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Futurama is another one, along with Family Guy, that I missed while it was on the air. Futurama was another Matt Groening invention, so I always had an interest in it, just never the time to watch it. Luckily, Adult Swim on Cartoon Network came along and featured Family Guy and Futurama back to back in an hour of cartoony goodness. Basically, Futurama is the story of Fry, a kid frozen in 1999 and awakened a millennium later, in the year 3000. He has to deal with a strange new world, strange new people, and strange new situations. It’s very cleverly written with a lot of space spoofs and in my opinion, was better than the episodes of the Simpsons that ran in the same time frame.
The Main Characters
Futurama has 7 main characters, broken up into 4 main characters, and three other minor main characters. The whole shebang is based on Fry, the slacker Gen X-er from 1999 who wakes up a millennium later and doesn’t know what to do in the new world. He ends up working with a strange bunch of ‘toons. There’s Professor Farnsworth, the crazed, senile scientist and also Fry’s great, great great (great……………) nephew. Leela, a one eyed-purple haired woman/alien with an attitude, joins them. Also there is Bender, a foul-mouthed, beer-swigging robot. To round out the strange cast of misfits is Zoidberg, an octopus like alien who is a physician, Hermes Conrad a Rastafarian man who works is a bureaucrat, and Amy Wong, Farnsworth’s intern who is also from a very rich family.
The Setting
New York City in the year 3000.
The Plots
---Disc One---
1) Space Pilot 3000
Fry is a pizza delivery boy delivering pizzas on New Year’s Eve and sees his girlfriend in a car with another man and then seeing his bike get stolen. He delivers pizza to a cryogenics lab (to IC Weiner) and celebrates alone with a Duff beer in hand. He accidentally lands in one of the freezing chambers and we see time fly by while he’s there. A century later, and Fry wakes up and sees the future and celebrates the fact he’ll never see them again. Then we hit the opening. Fry learns he has a living relative (Prof. Farnsworth) and Leela finds that his designed profession in life is that of a delivery boy. Fry escapes and Leela accidentally gets frozen in the lab, though Fry sets it for five minutes instead of 1000 years. He goes in search of Farnsworth and finds Bender waiting in line at the phone booth (though the phone booth is really a suicide booth) and they bond, but Bender doesn’t want them to think they’re robosexuals. Leela finds Fry but Fry and Bender hide in a head museum (next to Matt Groening?) and even breaks the Nixon head case! Fry and Bender escape into the sewers of New York, now known as Old New York, with a collapsed Empire State Building and a dilapidated Rockefeller Center. Leela finds them in ONYC and Leela tells Fry she knows what it’s like to be alone (she’s the only one-eyed alien in the galaxy) and quits. They are all unemployed now but search out Farnsworth and escape from the police in Farnsworth’s spaceship, where Farnsworth offers all three of them jobs as his new space crew, where Fry will be a delivery boy.
2) The Series Had Landed
We start with the Planet Express commercial (which is hilarious) and we are introduced to Hermes Conrad. Farnsworth names Leela as the captain of his ship. We also meet Zoidberg, the crazed octopus physician, and Amy, the rich intern. The episode really kicks off when the crew has to make a trip to the moon to make a delivery. Leela lets Fry and Amy (who came along) drop the package off and Amy accidentally loses the keys in the box. Afterwards, the crew goes to Luna Park, the moon’s amusement park. Fry and Leela go on the educational moon tour, which is horribly re-written revisionist history. Fry gets fed up and wants to go on the moon and gets caught in quick sand. Meanwhile, Bender and Amy find the box with the keys and see it’s dumped in one of those machines where you need the arm to grab the prize. Bender tries to do it with his hand but gets caught by the police and thrown onto the moon. Fry and Leela find a barn to get Oxygen and wind up at a farm until sunrise, which is two weeks on the moon. Bender ends up joining them and they escape, only to be chased by the country yokel and his robot daughters. Fry and Leela escape to the original moon-landing site and Fry is excited about it though Leela says it’s only a dump, but then realizes how beautiful it is. Bender gets chases by the farmer again but Amy is there to save the day.
