Talking Simpsons - Talking Futurama - Space Pilot 3000

Episode Date: March 16, 2018

Good news, everyone! The Talking Simpsons Patreon has started its newest miniseries, and this time around, we'll be looking at all 13 episodes of Futurama's first season. For our inaugural episode, we dig into the pilot (aptly named "Space Pilot 3000") as well as every detail we could possibly find about Futurama's production! If you dig our clip-and-reference-heavy take on The Simpsons, you'll definitely find a lot to love with our same treatment of Futurama. So jump into the nearest probulator, crank up the volume, and get ready for Henry, Bob, and Chris to introduce you to THE WORLD OF TOMORROW! Hear more episodes at Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons

Welcome to the world of tomorrow! Good news everyone, it's Talking Futurama, now with flavor. I'm your host Bob Icy Wienermackie, and this is the Talking Simpsons Patreon's chronological exploration of Futurama, who is here with me today. Is that blimp accurate? It's Henry Gilbert. And who else? Brick shitting Chris Anteaston. And today's episode is Space Pilot 3000.

Bite my shiny metal ass. And today's episode aired on March 28th, 1999. As always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Welcome to the world of tomorrow oh boy bobby on march 28th 1999 the purdue beat duke to win the ncaa women's basketball championship okay freaky tav the rap group lost boys passed away the top film is sandra bullock and Ben Affleck romantic comedy forces of nature which I have not thought about in ever I think and in a very futuristic move at the top of the charts of the US

is the introduction to auto-tune for many shares so Chris also has some important news facts we did not talk about who was doing news beforehand so I excitedly did it and just because it's later than it's later in the world than when we do the Simpsons there's a lot of information about what was going

on out there you can actually read news stories on websites from articles written for the internet at this point so I'll get in I'll get in my books I collected so much and the highlights are this oh boy Bobby or Bender. Dr. Jack Kevorkian is found guilty of second-degree murder for his part in the assisted suicides.

Craig Kilborn takes over for Tom Schneider on CBS's Late Late Show. And let's ignore Doug's first movie for a moment, animation fans, because hours after Futurama's debut, The Matrix premieres in theaters. Oh, my. Oh, my.

And SpongeBob is weeks from airing. The Kosovo War is going on. Pokemon Snap has just come out. And Joe DiMaggio, no relation, has just died. Well, he couldn't see The Matrix. That sucks for Joe. He should be so sad that his son, John DiMaggio, he didn't get to see his work.

No relation. I wish they were related. I liked all those extra news bits chris to really set the scene because this early 1999 time frame is very different from the late in 1989 release of the first episode of the simpsons it's just all stuff that you like can't it's it should it was shocking to me that like 72 after Futurama's airing, The Matrix comes out. That's crazy. Those are two huge things.

It's time to be alive. They're both very future-looking for a specific type of future. They're not similar ones. Before we start, I want to explain Talking Futurama to all of you. It's just like Talking Simpsons, but with Futurama. Also, to let you guys know, we're only doing one season for now. This episode you're listening to, probably for free. If you go to patreon.com slash TalkingSimpspsons episode 2 is already there waiting for you and that's where the rest of the episodes will live so go to patreon.com talking simpsons to

get episode 2 right now and the rest of them when we release them weekly and i would like to say i begged you guys over and over to do this and this is i'm so glad i did it uh because i was dying to re-watch futurama more so than the simpsons because i had comparatively a very short time with futurama i was obsessed with the dvds moved out here didn't take them the simpsons i had 10 years of baking in my brain i didn't get that for futurama and i said something i regretted on a podcast that i i wish i could say it more elegantly I love I think the Simpsons is funny and I really love Rick and Morty it doesn't replace Futurama it's just very similar it scratches a very similar itch I would say though uh Rick and Morty is kind of a middle

ground of the two because Futurama is not about family well Or it's not about an actual, like, genetic family together, while Simpsons is, and Rick and Morty is both those things. It's wacky, crazy sci-fi adventure ops, but with a core nuclear family in the middle. And Rick and Morty is the non-Harvard writer version of the same idea. Yeah, the more depressed writer's version.

