New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Of course, none of this matters if the show were not populated with compelling characters, the ultimate necessity of any great story. And this cast has created such a menagerie of fun, empathetic characters. My favorite changes every time we cut to the next one. Jessie, Hank, Gus, and Saul are all a pleasure to watch, and they're backed up by ringleader Bryan Cranston’s Walter White. I must admit, I wasn’t a fan of Cranston’s mugging in his role as Hal on Malcolm in the Middle, but here he creates a brilliant, obstinate, loving, impulsive, foolish genius in Walter White, a man both finding his true calling, and finding himself in over his head. It's an amazing accomplishment for Cranston, worthy of the acclaim heaped upon him.

Speaking of shows living in the shadow of giants, no matter how great Futurama gets, and it gets pretty great, it will always be The Simpsons' younger brother. It’s not that The Simpsons doesn’t deserve its status as a genuine pop culture phenomenon, of course it does. Despite the obligatory griping about how it’s past its prime, the show, at its best, is as good as television has ever gotten. Problem is, what gets lost in the face of this is that the same can be said of Futurama.

A zombie show, reanimated from cancellation, Futurama has always been the cleverer of the two, while Simpsons the warmer. This is not to say that there isn’t cleverness in Simpsons nor warmth in Futurama, but Futurama has a tradition of trusting its audience to understand the layers of wit that Matt Groening, David X. Cohen and their team infuse into every episode.
This is, of course, appropriate for the fan base, which includes a high proportion of nerds. I’m sure by now most nerds have accepted the term with affection and, though we could debate the hair-splitting difference between nerds and geeks, a nerdy pursuit to be sure, I’ll just move on and hope we can all agree that we Futurama fans are nerds.

Nerds don’t like being condescended to. We prize intellect and want our entertainments not to coddle, but to challenge, speak to, and embrace us. Futurama, a show made by nerds, for nerds, is just that kind of entertainment.

It is both a parody of science fiction convention (the nerdiest of genres) and a science fiction narrative in its own right. It pokes holes at the genres tropes while embracing them. It has its own science fiction mythology, while making gentle fun of the narrative need for mythologies. It adheres to a pretty solid continuity for an animated program while mocking the nerd desire for strict continuity.

The targets of its comedy range from the extreme nerdiness of mathematics and science, to the lowest depths of poop jokes. It doesn’t explain the jokes or even acknowledge that the joke is there. Shows that do this provide a major pet peeve of mine in television comedy. The obvious example of this is the laugh track, but I’ll also point to the extreme reaction shots and music stings of a show like Scrubs, which punctuate the joke, just in case the viewers didn’t realize that the joke is there. Futurama, on the other hand, tells its joke, then goes on to the next one, figuring that you’re smart enough to understand it. Besides, if you missed it this time, you’ll catch it the second time around.

Another of Futurama's great hallmarks, like its big brother Simpsons, and other comedy classics like Arrested Development, is that it’s in multiple viewings that the show really shines. While much of television is disposable one-and-done viewing, revisiting old episodes of Futurama not only reveals more jokes, but often greater thematic depth. There’s been many an episode that I’ve been unimpressed with the first time but have gone on to love with further viewings.

So this time around, I really didn’t get too into the mythologies of Breaking Bad or Futurama, I pretty much just raved about them. I figure since they’re both pretty much shows on the fringe, a little hyping can’t be a bad thing. And they keep you in the air conditioning during this extremely hot summer we’re having. So quit reading this and go watch them before summer turns back into a television dumping ground.

Continued:       1       2