Welcome to the Year 3000!

Ok, so first: HAPPY NEW YEAR! Yay! ^_^ Second: Sorry I didn't post nearly as soon as I would have liked. Last week was CRAZY with the whole "Christmas" thing. ^_^ First, well, Christmas... got some AWESOME stuff that I'll have to obsess over ^_^ Anyway, the 26th was spent at my dad's side of the family. The 27th I had a full day of work. The 28th I had off... what was I lazy about that day??? Gah! I honestly can't recall what the heck I was doing... but apparently it wasn't posting here... The 29th and 30th I worked again. New Year's Eve I worked and then went bowling with Mom, her ex, and his 10-year-old daughter Hilary. Blast of a time. Laser bowling or whatever it's called when all the lights are out and the lane is lit up with black lights and the bowling balls glow... whatever, you get the point.
New Years Day I went to my Mom's side of the family, where we all sang Christmas carols and played Rock Band. What was really funny is that the only cousins that came were all children of my one uncle. He has an-almost-five-year-old and a set of three-year-old triplets. Anyway, the older one LOVED Rock Band, even if he couldn't actually play the drums, or the guitar, or knew any of the songs enough to sing... We all picked "Eye of the Tiger" for him, thinking it was one of the easiest songs that were currently unlocked. Well, we had to play it enough for him to know the song, and then we played the song some more because it was the only one he knew. 9_9
Anyway, now for the actual obsession. If you couldn't guess from the post title, I rediscovered the awesome brilliance of Futurama. I discovered the DVD set of the first season for like $15 at a local FYE. Watching just one episode suckered me back in right away and I soon watched the entire first season in one sitting. Going back to FYE to pick up one last Christmas gift, I caved in and bought the second season. I was tempted to also purchase the movies, which were on a double sale: discounted to about $20 AND available for buy one, get one free. I could own all four for about $40! I decided against the purchase because I wasn't sure if anyone had purchased any of the movies for me for Christmas. I should have stuck with my guts and just bought them then, however. I just went back to FYE yesterday, and not only was the BOGO over, but the movies were back to their usual $30 pricing. Curses... So now I'm back to watching just the first two seasons on DVD, and the rest either online, or on Comedy Central.
However, in getting re-addicted to the show, I discovered a whole slew of cool information about it. First, Futurama actually wasn't cancelled because of bad ratings. In fact, even with Fox messing with it's time slot, Futurama still had higher ratings than Family Guy and King of the Hill. One of the main factors of the show's cancellation was actually due to Fox and the show's creator Matt Groening not really seeing eye-to-eye about the show. In fact, if Groening's other show The Simpsons wasn't such a cash cow for the network, it probably would have been cut too. Anyway, the show disappeared for a little bit before Cartoon Network picked it up. It got so popular on the network that fans started calling for the story to be continued. As soon as Cartoon Network's syndication contract was up, Comedy Central dove head-first into acquiring the rights to air the revived show. Getting the syndication rights for Futurama is actually Comedy Central's largest and most expensive acquisition to date. Upon airing on Comedy Central, Fox received an order for a continuation of Futurama. Thus, four direct-to-DVD movies were made: Bender's Big Score, The Beast with a Billion Backs, Bender's Game, and Into the Wild Green Yonder. And finally, it was announced over the summer of 2009, Comedy Central ordered a full season of Futurama! Therefore, the new season of the show is scheduled to premiere mid-2010.
Ok, Ok... now, for a bit of a recap of the show for those who a) forgot and b) didn't go to the handy Wikipedia page that I was so kind to link to...