Yes. And I, because I, it sounded like I said Futurama was worse than those shows i didn't mean that and it was super important to me look i brought out that's a metal bender uh that i still have i brought on that a long time when it was canceled i bought everything i could that when it was canceled the first of four times i bought everything i could uh of futurama there's too many last episodes of futurama i think there's four at last count. All written by

Ken Keeler, by the way. But my experience with Futurama was similar, I bet, to most people in my age group even that you love The Simpsons but there never was anything that was really a new

Simpsons, like a spin-off of The Simpsons. You had you had the critic which we did every episode of which had many of the same staff but it was intentionally meant to not look like the simpsons around the same year as this episode as this premiered you had mission hill which was a bunch of ex-simpsons people but they wanted to not make the simpsons this was matt graining so he could even ape to the simpsons art style because it's his art that's true yeah it does feel nuts he got away with it yeah but this is they're white like yes yeah no one has the yellow skin was as i'd heard graining say that in the world of futurama it is our world where they watch the Simpsons

in it. It's not the weirdo world of the Simpsons and yellow people. That is the difference. Plus, some people have little bumps on the bridge of their noses, which Simpsons characters don't have, thus making them legally distinct. So Fox can't sue itself. I'm looking forward

to, on the Netflix show Disenchanted, for them to look 98 percent the same as simpsons characters do and the one little thing they'll change to not be sued through that statement and doing that show i discovered that people a little younger than me have the same relationship to futurama that i had with the simpsons because they'd grown up with it in syndication repeated forever like it's kind of that's what keeps bringing it back yeah running adults saved it because this was unwatchable in the sense that you could not find a way to watch repeated forever. Like it's kind of that's what keeps bringing it back. Yeah. Running different channels. Adult Swim saved it

because this was unwatchable in the sense that you could not find a way to watch it on Fox. I mean I was there day one and I was just chasing

it all over Fox. It was on like two Sunday nights after premiere then I went to Tuesday where they put every non-Simpsons animated show so Tuesdays on Fox

for like maybe half a year it was like Futurama, the PJs, Family Guy, and something else. I forget. Just a dumping ground by a taxi. It would be like an old Simpsons.

Well, that shit always happens to animated shows on Fox. It did. It's what killed the fucking critic, too. Trying to watch Futurama was like a Scooby-Doo hallway sequence. Everywhere I was, the episode wasn't. It's just a football player behind every door. Or a baseball player. John Madden here, not watching Futurama.

But they say at the time, Futurama had the highest ratings of any Fox show to ever debut. And how could it not? Until Oliver Bean, Chris. And we all remember Oliver Bean. I'm totally serious. Oliver Bean had the highest. Are you joking? After Futurama, it was Oliver Oliver Bean and it lasted like half a season

did it air after the Superbowl what the hell I don't remember but that David Cross narration could not save it my god I have erased that from my memory if you can imagine like growing up being obsessed with The Simpsons for over a decade and then Fox tells you there's a new show from the guy who made The Simpsons and it's set in the future

like I went crazy and at the time I didn't know I didn't know the names of every writer like I know now, so all I knew was, oh, Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons, who does everything on The Simpsons, he's making a new show. Awesome. And I would have been even more excited to know how many people they stole from the season eight Simpsons writing staff and animation too. We should talk about the production, though, because, I mean,

after Matt Groening created The Simpsons, fox is trying to get him to create a new show for years again this took like 10 years to happen and what's his motivation is the richest man in showbiz money yes as dana gold said on our live show he's like he's a billionaire of course he's happy yes but we said that on uh on one of the season wrap-ups, I remember saying the news that in Variety, they had made a deal for a pilot for a Life in Hell cartoon that never happened. Not even a pilot of it produced. And there was a story that the critic began as Matt just talking up like, what if we had a Krusty spinoff? And it's about making the Krusty show. And I believe they at one point talked about, what if 22 Short Films of Springfield was just a show?

It was a Springfield. But they could never, Matt Groening could never actually get a new show going. On the commentary, you'll hear him throw out ideas he's had for series, like Young Homer, things like that, things that never happened. But this is what happened. In 1996, he and David S. Cohen, he changed his name to David X. Cohen because of the future I guess or for a more notable Writers Guild credit who knows but

in 96 he and Matt Groening began developing Futurama and they pitched it to Fox in April of 1998 and from that first pitch it was a very contentious relationship with the network you think they would kiss Matt Groening's ass in whatever he did because he saved the network he made the Fox network

him and all the other people that worked on The Simpsons, of course. He made many people rich through his show. Yeah. But still, they gave him shit at every turn, it sounds like. It's true. And so going into the production of Futurama, Matt Groening rightly assumed, oh, just like on The Simpsons, we don't get notes. And when that didn't come true, he went to Fox and they're like, we don't do business like that anymore.

So they. And he said, well, that's the only way I do business. Yes. So he did take notes from the network until episode three, I Roommate. That was an episode made for the network. He's like, here, we're going to address every problem you have. And they hated it. And from that point on, they're like, guess what?

No more notes. Well, that's also why they got their time slot fucked around with a bit too because like executives if executive doesn't like you they're not going to give you the prime simpson post simpson time slot which it absolutely what else do you put on after the simpsons yeah it got seven o'clock like after tuesdays it was always seven o'clock sundays which is the worst it's it's you will always be preempted by sports. King of the Hill was like 7.30, maybe. Maybe you got King of the Hill.

