RR Futurama Rebirth

We're back, Baby!!~

For more Matt Groening-related reviews, check these other pages below!

The Simpsons Movie
Futurama Season 1 / Futurama The Game
Bender's Big Score / The Beast with a Billion Backs / Bender's Game / Into the Wild Green Yonder

Name: Futurama: Volume 5 
Created by Matt Groening & David X. Cohen
Original run 2010
Genre Animated scifi comedy

Futurama is back!

After a successful direct-to-video movies, great rerun ratings and DVD sales, Matt Groening & David X. Cohen were able to bring back Futurama on the air.

Ah! Suckers!

The series was resurrected on Comedy Central, although 20th Century Fox still retained distribution and international diffusion.

These new episodes are internally known as Futurama's "Second Run". A new 5th Season was produced but then aired as two distinct seasons. The first first thirteen episodes became known as "Volume 5" and aired in 2010. In 2011 aired the second batch of 13 episodes dubbed "Volume 6". This 5th Season is officially Season 6 counting the movies as Season 5, composed of Volume 5 and 6 on DVD and... you still following me?

Anyways!

I like to simply call this new series "Futurama Rebirth".

The new series pick up were Into the Wild Green Yonder left.

After going into the a wormhole, the Planet Express crew crash landed killing everyone in the process. Everybody's favorite pizza delivery boy Philip J. Fry is the only to have survived, albeit with some severe burns. The Professor resurrects the crew and up they go on all-new adventures!

Matt Groening & David X. Cohen had several different ideas how to bring back the show during production. They almost even thought about a possible reboot "J.J. Abrams' Star Trek"-style in case they would have to re-cast the entire crew (which was a fear a lot of fans had during production).

But the crew is all back, from Bender to Zoidberg, without forgetting Scruff the Janitor and the many other faces of the 31st Century!

These new episodes don't even take a second to let our heroes rest. In this Season 6a/Volume 5 Leela gets stuck in a coma while the Professor is able to bring everyone back and Fry gets a Leela-bot to help him cope with his sadness, after that Leela and Zapp Brannigan find themselves the last humans alive and they have to recreate the entire civilization in a tropical lost planet, the crew find themselves on a strange planet built from the mind of Leonardo da Vinci robot, we learn how Hermes was behind Bender's chance to have a robot-life, a robot revolution and later a mutant revolution break out in the streets of New New York City and finally the season ends on a great Futurama Holiday Spectacular like only this show is able to come up with.

Matt Groening’s cult sci-fi cartoon series is back, for the better and worse!

Now that Futurama is on Comedy Central the writers are able to really do whatever they want. The show isn't that different from before at heart, but at least they can pass some stuff Fox would have censored otherwise. There's a bit more adult tone, think light [adult swim]-ysh. Including more suggested nudity.

It's great to have the show back, although as many have criticized it, it doesn't feel as clever as before and the series seems a bit more redundant now. Some jokes feel recycled. And after the false alerts of the series ending abruptly so many times it's like they put out their best ideas and conceived the most original ways to end Futurama already.

But it's still good and it's better to have some more Futurama than none, isn't it?

There's still a lot of inside jokes, references and Scifi tropes lampshaded.

Sometimes it does feel like they tried to make it funnier to a broader audience on some occasions. Which you might have a problem with or not.

Also, now that The Simpsons are supposedly coming to an end (as it is rumored for Season 25 at the moment), some writers have moved over to join the staff on Futurama. Which shows the way they try to make the series relevant of follow contemporary topics such as the robot revolution alluding to real life gay rights for marriage and such.

Also the episodes work better as standalone status quo-free stories now. There aren't build ups over the entire Season or several episodes as in the earlier seasons (with Fry's reason to travel to the future, Nibbler's shadows or numbered members of the Legion of the Mad Fellows hidden in the background).

I'm not trying to say the show isn't good now, just that it changed focus a little.

There's still some true gems amongst the new episodes. Like the incredible "The Late Philip J. Fry" which is easily amongst the best episodes from the entire series.

Overall, entertaining, recommended.

It still is "Futurama", only a slightly different Futurama.

It's great to have the show back, really. And now in full glorious HD era.

The series was brought really quickly, after the four movies were cut down to pieces and aired on Comedy Central, this "Season 6" went in production and the first batch of 13 episodes were later released as this Volume 5.

I still love the show and easily recommend it to any scifi fan.

After a rough "new" start, this new series of Futurama did get better, particularly in Season 7. The production "Season 6" was cut into Volume 5 and 6, the final season, Season 7, is composed of Volume 7 and 8.

The writers showed some improvement over that later batch of episodes. They were able to come up with lots of creative new ideas and even a couple or more emotional episodes like in the earlier run of the show.

After these 52 new episodes, Comedy Central sadly canceled the show. Again. So far no more Futurama has been produced, though David X. Cohen & Matt Groening did say once more they'd like to bring the show back. Again.

Anyway, if that's the last we've seen of the show, the final episode "Meanwhile" makes a great heart-warming series finale.

I give it:

2 / 3 UFOs!