Futurama - Season 5
Fito Coulter
The American animated science fiction sitcom Futurama, created and developed by Matt Groening and David X. Cohen for the Fox Broadcasting Company, originally aired from March 28, 1999, to August 10, 2003 before being effectively cancelled. Starting in 2007, 20th Century Fox Television released four straight-to-DVD Futurama films. These films were subsequently reconfigured into four episodes each and were broadcast on four separate nights in 2008 and 2009 on Comedy Central as a fifth season.[1][2][3] This was followed by a sixth and seventh season airing from 2010 to 2013 when the show was cancelled again.[4][5] In February 2022, Hulu revived the series with a 20-episode order for an eighth season that began airing on July 24, 2023.[6][7] On November 2, 2023, Hulu renewed the show for a ninth production season consisting of 20 episodes,[8] which will air through 2026.[9][10] New episodes are slated to return on July 29, 2024.[11]
The original 72-episode run of Futurama was produced as four seasons, however Fox broadcast the episodes out of the intended order, resulting in five aired seasons (though the first season was aired entirely in order).[12] As consequence, the show's continuity is disrupted by the broadcast order. For example, the episode "Fry and Leela's Big Fling" follows on from the ending of the previous episode in production order (which is "T.: The Terrestrial"); however, the episodes were not aired consecutively. Each of the show's 26-episode sixth and seventh seasons on Comedy Central was split into two 13-episode halves and broadcast effectively as four separate broadcast seasons over four years. Some of the episodes of those seasons were also aired out of production order, though episodes always aired within the half-season they were produced. Moreover, different regions and networks use different ordering for the episodes. Some countries broadcast the original 72 episodes in the four-season production-order. In the UK, the first 13 episodes of the series' sixth (production) season were released on DVD/BD as "season five".
This list follows the season box sets, which feature the episodes in the original production season order, ignoring the order of broadcast. The original run was released on Fox and its first revival was on Comedy Central. The second revival is domestically on Hulu, while internationally it is on Disney+, and it has alternatively been titled the eighth season (production),[13] and the eleventh and twelfth seasons (broadcast).[14][15] The ninth production season will also be considered as Futurama's thirteenth and fourteenth broadcast seasons.[8]
Included on the DVD release of Bender's Big Score is a full-length 22-minute episode of Everybody Loves Hypnotoad, titled "Amazon Adventure", based on the fictional show produced by Hypnotoad. "Amazon Adventure" begins with an establishing shot of a house, before immediately cutting to Hypnotoad hypnotizing the audience. Other establishing shots and advertisements are interspersed throughout the episode.
The Futurama video game was released shortly after the airing of the 72nd and final episode of the Fox's run of the series in August 2003. The game's story and dialogue were written by J. Stewart Burns, and the voice direction was by David X. Cohen. According to Cohen, the half-hour's worth of cutscenes in the game were originally written as "the 73rd episode of the original series."[141] These cutscenes were compiled together (along with footage of the video game being played) and released as a bonus feature on the DVD release of The Beast with a Billion Backs. Renamed Futurama: The Lost Adventure, the episode tells of how the Planet Express crew prevented Mom from using Earth to take over the Universe.
Futurama Live! first aired on July 11, 2012, on Comedy Central following the original broadcast of the episode "Zapp Dingbat", the public were given the chance to participate in a live chat with the Futurama cast and crew. Several previews of upcoming Season 7 episodes were shown during the live stream, and several details about the season were revealed, including: returning appearances by the characters Guenter and Dr. Banjo in an episode of broadcast season 10, the debut of Lrrr's son, an episode about the origins of Scruffy, a three-part episode featuring 1980s-style animation, the status of Mars, and the possibility of "Mbius strip clubs".[142] One lucky fan even won a prize.[143]
A second episode of Futurama Live! was aired as a live Internet webcast event broadcast on September 4, 2013, on the Comedy Central website and the Nerdist YouTube channel as part of the Futurama series finale. It was broadcast in two parts, the first part was the pre-show hosted by Chris Hardwick and featured creator Matt Groening, series showrunner David X. Cohen and voice actors Phil Lamarr and Lauren Tom. The second part was the post-series finale webcast again hosted by Hardwick with Groening and Cohen and actors Maurice LaMarche and Billy West discussing the series finale and different aspects of the show.[144][145][146]
Radiorama is a special podcast episode of Futurama made for the Nerdist Podcast to help promote Futurama: Worlds of Tomorrow reuniting the entire Futurama cast as well as special guest star Chris Hardwick as the villain, Klaxxon. The podcast was released on September 14, 2017. The episode was written by David X. Cohen, Ken Keeler and Patric M. Verrone.
