Futurama returns in June. Fuck yeah.

Futurama
featuring gratuitous alien nudity

Futurama is an animated television comedy created by Matt Groening, who you may also know as the creator of the Simpsons. It originally aired on the Fox network between 1999 and 2003.

Futurama is set in the future! Yet finds a way to NOT be incredibly lame

Billy West, formerly the voice of both Ren and Stimpy, plays the voice of Fry.

Leela, Fry's main love interest is voiced by the very awesome Katey Sagal (peg bundy). No joke, She is pretty fucking awesome.

Hilarious subtitles in the opening credits

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In the beginning - The pilot espisode.

On New Year's Eve, 1999, 25-year-old delivery boy Philip J. Fry delivers a pizza to an empty cryogenics lab, falls into a tube and is frozen. For some reason the staff at the cryogenics lab never notices this tube-squatter, and he remains frozen for a thousand years.

Upon Waking up

After awakening in the World of Tomorrow, he meets Leela, a sexy female cyclops with a penchant for kicking ass. He spends some time with The Probulator (yes it is as bad as it sounds), and runs away to avoid being given his Career Chip, which will force him to be a delivery boy for the rest of his life. After nearly killing himself by mistaking a Suicide Booth for an obsolete phone booth, he meets his new best friend, an alchoholic bending robot named Bender. Hilarity ensues as Leela tries to hunt Fry down and force him to submit to being a delivery boy, but eventually the three of them end at the home and place of business of Fry's distant nephew, Professor Farnsworth. Farnsworth offers them all jobs at his interstellar delivery company, Planet Express, and the series gets underway. The Planet Express crew then spend four seasons getting into hilarious escapades, saving the world, and occasionally delivering packages. So Fry willingly becomes a devlivery boy..

Main Characters

Philip J. Fry

Fry is the mother fucking hero of Futurama. Fry's most important characteristic is that he lacks the Delta Brain Wave, which is produced by all other animals, as well as some trees (This birth anamonly gives him the ability to beat the giant brain and save the earth, episode 4.10, "The why of Fry"). It is revealed that he is missing the Delta Brainwave because Fry is his own grandfather (check out episode 3.19, "Roswell That Ends Well," to see Fry banging his Grandma Mildred in 1947). Fry's lifelong ambition has been to go into space, a dream he now gets to fulfill regularly as the official delivery boy of Planet Express. He is good at video games, and bad at everything else. He is madly in love with Leela and pursues her throughout the series.

Bender Bending Rodriguez
Bender is a Bending Unit, designed to bend girders. He drinks, smokes cigars, steals, cons, and is generally fucking awesome. He also harbors desires to be both a folk singer and a chef. Bender does not half-ass anything, except of course his job at Planet Express (nobody knows excactly what his job is, including his boss.)

A complete list of Bender's incredible exploits would take up far too much space (you should probably watch the series), but here are a few highlights:

Getting addicted to electricity after "jacking on" backstage at a Beastie Boys concert, hitting rock bottom and trading it in for extreme religion, then renouncing his religion and going to Robot Hell (episode 1.09, "Hell is Other Robots")

Arranging to have himself made Pharaoh of Osiris 4, a planet suspiciously similar to ancient Egypt. Bender proceeded to have his slaves build a statue of him "One billion cubits high!" The statue was so tall it exceeded the atmosphere of the planet. After surveying the finished monument, Bender decided it was too large and ordered his people to tear it down and try again. The priests promptly kicked him into his tomb and announced he had died. (episode 3.17, "A Pharaoh to Remember")

After being accidently shot out of one of the Planet Express Ship's torpedo tubes, Bender was doomed to drift endlessly through space. In that time he became a god to a community of small creatures called "Shrimpkins" that established a town on his body. Unfortunately, some Shrimpkis were unhappy with "the Metal Lord", and eventually the Shrimpkins split into different factions (For Bender Vs. against Bender/Religious vs. Atheist) and killed each other off. After that, Bender met God, or possibly the remains of a computerized space probe that collided with God. They have a nice chat and god answers all of his questions, more or less, perhaps.(episode 3.20, "Godfellas" - Easily the best episode period.)

Turanga Leela
Leela was abandoned on the doorstep of Cookieville Minimum Security Orphanarium as an infant. Because she has only one eye, and pinned to her blanket was a note written in an alien language, everyone assumed she was an alien of unknown origin. However, it was finally revealed that Leela's parents were not aliens, but sewer mutants who lived beneath the surface. At Leela's birth she was proclaimed to be "the least mutated mutant ever,". Leela is the most responsible and ethical member of the Planet Express crew (whatever that's worth), and the object of Fry's affection. She has a reputation for being kind of a bitch.

Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
Fry's great-nephew (to many degrees), the Professor is a senile, 160 year old, amoral crackpot, who enjoys inventing crazy things, and ranting like old people like to do. He is also the worst mad scientist ever. A few of the Professor's inventions that see regular use in the show:

The Smell-o-Scope makes its first appearance in episode 1.08, "A Big Ball of Garbage." This invention is exactly what it sounds like: a telescope for your nose, that allows the user to smell distant objects. We are told that Jupiter smells like strawberries. In the Planet Express office, the Smell-o-Scope seems to be the preferred, or possibly only, method of searching space from the comfort of home.

The "What-If" Machine can be posed a question in a variety of fashions, including lighting incense and praying to it, and will simulate what would happen in those circumstances (for instance, Fry asks what would happen if he had never come to the future).

The Professor also posseses numerous doomsday devices, which appear periodically, but thus far have only been used to save the world, rather than destroy it. Like I said, he is the worst mad scientist ever.