3) I, Roomate
Fry’s been living in the office for a month and has caused nothing but trouble. The other employees of Planet Express talk about it and decide Fry has to move out. Bender asks Fry if he wants to live with him and Fry says yes. He goes into Bender’s apartment, which is basically a closet (2 cubic meters!). Leela suggests that Fry moves into a new, bigger apartment and Fry tells Bender he’s moving out. They decide to move into a new apartment but can’t find a good one until one of Farnsworth’s friend’s dies. Bender and Fry make the apartment theirs. Everything goes well until they realize that Bender is causing the TV reception to go bad. They force Bender to move out but Fry doesn’t want to move out of the apartment, and Bender is clearly saddened by not having a roommate anymore. He comes in with a 5 o’clock rust and hasn’t even had a drink! He comes back to Fry and cuts off his antenna to be able to live with him. Fry eventually realizes the error of his ways and lives with Bender again in his 2 cubic meters and Bender shows him his “closet.” A full sized apartment.
4) Love’s Labour’s Lost in Space
Leela is in search of a man but her high standards are causing her to find nobody. Amy brings her to the Hip Joint but can’t find anybody. Farnsworth tells the Planet Express crew about Vergun 6, a planet that’s doomed to collapse and they must go and save the animals. The crew goes off to the planet but is intercepted by Zap Branigan and his ship. Leela is a bit infatuated with Zap and they go on board to tell them of their plans to save the animals, so he puts them in jail. Zap tries to seduce Leela but Leela would rather spend a night in prison, causing Zap to cry. The next thing Leela knows, she’s asleep next to Zap having done some things last night. They finally go and save the animals and Leela finds a small cute animal, which proceeds to eat every animal on board the ship. They try to take off but there’s no fuel left and they have to go back to Zap, where Bender and Fry learn Leela slept with Zap. Leela tells him off and they are stuck on the planet, until Nibbler (the new pet) craps out a black matter (which is starship fuel) and they escape.
---Disc Two---
5) Fear of A Bot Planet
Bender is getting a little upset that humans seem not to respect his fellow robots. They argue this over a game of Blurnball (a jazzed up version of baseball). They get called by Hermes who tells them they need to drop a package off in a planet where robots kill humans on contact. Bender gets dropped off to deliver the package but they learn he works for humans and have him taken away. So Leela and Fry must dress like robots to rescue Bender. Of course, when they get there, Bender is now one of the vocal leaders of the anti-human hunt. Leela and Fry come and rescue Bender who says he got out of prison by saying he killed a million billion humans. Bender doesn’t want to go though; he is a God there and wants to stay. While they are talking to Bender, the robots capture Fry and Leela, and judgment is placed on them, to perform the jobs robots do on Earth. Then they get put in front of the robot elders who sentence them to death at Bender’s hands. Bender eventually sets them free and they escape.
6) A Fishful of Dollars
Fry learns that ads are put into his brain while he sleeps. The ads are in his dreams. They go to a mall but Bender gets busted for stealing. Fry has no money but goes to his old bank and learns his balance of 93 cents comes to 4.3 billion dollars. Fry goes to get pizza but can’t get a pizza with anchovies since they’ve been extinct since 2200. Fry goes crazy and spends an obscene amount on a can of anchovies from 1997. He even outbids “Mom,” the richest woman in America and queen of the robot industry, and wins the can for 50 million dollars. We learn that Mom really needs the anchovies for the robot oil she makes. She sends all the robots after Fry, who has secluded himself from his friends. They think Fry is gonna use it for making robot oil, so they steal his pin number. So they steal Fry’s money and he is left with nothing except his anchovies, but then learns his friends are worth more to him than money.
7) My Three Suns
The show starts with a pretty dated reference to Essence of Emeril and Leela walks in with a green shirt? Meanwhile, Hermes says they can’t have Bender work for nothing, so he becomes the chef and then makes fun of Leela’s lime-green shirt. So they go off into the forbidden zone as Bender does a horrible job of being chef, using way too much salt. Leela makes Fry deliver the package to the emperor of the forbidden zone. He finds a glass of water there and drinks it, but the glass of water was the emperor, and now Fry is the new emperor. Leela warns Fry that the average reign for the emperor’s was one week and Fry will be killed. Fry manages to make it past the coronation until the old emperor makes an appearance in Fry’s chest. Fry, with Leela’s help, finally gets the emperor out by crying.