Futurama is an American animated science fiction sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company and later revived by Comedy Central, and then Hulu. The series follows the adventures of slacker Philip J. Fry, who is cryogenically preserved for 1,000 years and revived on December 31, 2999. Fry finds work at the interplanetary delivery company Planet Express, working alongside one-eyed mutant Leela and robot Bender. The series was envisioned by Groening in the mid-1990s while working on The Simpsons; he brought David X. Cohen aboard to develop storylines and characters to pitch the show to Fox.[2]
Following its initial cancellation by Fox, Futurama began airing reruns on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block, which lasted from 2003 to 2007. It was revived in 2007 as four direct-to-video films, the last of which was released in early 2009. Comedy Central entered into an agreement with 20th Century Fox Television to syndicate the existing episodes and air the films as 16 new, half-hour episodes, constituting a fifth season.[3][4]
In June 2009, Comedy Central picked up the show for 26 new half-hour episodes, which began airing in 2010 and 2011.[5][6] The show was renewed for a seventh season, with the first half airing in 2012 and the second in 2013.[7][8][9] An audio-only episode featuring the original cast members was released in 2017 as an episode of The Nerdist Podcast.[10] On February 9, 2022, Hulu revived the series with a 20-episode order, which premiered on July 24, 2023.[11][12] In November 2023, the show was renewed by Hulu for two more broadcast seasons, which will air through 2026.[13][14]
Futurama received critical acclaim throughout its run and was nominated for 17 Annie Awards, winning nine of them, and 12 Emmy Awards, winning six. It was nominated four times for a Writers Guild of America Award, winning for the episodes "Godfellas" and "The Prisoner of Benda". It was nominated for a Nebula Award and received Environmental Media Awards for the episodes "The Problem with Popplers" and "The Futurama Holiday Spectacular".[15] Merchandise includes a tie-in comic book series, video games, calendars, clothes, and action figures. In 2013, TV Guide ranked Futurama one of the top 60 Greatest TV Cartoons of All Time.[16]
Futurama is essentially a workplace sitcom, the plot of which revolves around the Planet Express interplanetary delivery company and its employees,[17] a small group that largely fails to conform to future society.[18] Episodes usually feature the central trio of Fry, Leela, and Bender, though occasional storylines center on the other main characters.
Futurama is set in New New York at the turn of the 31st century, in a time filled with technological wonders. The city of New New York has been built over the ruins of present-day New York City, which has become a catacomb-like space that acts as New New York's sewer, referred to as "Old New York". Parts of the sewers are inhabited by mutants. Various devices and architecture are similar to the Populuxe style. Global warming, inflexible bureaucracy, and substance abuse are a few of the subjects given a 31st-century exaggeration in a world where the problems have become both more extreme and more common. Just as New York has become a more extreme version of itself in the future, other Earth locations are given the same treatment; Los Angeles, for example, is depicted as a smog-filled apocalyptic wasteland.
Environmentally, common animals still remain, alongside mutated, cross-bred (sometimes with humans) and extraterrestrial animals. Ironically, spotted owls are often shown to have replaced rats as common household pests. Although rats still exist, sometimes rats act like pigeons, though pigeons still exist, as well. Anchovies have been extinct for 800 years because of the Decapodians. Earth still suffers the effects of greenhouse gases, although in one episode Leela states that its effects have been counteracted by nuclear winter. In another episode, the effects of global warming have been somewhat mitigated by the dropping of a giant ice cube into the ocean, and later by pushing Earth farther away from the sun, which also extended the year by one week.
Religion is a prominent part of society, although the dominant religions have evolved. A merging of the major religious groups of the 20th century has resulted in the First Amalgamated Church,[24] while Voodoo is now mainstream. New religions include Oprahism, Robotology, and the banned religion of Star Trek fandom. Religious figures include Father Changstein-El-Gamal, the Robot Devil, Reverend Lionel Preacherbot, and passing references to the Space Pope, who appears to be a large crocodile-like creature. Several major holidays have robots associated with them, including the murderous Robot Santa and Kwanzaa-bot. While very few episodes focus exclusively on religion within the Futurama universe, they do cover a wide variety of subjects including predestination, prayer, the nature of salvation, and religious conversion.[24]
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