In case you’ve been stuck in a cryogenic freezer for the past year, unable to keep up with the ongoings of a twice-cancelled animated show about a narcissistic talking robot threatening to kill all humans, tonight is the final episode of Matt Groening’s Futurama. Again. But this time it’s for real. Probably. Maybe. Definitely. I don’t know.
We’re treating it here at UPROXX as the finale, though — and hoping it is, too. I wouldn’t want to live on this planet anymore if Futurama ever sunk to the bottom of the ocean of mediocrity (I should have mixed my metaphors) that its great-great-great-grandfather, The Simpsons, has been drowning in for seasons. At its peak, Futurama was one of the funniest, smartest, most creative sitcoms on TV, animated or otherwise; I’d put seasons 2-4 alongside anything Seinfeld or The Office accomplished. So, in honor of Scruffy and the Gang, I went through every episode (minus the direct-to-DVD movies and tonight’s “Meanwhile,” obviously) and picked out one vision of the future I’d like to see come true one thousand years from now, if not sooner. Besides an anchovy-less world. That’s a given.
Suicide booths (“Space Pilot 3000″)
A lunar lander with blackjack and hookers, minus the lunar lander (“The Series Has Landed”)
Bachelor Chow (“I, Roommate”)
Nibblonians! (“Love’s Labours Lost in Space”)
A planet where drinking milk is a sin (“Fear of a Bot Planet”)
Light-Speed Briefs (“A Fishful of Dollars”)
Crack vending machines (“My Three Suns”)
Smell-O-Scopes (“A Big Piece of Garbage”)
For all three Beastie Boys to still be alive. Sigh. (“Hell Is Other Robots”)
iZac (“A Flight to Remember”)
Super-intelligent monkeys running broadcast networks (“Mars University”)
To FINALLY be able to watch the last episode of Single Female Lawyer (“When Aliens Attack”)
Slurm, and more to the point, Slurms MacKenzie (“Fry & the Slurm Factory”)
Ayn Rand books in the sewer, where they belong (“I Second That Emotion”)
The colonization of the Neutral Planet (“Brannigan Begin Again”)