8) A Big Piece of Garbage
The show opens with Farnsworth going to a Science Fair and he’s going to debut the death clock. Wornstrum is there too and his one of his major rivals who tells him to go home before he embarrasses himself. Wornstrum invents the reverse scuba suit, where fish can come out onto land. Farnsworth is told by Wornstrum he better have an invention better than last year’s death clock. So he has to debut a new invention, the smelliscope, which can smell distant objects. He manages to make a fool of himself as Wornstrum wins the award for best invention. Fry uses the smelliscope and smells something so horrible it’s off of the funkometer. They find out it’s actually a great big ball of garbage sent out into space in the year 2000. Farnsworth goes to warn the mayor and they try to think of ways to destroy it. The crew of the Planet Express has to put a bomb on it to destroy. Farnsworth gives them a bomb with 25 minutes. They make it to the ball of garbage (which has Bart Simpson dolls) and they set it off, but then realize the clock is backwards and they only had 52 seconds. So they throw the bomb into space, but the ball of garbage hasn’t been destroyed. The only hope they have is to send a ball of garbage that is the same size into the air to knock it out of the way.
9) Hell is Other Robots
They start off going to a Beastie Boys concert in Madison Cube Garden. Bender meets his friends Fender who goes to a party with other robots to jack on. (The robot equivalent of taking drugs). Soon Bender gets hooked on the stuff. On a trip to deliver subpoena’s to Sicily 8, Bender commandeer’s the ship into an electric field to get more jolts. He almost killed Fry and Leela too, who are ashamed of Bender’s actions. Bender leaves and finds solace in a Temple of Robotology. He gets baptized and becomes a new robot. He gets even more annoying than before. Leela and Fry want the old Bender back and take him to Atlantic City, where he rips off the Robotology emblem that was scorched onto his body. Because of that, he gets sent to hell. Leela and Fry manage to track him down and find robot hell. They go through a long musical sequence and they meet the Beelzibot and have to beat him in a fiddle contest to get Bender’s soul back and win a gold fiddle. If not they win a silver fiddle and Fry dies. They manage to escape by cheating and Bender is back.
---Disc Three---
10) A Flight to Remember
The Planet Express crew comes back from a horrible delivery and books the crew on a vacation! They will be going on the inaugural voyage of the spaceship Titanic. To top it off, Zap Branigan will be the guest captain. He christens the ship by throwing the head of Leo DiCaprio onto it. Leela tries hard to get Zap off of his case and tells Zap that Fry is her fiancé. On the boat, Bender is smitten with a upper class robot. Zap, on the other hand, craves adventure and wants to go flying through a comet field (the icebergs of the sky). Amy is onboard and meets her parents who want her to get married so she can make babies. They have a man for her (who is rather large and obese) so she lies and tells them she has a boyfriend, Fry. Soon, Leela gets jealous of Amy and Fry’s fake relationship. Bender also gets caught stealing drinks and now the upper class robot learns he is not really rich. A Titanic rip-off follows only to be interrupted by Fry and Leela being at Zap’s royal table, and the Wong family joins them. Before things can get any worse, the Titanic runs into some trouble and Zap leads it into a black hole. The ship starts breaking up and they head for escape pods as Bender runs to get the countess. Bender and the Countess manage to escape and grab onto the escape pod but it’s bringing it down into the black hole. The countess lets go and it’s enough to send the escape pod back to safety.
