The end of this month will see the debut of the latest– 12th, depending on how you’re keeping track– season of the cult-hit animated sitcom Futurama via the Disney-owned Hulu streaming service. Laughing Place was provided with access to the first six (of ten total) episodes, and below are my thoughts.
The 25th anniversary of Futurama just passed a few months ago, and if you’re wondering why there are fewer than half the amount of seasons than the number of years in which the series has existed, well… it’s a long story. But essentially it’s been canceled a few times by a few different networks, and eventually, thankfully, it seems to keep finding new homes– be it on FOX, straight-to-DVD mini-movies, Comedy Central, in video games and mobile games, and now on Hulu. Whatever its release schedule, it’s always nice to have new episodes of Futurama flowing freely into our living rooms, and season 12 (which officially starts just a couple days from now) proves that these beloved oddball characters living in the 31st Century still have some life and stories left in them. It kicks off with a fun romp that sees our favorite beer-swilling kleptomaniac robot Bender “Bending” Rodriguez (voiced, as always, by John DiMaggio) returning to his ancestral home in Mexico after accidentally selling the concept of himself to the highest bidder on an NFT trading platform.
From there, the Futurama writing and animation teams deliver an episode that pokes fun at Netflix’s Squid Game by trapping Philip J. Fry (Billy West) and friends in a simulation of his childhood birthday party, then they erase Fry entirely from existence in a Twilight Zone-esque installment that replaces him in mind and body with a temp. We also see Bender become a bug-fighting matador on Mars, Leela (Katey Sagal) befriend a jealous chatbot, and Professor Farnsworth (also West) enter an inventors’ contest with the creation of a Frankenstein-like being sporting the head of a supermodel. I would say these six episodes represent a pretty great cross-section of the Futurama experience, right down to the supporting turns of Phil LaMarr as bureaucrat Hermes Conrad, Lauren Tom as the industrious Amy Wong, and Billy West once again providing the voice of the poor, deranged lobster physician Dr. Zoidberg. Other familiar faces return as well, naturally, and fans will be delighted to hear the voices of Tress MacNeille, Maurice LaMarche, David Herman, and Frank Welker coming out of additional returning characters like Scruffy and Morbo.
But the best thing that I can report about this new batch of Futurama episodes is that the show’s creative team has definitely settled into its groove after taking nearly a decade off between seasons 10 and 11. Right off the bat I noticed that these outings are actually funnier than the ones we got last year, and those were already pretty solid. But I think the laughs-per-minute ratio is higher overall in season 12, and there are some rather clever storylines beyond the broad synopses I listed above, though I don’t want to spoil too much about them in this review. Suffice it to say that as a fan of this series for more than a quarter-century now, I was absolutely entertained by what I’ve seen so far and I can’t wait to check out those final four installments when they finally appear on Hulu– the ending of episode 6 almost feels like a cliffhanger, but I’d be surprised to see Futurama become more serialized than it’s been in the past. To me this show has always been about the characters, the gags, and the animation, and I’m very pleased to report that the quality of all these things is still high enough to keep me coming back for more.
Futurama season 12 will premiere on Monday, July 29th, exclusively via Hulu.