TVSquad

Do not adjust your web browser. You are now entering the Retro Squad, where we are reviewing past episodes of your favorite shows, in order, every week.

(S01E01) First, some good news for Futurama fans: last week, I conducted a lengthy interview with Billy West, where, among other things, I was able to get his thoughts on the vast majority of Season One episodes. What I plan to do is to intersperse those thoughts (some are a sentence or two, others are a bit more in-depth) into my Retro Squad reviews of Season One.

West did have some thoughts about the series pilot, but I think I'll leave those for the general interview, which will likely be posted sometime this week (we spoke for 90 minutes, so I'm not looking forward to transcribing that monster). So I'll just give my thoughts; yes, I know, I'm not Billy, but you'll just have to wait for him. Nyah.

One of the things that always struck me about Futurama is how little the show changed from the first season. That's a good thing; it seemed like Matt Groening, David Cohen and company had a pretty solid vision of the 31st century before the show was even given the greenlight by Fox. Look at the pilot and look at an episode from, say, Season Three, and you'll notice a remarkable consistency: some voices have changed slightly, and more characters have been added and fleshed out, but the artwork is the same, as is the story-telling and tone. Contrast that with Groening's "other" show, The Simpsons, which was completely different in Season One than it is now. Maybe it was ten years of animation practice, but there have been very few pilots of any type that looked as closed to "finished" as Futurama's.

The plot is pretty easy to summarize: Philip Fry's life at the end of 1999 sucks. He delivers pizza. His girlfriend leaves him. And he's working on New Year's Eve. He accidentally gets cryogenically frozen and wakes up 1000 years later in New New York. He meets Leela, a one-eyed government officer who tries to implant a delivery boy career chip in him. He escapes and she chases him. While escaping, Fry meets Bender, a robot programmed to bend girders who happens to run on booze, at a suicide booth. All three eventually find themselves at Planet Express, run by Fry's great-times-500-nephew Prof. Hubert J. Farnsworth. All three stay; Leela becomes the pilot of the courier ship and Fry... becomes a delivery boy.

Like I said, the episode still holds up. I hadn't seen it in quite a while, so all the jokes seemed fresh to me. Somae of my favorites:

• Leela's badge number: 1BDI.
• When she calls for police assistance, the cops that are standing right by her say "we'll be there in twenty minutes."
• The Floating Head Museum. Perfect way to bring in 21st century voices like Leonard Nimoy without having to create new characters.
• When Farnsworth hires Fry and Leela, they need career chips or they'll be "fired... out of a cannon into the sun." He just happens to have salvaged the chips from the last crew ("Poor sons of...," Farnsworth calls them), in an envelope with the very specific label "Contents of Giant Wasp's Stomach" on it.
• When the Planet Express building is partially surrounded by the police, Bender literally shits a brick. I didn't even notice that until I watched the episode a second time so I could listen to the commentary track.

As the DVD commentary by Groening, Cohen, Rich Moore, Greg Vanzo, and John DiMaggio (the voice of Bender) stated, there are little clues in the pilot that allude to plots that occur in later episodes and seasons. Some are obvious: the signs for Slurm, for instance. Others aren't.

Which leads me to a tidbit from Billy West, which I will paraphrase here: In the opening scene, when Fry falls into the cryogenic chamber, check out one of the shadows on the wall. Futurama fans will know who it is, and know the exact later episode that explores that little "extra" in more detail. So, as you can see, they had the "mythology" pretty much down, which we'll find out as the season goes along.