11) Mars University
The show starts with the crew going to Mars University to drop something off for the Professor. While there, Bender sees his old fraternity, Epsilon Rho Rho (ERR) and finds his fraternity has turned into a nerd haven. He, however, is revered by the three nerdbots and they ask him to be cool. Fry goes back in time to his college days (where we get another Simpson’s reference) at Coney Island Community College, where he’s an official dropout, but now since it’s the 30th century, it’s only a dropout at the high school level. He enrolls in Mars U to dropout and become an official high school dropout and takes Farnsworth’s class. Fry lives in a dorm room and his roommate is Gunter, a monkey (who sounds like Nelson Muntz) who is Farnsworth’s experiment. Turns out, the monkey and Fry HATE each other and ERR has just been causing trouble around the campus. Fry embarrasses Gunter by unleashing his parents at Family Day and Gunter runs off. Later on, they find Gunter crying in his room about being unhappy. Gunter finally runs off into the jungle and Leela, Fry and Farnsworth go into the jungle to get his final decision. Meanwhile, the fraternities have a raft race and the winner will be cleared of any secret violations will be lifted. The robots manage to win and Gunter saves Leela, Fry and Farnsworth while sacrificing his super intelligence. Now he’s happy and is transferring to business school.
12) When Aliens Attack
Back in 1999, Fry delivers pizza to WNYW and watches the season finale of Single Female Lawyer and Fry accidentally knocks Fox off the air. No one on Earth cares, but many light years away (some 1,000 years later) in Omicron Persei 8, some aliens are watching the show and demand to know what happened at the end of the episode. The gang goes to the beach (full of monuments) and things get out of hand when aliens come flying in (a la Independence Day) and destroy everything. The aliens just want O’Neal (who happens to be the name of the president) and Zap Branigan is named the leader against the fight for Earth, so off goes the Planet Express. Fry and the Planet Express even manage to destroy the mother ship, but in fact it was only the Hubble telescope. The real mother ship is destroying all the ships so Planet Express cuts back and flies back home. Meanwhile, Zap offers the aliens McNeal, but Zap learns the aliens means the Single Female Lawyer and destroys President McNeal. They demand to see the episode or they will destroy the earth. The episode has been lost forever after the second coming of Christ and the crew has to re-create the episode and luckily the day is saved.
13) Fry & The Slurm Factory
For my money, this is the best episode of Futurama that’s been made. You have seen other shows do a Willy Wonka “homage” but this is by far the best ever done. Slurms MacKenzie offers a chance to tour the Slurm Factory by getting the golden bottle cap. They then go into the opening, which has some old Simpson’s footage from the Tracy Ullman days. The next day, Bender comes in sick and Farnsworth has to use the F-Ray, which can see through anything, and uses it to look through every Slurm can to find the winning can. They won every other prize, but then Fry drinks the winning can from the refrigerator and they win the contest! They go through the Slurm factory (which is almost the same exact trip as Willy Wonka’s trip) and learn of a Slurm secret ingredient. As the boat goes on, Fry falls into the Slurm River and can’t swim, so Leela has to jump in and save him. Bender is there as well and they end up in a place with two doors, one to the Real Factory and one to the Fake Factory. They go to the production center and see the secret ingredient is slug excrement. They get caught and now must die. Fry manages to rescue Leela who rescues Bender who is then rescued by Slurms MacKenzie.
Season Review
Futurama had a clear vision of where it was going in the first season. Every episode clicks and has many running themes that continue the whole season (for instance, Zap Branigan and Leela). It’s probably easier to compare it to the Simpsons (since it’s the same creator) and I’d have to say that Futurama as a whole was better than the Simpsons. The Simpsons were on the right track but Futurama hit the ground running and never stopped. The 13 episodes are funnier than the Simpsons first 13 episodes, and there are some truly classic episodes on here. The highlight would be the Fry and the Slurm Factory episode, but all the other 12 are funny on their own and there were no episodes I was really bored with. In fact, the season really got better as the season wore on. Highly recommended season that any fan of the Simpson would LOVE and it’s superbly written.
