Fox & Disney’s revival of this adult animation staple is 40% of its authentic self, with the remaining filler feeling like a bad mix of Futurama fan fiction & scraps left on the writing room floor.

I love Futurama. At first glance, it looks like a bootleg version of its more famous counterpart in The Simpsons (like what Disenchanted is currently), but it displayed an aura that made the show attractive to my young mind. It was adult, but smart and not raunchy. It stood out for its smart jokes & clever use of commentary & satire. It’s a show that I grew up on (even though I probably shouldn’t have), but even now I still fondly remember the adventures of Fry, Leela, Bender, and even old Scruffy. So when Disney decided to bolster its Disney+ library after the 20th Century Fox buyout, and revive Futurama for a third time, I was more than skeptical. The show ended in a perfect way, and continuing from there without proceeding carefully would’ve just ruined the good thing the writers had going, and after watching the finished season, my skepticism was correct. Season 11 of Futurama is a chore to watch & a sad reminder of the good days of Futurama, almost like watching a Disney executive puppeteering a dead franchise for more subscriptions.

Lack of Comedy

So what am I complaining about? Well my biggest issue towards this new season of Futurama is that for a “comedy”, there’s barely any present. I can barely remember one joke from Season 11 that I can name at the top of my head, or even made me laugh. Most jokes have this “hit or miss” attitude behind them, and the ones that really miss, miss hard, like you stare at the screen confused and grab the remote to watch something else. It’s that bad. Scenes will end abruptly with (let’s call them) punchlines, characters will act out of character just to serve a joke that never lands, and it feels so amateur-ish. Like the writers were thinking of all these amazing jokes, but never had anyone outside of 20th Century Studios react to what they had wrote.

Even when there is the possibility of a good joke, the writers can barely take it past developing it further. Take the Christmas episode for example. While Zoidberg & Bender are trying to dispose of Robot Santa’s body in a lake (just go with it), they get stopped by the police, who ignore the body and let them pass. Maybe instead of letting them pass, maybe the cops chase after the two and Bender uses the body like a speedboat, only for the cops to crash on a slew of other dumped robot bodies. Literally anything but pointless filler would suffice, at least show that you’re trying.

Lack of Futurama

I feel that for a show based on the future & all the ideas that you can potentially play around with, we barely really get any original ideas from this season. One episode is literally Fry binge watching too much TV, and the Planet Express crew need to keep producing episodes for him to watch so he doesn’t go brain dead. Like this sounds more like something you’d find from an episode of Family Guy or even The Simpsons, shows based on everyday life instead of this universe with literal infinite possibilities. It literally feels like they grabbed a bunch of writers, wrote on a blackboard a bunch of things that were trending on Twitter (sorry, X) and based their series on that. We get episodes based off Amazon, Crypto Currency, Cancel Culture (this episode was decent), and even a COVID-19 parody.

And yes, I understand that older episodes of Futurama did something similar when it mocked current day issues like Apple & iPhones, but here’s the funny thing. These older episodes not only had comedy, but they served an actual point. The Apple episode (S7, Ep.3 Attack of the Killer App) was about the effects of social media & over abusing the technology we use. The digs at Apple & Facebook were used for jokes, and simply helped connect the message to our world. I never really got an actual message from any of these new episodes say for one, which was the streaming episode basically telling you to not binge content, which is as far as Disney themselves telling you not to watch their poorly made products.

Even the more in-universe episodes feel either underbaked or like they didn’t know what to do. For example, the staple anthology episodes. These were great, and gave us some good parody episodes, yet this season’s anthology episode was literally (and I say this without hyperbole) the worst Futurama episode I had ever watched. It’s like the writers were forced by the studio to write the episode, and they didn’t know how to proceed.

We even see characters like Amy & Kif’s children get introduced, yet they really don’t do anything with them. There’s even a moment in the climax where Amy is questioned on how much she loves her adopted kids (it’s a long story), and after Amy starts to cry after she says yes, the conflict resolves itself & the children end up as background characters for the remainder of the season. Even when characters from past seasons like Fry’s Worms of the Whale Biologist return, they’re either there to make a reference or exist to be the butt of an awful joke.

Lack of Purpose

It felt like there were three parties creating these episodes. You had “The Originals” who wanted to create more of what they’re used to (and the team who probably wrote that last episode). Then there’s “The Newbies”, who are fresh out of college but barely have any comedy or writing experience. They were hired because they were passionate about Futurama, but also because they’re much cheaper to hire than the experienced ones. Then you had “The Suits”, who saw what was trending, and wanted to reach out to modern audiences to promote the show. So you’d get crap like the COVID-19 Episode, and they’ll continue to greenlight episodes before the name becomes another lifeless husk. Like there’s already going to be a Futurama Season 12, like why?

It honestly feels like this entire season was pointless, almost like Disney needed something to fill out the release schedule for early Autumn. It’s not like there was any competition. Sure, Disney released a bunch of promotional material with the staff, the writers, and the cast, but it felt like they barely contributed to the finished product.

Also you wanna know why this review took so long to publish? Well I didn’t even realize that the final episode we got for Season 11 was the season finale. I only realized when I went to Disney+ on a Monday morning & realized that there was no new episode, and I thought to myself “wait, that was the season finale, when things finally started to get good?”

Overall, Season 11 of Futurama feels like wasted time. Its humour & approach to storytelling feels like a half assed episode of Rick & Morty on its best day, and its sheer existence of ruining such a perfect series makes me hate it even more than the average viewer. It does have its good episodes but its not enough to make me believe that “Futurama is back!”

4/10

(btw if you read the lead caption in the Professor’s voice, I love you)