The show centers around Philip J. Fry, who was a loser with no future back in 1999. As the ball was dropping on the new millennia, Fry ends up delivering pizza to a cryogenics's lab, thanks to a prank call. Through an accident, Fry gets frozen for 1000 years, awaking on New Years Eve in the year 2999. Aliens are now fully assimilated citizens and space travel is for any average joe. Fry is soon met by his "career assignment officer" Leela - a gorgeous woman that Fry is instantly attracted to, even though she's a cyclops. Fry then finds out that his only surviving relative is a great-great-great-great-... Oh forget it! It's a thousand years! That's a LOT of greats... Anyway, his nephew. Said nephew is 160-year-old Professor Farnsworth. While exploring the sites of New New York, Fry meets up with a former girder-bending unit named, appropriately enough, Bender. Fry, Bender, and Leela become the professor's new crew for his interplanetary delivery service "The Planet Express". Rounding out the cast are the company's intern Amy, the company's overly zealous, bureaucratic, accountant Hermes, the company's completely pathetic, broke, and incompetent doctor Zoidberg, and finally, Leela's pet alien Nibbler.
Throughout the course of the show the inevitable chaos does indeed ensue, but there is a lot of depth also involved in the series. As mentioned above, we find out in the fifth season of the show, that Fry getting frozen that New Year's Eve in 1999 was in fact NOT just a crazy accident. What's even better is that if - after knowing the truth - you went back to the first episode, you actually see the shadow of the responsible party! That's right! They knew from the beginning that Fry was frozen on purpose, knew WHO froze him, and actually drew a clue in the first episode that just about EVERYONE missed the first time through!
This happened again in the first episode of the second season. When we are introduced to Leela, she tells us that she is an alien who was left on Earth as a baby. She doesn't know what planet she's from and she has never met another cyclops. However, we do find out who Leela's parents are in season four. The trick though, is that her parents make an appearance in that second season episode.
The depth of the show doesn't only come from how far ahead the writers think when creating a story. More depth comes from how amazingly they are able to parody the science fiction genre. There are far too many examples to start listing them, but the audio commentary off of the DVDs just points out how deeply they thought about the science of their little world. It is actually greatly amusing. You would have one of the voice actors commenting about an upcoming joke and then the show's co-executive producer and head writer David X. Cohen would chime in with something scientific that just occurred on the show. For instance, one of the episodes has the cast being dragged under the ocean. Cohen then spends about five minutes explaining how scientifically accurate the episode is. That is, until Bender's voice actor John DiMaggio, makes a comment about the mermaids that show up a moment later...
I must admit though, that the main reason I watched the show - which is the same reason I watch the majority of the cartoons I watch - is because of the romantic build-up between Fry and Leela. Watching Fry go from just being attracted to Leela to actually having romantic feelings for her, and watching Leela slowly start seeing Fry as the sweet mush that he is, and therefore start falling for him too. At the end of the series we see Fry trying one last time to win over Leela. He learns how to play an instrument that - along with gorgeous music - also projects a hologram of what images the music is supposed to portray to the audience. I don't want to give away the plot of the episode, so I'll just say that at first Fry is able to do amazingly thanks to a deal with the Robot Devil. However, the Robot Devil goes back on their agreement and Fry has to finish his opera without the Robot Devil's help. The episode ends with Leela being the only one left in the audience. Defeated, Fry stops playing before he finishes. Leela tells him to not stop, she wants to see how it ends. And thus the show closes with Fry playing the last few notes, portraying a mangled image of Leela and Fry kissing and walking off into the sunset. A bitter sweet ending to the show, since it was vague enough to give the fans closure, thinking that Leela and Fry will indeed get together in the end. However, the fans don't get to actually SEE the couple finally come together.
Well, then the fans received the movies. I have yet to watch Bender's Big Score, but I have watched the other three. In The Beast with a Billion Backs, Leela is still rejecting Fry's affection, and so Fry turns to a woman who ends up being a polygomous. Not being able to handle sharing his girlfriend with mulitple other men, and thinking there is no love for him on Earth, Fry is willing to go on a suicide mission through a rift that opened in the fabric of space. On the other side he meets up with - and gets possessed by - a planet-sized creature who is also only looking to be loved. The monster attaches it's billions of tenticles on the necks of all living creatures in our universe as a means to try to grow close. Bender and the rejected robots are the only ones left for a rescue, but Bender's preoccupied with being in a robot brotherhood which claims to hate all humans.