DVD Features
A) Extras
---Disc One---
1) Feature Commentary on Episode 1
The commentary on this episode is done by: Matt Groening, David X. Cohen, Rich Moore, Gregg Vanzo and John Dimaggio. They mention how the show has evolved a little bit, but the look is basically the same. They talk about some of the “secrets” they put on the show that would be paid off later. They mention that the script changed a lot (which we will be able to read later), and how Fry was going to be sold to Farnsworth for spare organ parts. They mention that it was the highest rated debut in Fox’ history. They were going to name it JFK JR airport, but JFK Jr. died shortly afterwards and they scraped that idea. John Dimaggio talks about his auditions. The suicide booth was influenced by a Donald Duck cartoon where he went into the future. The first clue, the alien language in the back that says drink, and was thus translated in a few hours. They then introduced a second alien language, which took a few months to decode, and now they are trying a third one. They mention a goof with Leela’s wristband being on the wrong arm. Matt mentions again how he wanted to create characters that could be recognized in silhouette form. Fry is wearing James Dean outfit from Rebel Without a Cause. They mention one of the secret phrases with the Nixon joke. There’s a joke in there about the French language not being there anymore, they just speak English. They finish with John doing Professor Farnsworth singing David Bowie. The curiosity logo is a reflection of a surfboard, and they paid for the 30th Century Fox out of their pocket because Fox didn’t want to do it, but Fox liked it and paid them back.
2) Feature Commentary on Episode 2
The commentary on this episode is done by: Matt Groening, David X. Cohen, Rich Moore, Ken Keeler, Peter Avanzino and John Dimaggio. The original commercial included the Planet Express captain getting angry with the crew and dying shortly afterwards. In the original script, Hermes was not Jamaican and he was named Dexter. John actually demonstrates his belching on the commentary as well. They make fun of the Chinese a bit and the annoying whaler song on the moon ride. They talk about someone writing in about the inaccuracies and they mention a PHD wrote it, so it was mostly accurate. They mention the yokel on the moon and his shotgun in a glass dome, and one of them quote Total Recall as a source of accurate material. They laugh about the space alligator’s, too. They mention the lunar landing device wasn’t there anymore so they put a sign in the cabin to placate the nerds (which it didn’t). They mention the beautiful 3D graphics in the show, too.
3) Feature Commentary on Episode 3
The commentary on this episode is done by: Matt Groening, David X. Cohen, Rich Moore, Gregg Vanzo and Eric Horsted, Bret Haaland, and Billy West. Fox thought the show was too outer space-ish so this was their attempt to bring it back to Earth. Billy West talks about how he came up with the voices the characters he voices (including Fry, Farnsworth), and then someone calls him out on not answering in the character’s voices. They like Bender’s character because he can smoke and drink and all, then they challenge viewer’s to look up Bender’s apartment number in the ASCII charts. They mention the Odd Couple rip off and how owls are the pest of the future. They mention cutting one or two minutes out of every show (or doing some tricks like speeding it up) and then they have to cut a minute more out of syndication.
4) Feature Commentary on Episode 4
The commentary on this episode is done by: Matt Groening, David X. Cohen, Rich Moore, Brian Kelley, Brian Sheesley, Scott Vanzo and John Dimaggio. The opening sequence took about an hour a frame, and at 30 frames a second, it adds up, to which someone quips, “That’s uncredible.” They mention Bender’s voice changing in the series. A lot of Zap’s poses in the chair are taken from Captain Kirk and his short skirt and how he used to have go-go boots. They also mention that Zap was supposed to be for Phil Hartman, but of course he was tragically killed by his wife, robbing the world of one of the best comedians of the world. Out of the four commentaries on disc one, this was the one they spoke the least on.
5) Animatic from Space Pilot 3000
I thought that this would be a couple of minutes long like the animatics on the Simpsons first DVD but no; it’s the entire show. It’s basically rough drafts of the cartoon without any of the color and without the lips moving. It actually includes a few extra minutes that wasn’t shown in the pilot aired. Really cool to watch it, actually.
6) Space Pilot 3000 Script with Notes from David X. Cohen
This is the 90+-page script to the debut episode. There’s a lot of differences between the script and the final version, and I always love reading the scripts to compare it to what I see on the screen.
7) Space Pilot 3000 Storyboards
Yes, it’s EVERY SINGLE Storyboard that they must’ve done. There’s over 300 storyboards here for your viewing pleasure. It doesn’t take as long to get through as you may think, and it’s fun watching the storyboards for the show and seeing what was kept and what was given up.
8) The Series Has Landed Deleted Scenes
There are two deleted scenes here that adds up to about a minute-twenty. The first is more with the gophers and the second is when they are being flown away by Amy, the big robot daughter of the country yokel rolls up holding her stomach telling her father she has something to tell him. Great stuff.