Almost never. For two months of the year, it wouldn't be preemptive during primetime because you either had at the start of the season, you would have baseball playoffs and then the World Series. Which, by the way, they play how many games a year? Like 2,000 baseball games a year? Holy shit. And then once baseball season's over, by the way, they play how many games a year? Like 2,000 baseball games a year? Holy shit. And then once baseball season's over, well, now it's football.

And NFL is going to replace it, too. Remember that shitty caveat of when Fox canceled it? It's like, no, no, but so many episodes have been preempted. We'll still run it for another year. It's like a season's worth of episodes. That's right. And that's why I'm like fucking Hulu, which you can watch along with us on Hulu. If you have that, you don't have to rebuy the DVDs.

They're awesome DVDs. But on Hulu, it's the airing seasons, not the production seasons. I should point out, we are doing 13 episodes for now, not nine. The nine that aired in season one, we're doing the 13 produced for season one. It ends with the Titanic parody, just in case you're wondering. That's also what drove me nuts when I would buy the DVDsds they're called volumes not seasons because they can't be aired season that and family guy they both got fucked around in the same way volume volume sets so they're volume one which i re-bought it uh and look i know i'm glad there's less of a carbon footprint but i miss

those i miss the plastic sleeves on those. Though the art is amazing. The art is way better. The minimalist look to it. So if you listen to the commentaries, the commentaries are fucking great, by the way. Just like Simpsons commentaries. They're extra salty and spicy because they were recorded in 2003 right after they were cancelled by Fox.

So you hear a lot of complaints about Fox, about how they hated everything with the show, including like Suicide Booth, like why is Bender so bad? All of these things. You get to hear every Fox complaint. And those are the things that we love the most about Futurama, like Bender being a drunken sociopath. He's a charming character. He's a fun character.

Fox hated it. Yes. Reading about some of their notes, it's like, this is every reason the show works. God, shut up. I hate you people so much. Again, I've said this before on podcasts, but I never worked with executives until last year, and everything you hear about them is true. Everything.

Maybe there's three good executives that are fans of their product that they're helping shepherd into creation. I absolutely have some, but with this much money on the line, everybody has to have a say where it looks like they're not working. Exactly. You get in that situation like, this isn't important. In a way, it's a system than like vindictiveness on an executive i put in though there are absolutely vindictive executives in my life but i'm just still raw but it is it is also the system of

just like well i'm not doing my job if i don't fuck with your show like i have to and given that that family guy is still on fox and futurama isn. That you noted this show for being harsh or making a joke that goes too far or being too ribald. And you still have Family Guy in there. What the fuck? About like three rape jokes per act now. I think I don't know. I think I would. You sound like an executive.

I would say. Make it two. I got an extra inventory. I need more rape jokes. Well, I would say a big difference is that Matt Groening, whenever he's pissed at executives, he goes to the press and says, these guys suck. He's a tattler. Seth MacFarlane knows how to play ball.

He's a good boy. He wanted to eventually have his own Star Trek, so he played ball. He did. And that's why he makes more shows than Matt Groening does. It is not a judgment. I'm not calling Seth MacFarlane some suck-up or whatever. Orville really good. He works hard.

He works hard. Blah, blah, blah. Seth MacFarlane's not the worst person ever. But anyway, I did want to mention David Cohen as well because he was – we just recorded the Treehouse of Harps 6, which is such a Futurama episode. His segment, Homer Cubed, is for sure. Tons of nerdy ass math jokes cgi and also like a professor farnsworth the most farnsworthy frank ever too oh for sure he is farnsworth in that segment and what i didn't know about cohen in his time working on the simpsons

in season seven six seven and eight that he was would have been a showrunner too, at least in our interview with Mike Scully. He mentions that Mike Scully felt had David Cohen stuck around, that him and Scully would have co-ran season nine because they co-ran a lot of rooms under Josh and Bill on season seven and eight of The Simpsons. But David graduated. I wonder too, if I was the simpsons but david graduated i wonder too if i was like if i was a simpsons writer who wasn't tapped by matt graining to make a new show i would have been very jealous i'm like what's the matter with me i could help you with the show though cohen is such a fucking dork that he's perfect for that it's like a science that's the way he made it sound in an interview i heard with him that he like matt was very specific he wanted to do a show set in the future who's the biggest sci-fi nerd and the one

sitting in the writer's room was like i know all this stuff uh and and yeah he also brought us poochie didn't he yeah he wrote the episode and this is the most over-educated writer's room for a comedy show there are three phds i think seven people with master's degrees. My God. All Harvard jerks. A bunch of big dorks writing the dork show, so it's only appropriate. They took Ken Keeler, Ken Keeler,

fresh off of destroying the Simpsons with the popper. That's a joke. You say in jest. Yes, but Ken Keeler wrote that episode, Armand Tamzarian,

and then went to Futurama. And I think it's fitting that he is the, after the credits, the first name you see because he became a co-executive producer in the Comedy Central season. Yeah, that's right.

