly into my brain, it would be from “The Late Philip J. Fry”.

This is the first episode I watched start to finish. I never really got into Futurama from just passively watching it but this episode also stuck in my mind, it was fantastic. Although the author's book may have been used, the influence of the episode was Poul Andreson's Flight to Forever[1].

[1]http://theinfosphere.org/The_Late_Philip_J._Fry

Great show, but I sort of lost interest for some reason after the movies came out. Regardless it's had 7 seasons which is just as much as Star Trek TNG.

You know, I somewhat think this is because fans distrust the fate of what will happen to futurama. However, if it were picked up by another party which produced smaller amounts and for quality, Futurama could continue forever. (I'm thinking mini-series 4-7 episodes a season).

I think the biggest problem tv-media is the hiatus, the blanks between seasons cause an eraser from the general public. If they good give a consist stream of content, fans would be much more in-tune with it, and less to forget about.

I think that is a matter of expectation. In England (AFAIK), series aren't (necessarily) expected to be as continuous, nor even to run through the whole year. So, for instance, Doctor Who could "get away" with a specials-only year, between the 4th and 5th series.

Yes, it's quite common here to have series where a season is 6-8 episodes, once a year or less frequent.

E.g. Red Dwarf have had seasons ranging from 3 (if you count "Back to Earth") to 8 episodes, with most seasons having 6, and occasional multi-year gaps between seasons.

I wouldn't just say 'quite common'. I'd say it's the norm.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BritishBrevity

...usual warning about a tvtropes link, and your subsequent drop in productivity

Doctor Who could "get away" with 15 years of hiatus.

He just skipped those 15 years, for now, but he'll get to them eventually.

They happened, just in "other media" then the last part was time locked, then the whole universe was rebooted, and time restarted, and a whole bunch of other things that I forgot in silence.

I was wondering why I had these tally marks on the back of my left hand.

You should take a look at your right arm.

Oh dear. Why am I holding this knife? What the hell is that dead thing in the corner?

Who knows, maybe Netflix will pick it up.

The quality never quite returned to the heights it reached during the original FOX run, so I'm not terribly sad to see it go. Better that than limp on towards true mediocrity like The Simpsons.

It was less consistent, but there some brilliant ones. The brain switching episodes is one of my all-time favorites.

There's definitely an argument to be made for that but I still loved that show immensely and I'm sad to see it go.

I hope some company will pick up the whole producing team and will continue series. Even though someone can say quality of "after movies" episodes wasn't as high as "before movies" but it's still the best western world animation there is (considering South Park decline). Also, Futurama's main theme has been my only cellphone ringtone for many years :)

> the best western world animation there is

Even restricting ourselves purely to mature comedy shows, I would argue that Archer and Venture Bros are better than the latest season. I highly recommend checking them out.

South Park decline? I don't see it, maybe you're just getting bored of the show.

Other great animated Western shows: Adventure Time and Bob's Burgers.

it's still the best western world animation there is (considering South Park decline).

Maybe it's just the geek in me talking, but what about Adventure Time, and the two Avatar series? Very well done from a technical standpoint, fun to watch, decent writing too.

Though I do think Adventure Time is too far into stoner humor. I watch the show and just want to turn it off and go play Legend of Zelda.

I don't want to do this, but I am really asking myself, how could this be on the front page of Hacker News?

Because enough people upvoted it? I wish it was possible to downvote stories.

Well, I won't try to guess why people upvoted it, I can only tell of why I submitted it: the article (which I haven't written, only come across) is not just moaning about a cancelled series. It discusses the science that permeates it, and its geek appeal. Which I thought fitting for hacker news.

Indeed: I've only watched a couple of episodes, and never got into it. But I was fascinated to read about the "Futurama theorem".

Thankfully it's possible to downvote comments, though.

Your precious eyes can't handle seeing this? It's here because people who read HN are interested in the story.

If you didn't want to do it, you wouldn't have done it.

I don't want to file my tax return but I do because there's some benefit to doing so.

And there's no benefit to whining (and I do characterize it thus) about what other people find interesting on HN. If you think it sucks, flag it. Obviously not many people thought it sucked.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXmYnMuDxUs

Agree, Futurama's last season was quite unentertaining. Not as funny, and too focused on the emotional stuff, which was more effective being spaced out.

I think that the 'Fausto' episode, finale of the S05, was by far the best ending Futurama had.

Netflix should buy the IP off of them and continue the show.

Loved the "Killer App" episode of the new series. Everything else was pretty meh. Rest in peace, Futarama.

I wish/hope netflix can take on the show, like they did for arrested development

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