9) I, Roomate Deleted Scenes
There’s a minute of deleted scenes here, two of them to be exact. Basically they are just extensions of the Fry shower scene and Bender and Fry moving in.
10) Love’s Labours Lost in Space Deleted Scenes
There’s only one deleted scene (which is about 40 seconds long) and has to do with Zap having a killbot on board and Bender resets the kill limit to 0.
---Disc Two---
1) Feature Commentary on Episode 5
The commentary on this episode is done by: Matt Groening, David X. Cohen, Rich Moore, Gregg Vanzo and John Dimaggio. They mention the clips that are shown in the opening, and Matt picks them out for the short two-second clip. Blurnsball came from Blurnsday, a day created by the creators so they had an extra day to get all the work they needed done. Matt mentions that Doomsville and Aloha Mars were working titles for the show. The cleaning robot in the stadium was originally in the pilot but was cut out. Chapek 9, the planet, was based on a guy named Chapek who coined the term robot. They say they rip off of other things besides Star Wars and Star Trek, but other literary science fiction works. They mention that the judge is an apple computer and how they should’ve gotten money from them for all the free screen time. They mention they killamajig has some Dungeon and Dragons weapons on it, to which someone responds, what the hell are you talking about.
2) Feature Commentary on Episode 6
The commentary on this episode is done by: Matt Groening, David X. Cohen, Rich Moore, Patric M. Verrone, Gregg Vanzo and John Dimaggio. Obviously, the episode name is a parody of a Fistful of Dollars. They were debating whether dollars would be the currency of the future. They actually point out a goof; the voice of the sales clerk was voiced first by Billy West, then a scene later, by someone else. They actually figured out the mathematics behind the rate increase and it’s actually right! They have two math PhD’s on the staff. The original script was about pop-tarts and not anchovies and he was rich enough to get another robot, Deluxor, an all-wood robot. They mention another goof, Fry’s door opening from left to right then right to left in later scenes. They mention Pamela Anderson showing up for the show and how they were smiling very broadly in that picture. This show has the highest cumulative rating of all Futurama episodes.
3) Feature Commentary on Episode 7
The commentary on this episode is done by: Matt Groening, David X. Cohen, Rich Moore, Gregg Vanzo and Billy West. Zoidberg introduces the episode and the car wash was put in quite late in the script-writing. They started early on with the cold openings (before the title sequence) but started changing that later on to get people right into the show. David X. Cohen has the X in his name because there was already a David S Cohen in the screen writer’s guild and there can only be one of each name, so an X was thrown in. This was originally going to be the second show of the series but wanted more down to earth episodes before this one. They mention the To Serve Man apron, which they took off of Twilight Zone. Billy West talk about Zoidberg’s voice came from George Vezzel (sp?) and Matt asks how he knows that and Billy said he’s almost 50 and watched him in movies. They joke about Matt never watching Star Trek. They discuss the physics of the three suns. They say it’s in the year 3000 because it was easy to set the dial on the freezing device, and they could get away with any technological advance.
4) Feature Commentary on Episode 8
The commentary on this episode is done by: Matt Groening, David X. Cohen, Rich Moore, J. Stewart Burns, Gregg Vanzo and John Dimaggio. John asks how the little word clips in the beginning (like Wardrobe brought to you by Robotany 5000) get pitched. They say Ron Popeil came in and sold them $80,000 worth of stuff. One of the commentator’s say they’re glad they didn’t buy it because they are boring. (Don’t worry guys! You aren’t!). The Rough Draft Animation Logo is a shown in the napkin. This episode was nominated for an Emmy (not the real Emmy’s, the Technical Emmy’s) but it didn’t win! They gave the award to King of The Hill instead. The animator did win the Tech Emmy for one of the other episodes.