Bender's Game, the one I wanted to watch the most, has the cast parodying both Dungeons & Dragons as well as Lord of the Rings. This fantasy parody, as well as the title being a pun on the Sci-Fi book Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, is the reason I wanted to watch this movie the most. The plot is that Herme's son Dwight and Professor Farnsworth's clone Cubert are playing D&D and Bender tries to join them. Forcing himself to imagine, Bender goes insane and can't remove himself from the D&D personna he created. Meanwhile, there is a shortage of Dark Matter - which is used for rocket fuel. Professor Farnsworth tells his crew that he and the coorporate superpower known as Mom each have an "anti-backwards" crystal and if they were to come together it would cause Dark Matter to become useless. However, the crystals - once close enough to each other - teleport the cast to the fictitional world that Bender had created. A Lord-of-the-Rings-like quest ensues, in which Frydo must destroy the Die of Power before Momon could get her hands on it.
The most anticipated movie however, was Into the Wild Green Yonder, since this was the last movie and was supposed to be the conclusion to the show. In this movie Amy's parents are tearing down the old Vegas-type casino-city on Mars, and expanding it. This would cause the extinction of some of the Mars animals. A feminist environmental group tries to stop the Wongs, but to no avail. However, when Leela finds out that Amy's father is trying to inplode a beautiful violet dwarf star in order to create a "ball return hole" for his galaxy-sized mini-golf course. The destruction of such a beautiful star is upsetting enough for Leela, but when she finds out that the star's demolition will destroy a planet thriving with life, the animal-lover snaps and joins the environmentalist group that protested earlier. Now taking leadership, Leela turns the environmentalists into eco-terrorists as they attempt to sabotage Mr. Wong's attempts to complete construction of his golf course. Meanwhile, during the Eco-feminist's first protest, the leader's necklace charm gets unknowingly lodged into Fry's head and ends up giving him telepathy. The group "Legion of Mad Fellows" kidnaps Fry after discovering two key things about him: 1) his new-found telepathic powers, and 2) Fry's lack of delta waves make him immune to psionic powers. He is told of a story of two ancient waring creatures, one good - Encyclopods - with the ability to obsorb DNA in order to preserve all living creatures - making it impossible for any creature to truly become exstinct, and one bad - the Dark One - whose goal is to destroy all other life. Fry was charged with finding and destroying the Dark One, as well as preventing the destruction of the violet darf star - which was the last known egg of the Encyclopods. In order to try to prevent the destruction of the star, Fry decides to stay as close to Leo Wong as possible, becoming a trusted lackey, but also being an inside-man to prevent Wong's destruction of the star. Leela only seeing Fry cozy up to "the enemy" has a hard time trying to trust her friend, especially since Fry must never speak of his true goal as a preventative of having the Dark One discover the plan. In the end, all ends well, except that the Planet Express crew is now deamed eco-terrorists and are chased by the dimwitted authority of Zapp Brannigan and his reluctant lieutenant and personal assistant Kif Kroker. The Planet Express ship heads towards a wormhole that would take them trillions of light years away and who knows if and when they would ever return. And this is the part which made it the best farewell to the show. After a quick vote, Leela decides to go ahead and enter the wormhole, just before informing Fry that she loves him back. The movie ends with the crew entering the wormhole and a flash of light as the same slate as the opening titles comes up. The end. No more. Fantastic ending to the show!
However, now there is the new season coming out and apparently Matt Groening and David X. Cohen are debating if they will keep the ending of Into the Wild Green Yonder in-cannon. All I know is that shots used to promote the new season has Hermes as a Head in a Jar. So I'm not so sure where they're going with this, but I'm counting down regardless!

Ok... so this post actually kept me DAYS to complete... so I'm now moving on with my life. ^_^ I'll catch you later with my next installment. *insert catchy closing line that I still need to think of*