Entry 15: "The Once and 'Futurama' Thing"

Yo!

For those of you who haven't heard of this yet, the futuristic "Simpsons" spinoff, "Futurama", has just been officially resurrected!!!!! And before you think to yourself "Alright! New episodes on Fox/Adult Swim!!!!!", ..............WRONG. New Futuramas will premiere on the one network almost none of us really anticipated: Comedy Central. That's right, people, the infamous cable channel that brought us "daily" satiric primetime news, a festive, talking piece of crap, Stephen Colbert and Dave Chappelle is now the exclusive home of not just the 13 new episodes coming soon, but the 72 episodes previously produced for Fox from January, 1999 to August, 2003.

Allow me to elaborate: See, in 2007, apparently, Turner Broadcasting's acquisition to the franchise's broadcasting rights will expire, so last year, a quiet buyout took place to prevent Turner from holding onto the show any longer. Apparently, Viacom won that bid, and so the new Futuramas will be shown only on Comedy Central starting in 2008. It hasn't been confirmed yet as of this writing whether or not Comedy Central will also air the DVD movies later down the line, or how much of the original cast will return, other than Billy West (Fry, Prof. Farnsworth, Zap Brannigan, Dr. Zoidberg), Katey Segal (Leela), and John DiMaggio (Bender), all of whom have definitely signed on for the new stuff. The full news story can be found HERE, courtesy of IGN.com.

Well, it's about darn-tootin' time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ever since word of the Family Guy resurrection last summer exploded across the internet back in 2004, there were just as many message board posts, blog entries, and editorial podcasts left-and-right, asking the (until-now) ultimate unanswered question: Will Futurama ever return?????? If you saw the Family Guy DVD movie that came out last fall (and aired on Fox last month), that was one of the gags used in the opening red carpet prologue sequence, that had the question-asker inevitably killed immediately (He worked for Entertainment Weekly. He had it coming. HERE's an explanation, at the bottom of that section).

Bottom-line: In my opinion, Futurama is very high in my personal top-10 TV shows EVER list, and even though it's a shame it took so long for it to come back, and it won't be returning on the original network, it's good to see the old gang back together. After the five-year wait to see new episodes, here's hoping the writers haven't gotten rusty over time, or there won't be a season seven, even on Comedy Central. But there will be DVDs. Thank God for DVDs. Us fans will always have the DVDs. ...But seriously, though, Futurama writers, you better not blow this or the fans will be seriously pissed about the long wait for sub-par new material. ....................But that's just me.

Later!

-D.

P.S. In case you didn't catch it, this blog entry's title is a subtle reference to an episode title of arguably the greatest animated superhero show ever, Justice League. Specifically, the "Unlimited" episodes that started in 2004. This show recently aired its series finale on Cartoon Network a few months back with a few dangling plot threads, and a rather interesting end for Lex Luthor, when compared to where he was in the beginning of the Superman cartoon, almost exactly ten years ago (get the season one DVD from Amazon HERE). From head of Lexcorp, at the top of Metropolis, to a smoldering crater at the bottom of Metropolis. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.