5) Feature Commentary on Episode 9
The commentary on this episode is done by: Matt Groening, David X. Cohen, Rich Moore, Eric Kaplan, Gregg Vanzo and John Dimaggio. They talk about the Beastie Boys and only two of the Boys actually recorded. The Beasties actually didn’t want to do We Have to Fight for the Right to Party. John is in rare form early on, talking about how he made the voice (and demonstrating it) then making chomping sounds when Bender eats the atoms. Groening said he did get a call from Scientology about the Temple of Robotology. The Robotology logos are transistors and they mention the humans have round pupils and the robots have square pupils. They mentions there was a religious person on the crew who didn’t want to work on this episode because of its religious overtones and things. They then joke that she was fired. They mention that the voice of the robot devil is Dan Castellanetta, Homer from the Simpsons.
6) My Three Suns Deleted Scenes
There’s 52 seconds of deleted scenes, and it’s Fry splashing the water people with water and them going down the drain. The animation is a lot rougher on here than what it is on the DVD.
7) Hell Is Other Robots Deleted Scenes
It’s :44 seconds of deleted scenes and is an variation of Bender flying with Leela and Fry at the end. Again, the animation is a lot rougher than what was on the DVD, and the one shown on the DVD is a lot funnier than this ending.
---Disc Three---
1) Feature Commentary on Episode 10
The commentary on this episode is done by: Matt Groening, David X. Cohen, Rich Moore, Eric Horsted, Peter Avanzino, Scott Vanzo and John Dimaggio. They had originally asked Leo DiCaprio to be in the episode but he was “busy,” so they chucked his head into the hull. They say to make this episode; it is one part Titanic, two parts Love Boat, and one part Three’s Company. Matt says he’s never seen either three, so he doesn’t get anything in this episode. In the original version, there was a smart slot machine.
2) Feature Commentary on Episode 11
The commentary on this episode is done by: Matt Groening, David X. Cohen, Rich Moore, J. Stewart Burns, Bret Haaland, Gregg Vanzo and Billy West. Everything hovers in the future, and they didn’t use wheels in the future, until they got a list of all things that used wheels. This theme was remixed and they wanted to do it every week until they heard this one and decided never to do it again. They say they can’t begin to mention how many college movies they ripped off here. They mention the Simpsons being at Coney Island College, and the thing was they only showed them as objects, since Futurama was real and the Simpsons were fake, yet they still gave them 4 fingers. They say the monkey was much more realistic looking but they changed it since it was too scary. They mention Billy West tries to change his voice so it doesn’t sound alike at all (he does the voices of Zoidberg, Fry, Zap Branigan, Professor Farnsworth, among others). Matt takes some umbrage with the name of a robot named Fatbot, and how someone would build a fat robot. The number that Gunter gets has a lambda in there so they wouldn’t have to put a 555 number on there. Someone mentions the hat that Gunter wears is like the one the guy on Oz wears. Gunter’s name came from the writer’s roommate in college. They joke at the end about bringing the monkey back.
3) Feature Commentary on Episode 12
The commentary on this episode is done by: Matt Groening, David X. Cohen, Rich Moore, Ken Keeler, Scott Vanzo, Brian Sheesley, and John Dimaggio. WNYW is the Fox affiliate in NY, though Cohen thought it was Newsradio. Groening says he went to school with Calista Flockhart. Omicron Persei was chosen since it was about 1000 light years away. Lrrr and Ndnd are the names of the aliens. Of course, the aliens blowing things up was from Independence Day. Matt Groening came up with the salute that Zap does and he actually got it from his sun. They of course use most of space fight scenes from Star Wars.
4) Feature Commentary on Episode 13
The commentary on this episode is done by: Matt Groening, David X. Cohen, Rich Moore, Lewis Morton, Ron Hughart, and John Dimaggio. Pamela Anderson has a quest voice on the show, and it was recorded the same time as her appearance in episode 6. Groening says that Slurm was one of the first names thought up of; it was just an ugly name for a pop culture piece. 6502 (the number in Bender’s brain) is the microprocessor of the Apple Computer and possibly the Atari. When Bender removes the watch, his color goes back to normal in a pretty neat trick. There’s a 3D scrabble board (like the Star Trek chess game) and the Professor’s letters spell out Futurama. Billy West does the voice of the Willy Wonka character (and he used a picture of Gene Wilder for inspiration) and his original name was to be Slurmy Slonka. Matt mentions he hasn’t seen Willy Wonka either. There’s a Slurm shirt in Hebrew and they had to redo it a lot since it looked a lot like Shalom. They say the big purple vat that Leela is dumped into looks similar to the Batman TV show.
