It takes twenty writers to put together a single episode of the Simpsons.  The effort shows. But other questions get raised when you consider this effort.  the primary question being, what do they do with all the material that’s just not good enough for the Simpsons? 

For years this material went to Seinfeld and other comedians who would purchase it by the pound.  Matt Groening got tired of seeing it wasted this way and decided to put together a second cartoon television show.  Now you know why Seinfeld really went off the air.  All the pieces were in place, Groening had tons of second rate material, he had cartoonists with time on their hands, and Fox was spending money on anything that even had the appearance of being coherent.  Thus was born Futurama. 

The show is set in the year 3000 and while it is the far future, not much has changed.  Even the characters are really just Simpson remakes.  Fry is nothing more than an older, albeit exhausted Bart Simpson,  Leela, the one-eyed love interest is Marge rebottled, Professor Farnsworth who is Fry’s great, great, great, great, great nephew (yeah, there’s more greats’ in there and if you really want to know you can figure it out for yourself.) is just Homer’s dad repackaged.  And so on and so on and so on.  Even the Robot, Bender, is more like Homer than the homage he’s supposed to be. 

The show does have it’s high moments, there’s the drunken robot episode, the monkey episode and the alien invasion episode, but these are somewhat few and far between and instead we’re treated to situations and dialogue that seems like, well, Simpsons discards.  Now that the show is off the air, unless you’re watching it in syndication, you’ll have to purchase this disc (volume 1, or the soon to be released volume 2) to find out for yourself.  There are 13 episodes on the disc so there’s bound to be something for everyone and I’ve found that there’s at least 5 minutes of good material in each show.  I suppose now that Groening has stopped doing the show he’ll go back to selling the not-quite-good-enough jokes.  I guess that means we can expect more Seinfeld alumni shows soon. 

Yes! Now you can own your own Futurama DVD! Just send $29.99 to Amazon.com (Futurama DVD Season 1)

You Get:

• Commentary by writer-creator Matt Groening, writer and executive producer David X. Cohen, co-director and supervising director Rich Moore, co-director and supervising director Gregg Vanzo, and John DiMaggio as the voice of Bender
• 13 episodes on 3 discs
• Animatic, script, and storyboards for "Space Pilot 3000"
• Deleted scenes from "Episode 2: The Series Has Landed," "I, Roommate," and "Love's Labours Lost in Space"
• Full-screen format
• Did we mention the 3 discs?