Dr. John Zoidberg

Dr. Zoidberg is a Decapodian, from the planet Decapod 10. He describes himself as a lobster on a regular basis, and does vaugely resemble one. He is the staff physician of Planet Express, despite knowing nothing about human anatomy (the exception is something he learned from a decongestant commercial). In episode 4.05, "A Taste of Freedom," we learn that Zoidberg was pushed into being a doctor, despite his lifelong dream of becoming a comedian. This may explain some of his horrifying incompetance. Zoidberg is desperately poor and eats out of dumpsters. He was also the alien captured at Roswell (he was being interrogated while Fry was knocking up his grandma). The rest of the staff treats him like shit, especially Hermes. Woop woop woop woop woop.

Hermes Conrad
The official beauracrat of Planet Express, Hermes is a Jamaican who loves rules, regulations, and filing. He is also a mostly-retired limbo champion who has participated in the Olympics at least twice (seen in flashback in episode 1.10, "A Flight to Remember," and in present-future-time in episode 4.18, "Bend Her.")His archenemy and the man who has stolen his wife on a few occasions is Barbados Slim. Fuck Barbados Slim.

Amy Wong
Amy Wong, of the Mars Wongs, is an extremely wealthy young woman, longtime student of Mars University (although only seen attending in the episode of that title), and intern at Planet Express. She's pretty much a slut for most of the series. It is generally unclear what exactly Amy does at the company, although she is occasionally seen washing the ship, and in the second episode "The Series Has Landed," she is responsible for cleaning Bender's body before he can go into space. Her main function is apparently to serve as a source of blood in Professor Farnsworth's type, in case he should need it. The rest of the time she paints her nails, hooks up with men (Including casual sex with Fry), and offers unsolicited advice to Leela on how to meet men. In season three, she and Kif Kroker begin a relationship which continues through the remainder of the series.

Other Characters

Zapp Brannigan and Kif Kroker

Zapp Brannigan, a chubby William Shatner-esque Captain of the Democratic Order of Planets (DOOP) military, despite his disasterous incompetence (basically, he is to military leadership what Zoidberg is to doctoring) and all-around stupidty (He is actually dumber than Fry). The best night of Zapp's life was the night when Leela's good sense was overwhelmed by pity, and she slept with him.

Kif Kroker is Zapp's long-suffering lieutenant and personal assistant (He has been Known to towel off his captain), who is in love with Amy, and even had her babies. Well, technically they were Leela's and he is a man... it's kind of a long story. (Episode 4.01, "Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch").

MomCorp Family
Mom is just your average sadistic billionaire disguised as a kindly old lady. She is the CEO and primary shareholder (99.7%) of MomCorp, the parent company of Mom's Friendly Robot Company (manufacturers of Mom's Old Fashioned Robot Oil, and also all of the robots in the world), Mom's Friendly Delivery Company, and Mom's Friendly Advanced Weapons and ammunition Company, among others. She had a relationship with Proffesor Farnsworth when he worked for her. Her three sons, Walt, Ignar, and Larry, are the other shareholders, and are regularly slapped by their mother. To be fair to Mom, they are kind of dumbasses. Ignar, the youngest and dumbest is also the son of Proffesor Farnsworth.

Lrr and Ndnd
The rulers of the planet Omicron Persei 8. They have attacked Earth a few times, for reasons as varied as missing the finale of their favorite television show (Single Female Lawyer), and because their children were being eaten as popplers.

Richard M. Nixon's Head
Good ole' tricky Dick. President of Earth, and all-around terrifying guy. Let's let him speak for himself: "Computers may be twice as fast as they were in 1973 but your average voter is as drunk and stupid as ever. The only one who's changed is me. I've become bitter and, let's face it, crazy over the years. And once I'm swept into office, I'll sell our children's organs to zoos for meat and I'll go into people's houses at night and wreck up the place!"

Futurama's stint on television

In its original broadcast run, Futurama struggled to find an audience, thanks in part to that famous Fox scheduling incompetence (for more on this, ask any fan of Firefly, Arrested Development, Undeclared, or pretty much any other Fox program that doesn't have the word "Idol" in the title). Matt Groening's suggestion was to air Futurama on Sundays, after The Simpsons, but Fox thought it made more sense to air it there for two weeks and then switch to Tuesdays, then back to Sunday, but at 7pm. Also sometimes it didn't air at all. But we're sure nobody found any of that difficult to keep up with... Fucking Fox.

After four years of this, Fox quietly neglected to renew the show.

But!
Cartoon Network bought the syndication rights for Futurama and began airing it as part of Adult Swim, where it was quite successful, presumably because it was aired at the same time every night and was never replaced by a ten-hour baseball game. (Also it aired at 10 pm - perfect time for the stoner crowd.)

Comedy Central acquired the syndication rights in 2008. In the course of negotiations, they developed four DVD movies, which are also airing on Comedy Central as the 16-episode fifth season.
All four movies are currently available. Fan reaction has been somewhat mixed. Mostly because they treated us like we were fucking ruh-tards (Hangover reference = LAME.. Fuck me.). They made loyal fans pay 30 bucks to buy a movie of a tv show that the fans single handedly brought back to life... Fucking Comedy Central.

But wait, it gets even better!

Futurama is officially getting a sixth season. Comedy Central ordered 26 new episodes that will air in June 2010 - Just 2 years after purchasing the rights to the show and forcing the fans to shell out money for 4 direct-to-dvd movies.


All glory to the hypno-toad