5) Featurette (4:51)
This is a very brief featurette about what Futurama will be. They show early versions of Fry (with brown hair), Leela and Bender. They show the rough colors of the characters too (Leela in a black shirt and Amy in Yellow). They show a little about the computer graphics too.
6) When Aliens Attack Deleted Scene
A :31 second deleted scene from When Aliens attack that says why they can’t go to real beaches anymore and only to man made ones. It’s because of the whales.
7) Image Gallery
There are about 65 pictures here, all of early designs for the characters. Its really fascinating stuff to look at and see how things developed.
B) Audio/Video
Maybe it’s just me, but the animation is a lot cleaner here than on the Simpsons Disc 1 and the Family Guy DVD’s. It seems more vibrant and the colors are much brighter and sharper. The animation does tend to get choppy every once in a while though. The audio is still the usual Dolby Digital 5.1 though it’s not used too much.
C) Liner Notes
The packaging on this set is awesome. There is a slipcase with Fry and Bender on the front and Leela on the back with a see-through panel on both sides. Sliding out of that is another case that is like the average background with a bunch of stuff going on. There are three slim DVD cases with covers that when combined make one picture. There was also a page stuck on the back with the basic info and each clear case has liner notes on the back, and episode/chapter listings on the inside case opposite the CD. You also get a Fox DVD catalogue.
D) Easter Eggs
On Disc One, highlight Love’s Labours Lost in Space and hit right once to highlight the car beneath Fry’s hand. Hit enter to see a movie poster of Planet of the Clams.
On Disc Two, there are a few ways to get to the first egg. The easiest is to highlight Hell is Other Robots and hit down to highlight the Slurm ad. Hit Enter to get another movie poster, Quizblorg, Quizblorg.
Also on Disc Two, access the Scene Selection of Fear of A Bot Planet. Highlight the fourth scene, then hit left once to highlight the NNY (?) logo. Hit enter to get a “It Came from Planet Earth” movie poster.
Also on Disc Two, access the Scene Selection of My Three Suns. Highlight the Main Menu then hit left once to highlight the three red buttons. Hit Enter to get a I Was A Teenage Human movie Poster.
Finally on Disc Two, access the Scene Selections of Hell Is Other Robots and highlight the third chapter. Hit right once to highlight the squiggly line and hit enter to see a Yentltron poster.
On Disc Three, highlight Fry and the Slurm factory, hit down to highlight the car and hit enter to receive the third movie poster, this time of Buffbot The Human Slayer.
Also on Disc Three, go to the Scene Selections of A Flight To Remember and highlight the fourth chapter. Hit left to highlight the Do Not Push button, and hit enter to reveal a rather disturbing Professor Farnsworth Photo.
Finally on Disc Three, go to the Special Features and highlight the Main Menu. Hit right once to highlight the LED screen on the device and hit enter. This gives you a Galaxy Wars poster.
Overall Review
This was one of the more enjoyable DVD reviews I’ve done. The 13 episodes were absolutely amazing to watch, and the extras fit the package well. The deleted scenes were fun to watch and the commentaries were much better than the ones on the Simpsons or Family Guy. Of the three cartoon series that it’s comparable to, it’s the best by far. It’s the best written and best animated, and has the best DVD set.
Overall Rating
9.5
10.0 Perfect
9.0-9.5 Near Perfect, Highly Recommended
8.0-8.5 Really good disc, Recommended
7.0-7.5 Good DVD, Mildly recommended
6.0-6.5 Above Average DVD. Mildest of mild recommendations
5.0-5.5 Decent all around disc, but catch it on TV
4.0-4.5 Great Movie but horrible DVD
3.0-3.5 Horrible movie but great DVD
2.0-2.5 There’s at least some merit to this DVD, but not much.
1.0-1.5 Horrible DVD, don’t even bother
0.0-0.5 Worst DVD ever
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