“Futurama” (9 p.m. Central Wednesdays on Comedy Central) has been around long enough now that it’s starting to contradict its own backstories. Since most “Futurama” fans are also “Simpsons” fans, we’re accustomed to this. Notoriously — on series where time passes but characters stay the same age — there are stories showing Homer and Marge getting married in the 1970s and the 1990s.
I forgive last week’s season premiere, “The Bots and the Bees,” though, simply because it’s an instant classic. (From Internet research, I’ve found that this is referred to as Season 7, as the past two years on Cartoon Network are considered to be Season 6.) Bender (who had been established as being built in a factory), it turns out, actually had parents, and that’s where he inherited his bending abilities. In a great parody of sex education videos, we learn that robots can reproduce just like humans, and indeed, Bender has a kid with the new beverage machine (named Bev, of course, and voiced by Wanda Sykes) installed at Planet Express.
The result is a classic “Futurama” mix of a touching father-son story (Bender’s offspring is named Ben, naturally) combined with the fact that the entire 22 minutes is completely insane. The image of Fry glowing due to his addiction to Slurm Loco had me laughing every time he appeared on screen.
The second episode of the one-hour premiere, “A Farewell to Arms,” is an example of the not-so-great episodes that filled too much of last season and caused me to bump “Futurama” from its usual perch in my end-of-year top 10. The jokes are more of the fun-with-dialogue variety (Fry: “3012, why does that year sound familiar?” Professor: “Because that’s the year that this is!”), and the overall story of the Earth’s populace fleeing to Mars doesn’t pack nearly as much punch as the personal Bender story from the first half-hour.
Still, it wraps with some unique “Inception”-style visuals where Earth and Mars pass so close to each other that Fry (on Earth) reaches for Leela (on Mars) and they end up having their arms ripped off (the professor grows clone arms for both of them, allowing things to reset next week). In a sweet-and-gory image, we see that clasped arms floating through space. Aw. The gag is another example of “Futurama” in 2012 being more off-the-wall than “Futurama” in 1999, and that’s not necessarily a good or bad thing.
Another nice touch: The “confused Fry” Internet memes have been adopted by the show itself, with Fry thinking “New episode of ‘Futurama?’ Or rerun of episode I watched when drunk?” as the first episode’s teaser. Good stuff.
So it was a bit of hit and miss in week one, but I’m glad to have “Futurama” back. It makes the generally slow summer TV months that much more bearable.
