Early Futurama

I picked up the new full length Futurama movies "Bender's Big Score" and "The Beast With a Billion Backs" the other day, and as I sat down to watch them I discovered to my horror that my brother-in-law Matt knew next to nothing about the show and had only seen an episode or two. We decided this needed to be rectified so we went out and got the first season on DVD so he could watch the early episodes and get a good grasp of the various story lines and what was going on with the main characters.

While watching the first season I realized that the first few episodes really are like Simpson's clones. There are frequently characters, voices, and situations that look like they should have been occurring in any given episode of the Simpson's. There's a guy talking in a stereotypical Indian accent, a jerk who says things very similar to the Nelson character, and random storyline arcs that wouldn't at all be out of place in an episode of that long running show. I guess that prob ably shouldn't be such a surprise considering the show was created by Matt Groening, but I'm just glad it managed to distinguish itself apart from the Simpson's and even overtake them and become the funnier show.

The voice actor's really hadn't gotten their craft nailed down yet in the early episodes either, especially the voices of Bender and the Professor. They are both delivered in a rather lackluster manner with none of the emotion and grandiose that would become typical of those characters later on in the series.

Futurama really hits it's stride at the fourth episode, "Love's Labours Lost in Space". Even though the voices problem hadn't been entirely resolved yet, this episode is rife with the zany antics the show becomes famous for and Fry gets to deliver some of his best lines in the series. My favorite moment is when they are being held in a jail cell and Fry says "Why don't you open that steam pipe Bender so we can escape?", and then when it's opened and the room fills with hot steam he shouts "No good, it's full of steam!"