by Mr. MacPhisto » Tue Jun 09, 2009 10:31 pm
Agree on Family Guy vs. Futurama. I was excited when we got the DVDs, but this is even better as it is a true return to the episodic TV for Futurama. It was a victim of Fox's scheduling more than anything else, getting skipped so often when NFL games went long and then beings bounced around from there.
I'd also take Futurama over The Simpsons. There've been several great seasons of The Simpsons, but time has diluted a lot of that and its glory days are far in the past. Plus Futurama is far more nerdy.
The Futurama DVDs get quite a bit of regular play and I look forward to expanding my collection further. It was a bummer when Futurama left off with "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Play Things" (a favorite episode, especially with the bit of opera at the end). The whole run was great. Lots of classics in there like "Roswell That Ends Well", "Luck of the Fryish", "Amazonian Woman in the Mood" (featuring the late, great Bea Arthur - me want snu snu!), "Jurassic Bark", and "The Why of Fry" - and that's just a small selection of Futurama greatness.
Futurama was the reason why I was happy Family Guy was brought back. Both were hugely popular on Adult Swim and DVD and I figured it was only a matter of time until Futurama was justly resurrected. I think the long delay for the DVD movies and the upcoming new episodes has more to do with Groening's schedule than anything else. I'm still hoping that after doing The Simpsons Ride at Universal Studios (which is great, btw) that Universal would go back to Groening for something Futurama related. There's enough there for a whole theme park - although same goes for The Simpsons (an out of control monorail ride, anyone?).
Good news indeed.