And co-ran the show. I believe Bill Odenkirk, Bob Odenkirk's brother, who finished his PhD and immediately started working on Mr. Show. And right when that was canceled, bounced over to Futurama. And then when that got canceled to Simpsons. To Simpsons.

Yeah, and also another of my favorite writers on the show is Lou Morton, who he is not a PhD dude, but he was a writer on news radio who was a gamer. Like on news radio commentaries, they talk about how like they, Lou Morton and the other guys would stay up all night playing versus Doom against each other. And then at like 1 a.m. they're like, well, let's write that script down, I guess, guys, and then just stay up the rest of the night. Lou Morton also won the award for greatest old-timey name. It's a great name.

I think he wrote a lot of the comic books, too. Yeah, he did. Lou Morton did, yeah. So other background info, I didn't dig up too much. I dug up what I could find, and Matt Groening had some other proposed titles for this series. Originally it was going to be called Aloha Mars, and also Doomsville. But Futurama is actually named after a General Motors

exhibit at the 1939 World's Fair. It was a peek into the world of tomorrow of 1959. I have a terrible clip of it but I really, really love that shit. I watched almost the whole thing. There's a 23 minute film you can watch based on General Motors presentation from that 1939 World's Fair.

Like a push button kitchen? No. Is it all about cars? that 1939 World's Fair. Like a push-button kitchen? No. Is it all about cars? Yes. It's like they built a giant model. They're trying to show you it's way more boring and about agriculture and highways than it is about the push-button future you're going into.

And it's also envisioning this, behold, the 1960s. Here's an optimistic clip if you want to. Oh, sure. It doesn't say Futurama in it, but this is describing the Futurama Pavilion. And if you listen to me on other shows, I do. I miss this time of optimistic America. We would like to really invest in our futures and look forward to something. Well, it is funny that as Hitler was rising to power in Germany,

they're like, look at this future. Yeah, I don't know. I love this stuff. I go to sleep watching stuff like this. To help us get a glimpse into the future of this unfinished world of ours, there has been created for the New York World's Fair a thought-provoking exhibit of the developments ahead of us. The greater and better world of tomorrow a thought-provoking exhibit of the developments ahead of us,

the greater and better world of tomorrow that we in America are building today, a vivid tribute to the American scheme of living, whereby individual effort, the freedom to think, and the will to do have given birth to a generation of men who always want new fields for greater accomplishment. White men. Yes, so yeah, it's great to think there is one black guy in that video

but he is a train porter. It's great to think all those people wandering around in their nice straw hats while Hitler's pulling up into Poland with his bros. But also that it was that reminded me of Andrew Ryan in Bioshock. I'm just like, men striving to create bigger and better things. Men! But we still left that era.

Of course I love Disneyland stuff. It's inspiring in a way. Small World is one of the only remnants you have from what the World's Fair was. But Tomorrowland is also what it was supposed to be. And that in a way. Small World is like one of the only remnants you have from what the World's Fair was, but Tomorrowland is also what it was supposed to be, and that was a showcase. It got too corporate, and that kind of killed it because it became a showcase for new products rather than like, let's try and imagine the coolest future in technology we can.

Well, and it's expensive to update Tomorrowland. You kind of do need to subsidize it with some, with an oil company or something. I don't know. I'll shut up. Is Tomorrowland just Star Wars now? No, i thought that's what they were gonna do i would have bet money on it but instead they're building a new land they're just making their own star wars well you know another thing about this though it reminded me of from the beginning

my favorite futurama could be tomorrowland now is now a disney product and it could totally take over tomorrowland oh my god that is true Okay this also does remind me Though the Tex Avery The House of Tomorrow The push Button future cartoon the suicide Booth is based on a Donald Duck

Cartoon based on the Donald Duck cartoon Modern modern oh my God I wrote it down modern marvels Where a robot that sounds just like pete it's not so much that the suicide talked to him a lot of those things yeah it's uncredited but it's donald duck trying out all these coin operated apparatuses but what donald also does is he ties the coin to a string like bender does in this cartoon it's a direct reference to him i just love this feel of

the old cartoons they put in there. But another thing I had read about the making of this. 1937's Modern Invention. Sorry. So we heard MacRaney and Cohen started working on this three years before the episode finally aired. There is honestly

over prep in it I would say. But it's also why it's so dense with stuff. They had so many secrets in this. There is honestly over prep in it, I would say, but it's also why it's so dense with stuff. They had so many secrets in this. There is both the secret of how Fry got into his cryo chamber, which Nibbler's shadow is on screen for just a second. There is also the mystery of Leela and the mutants slasher outer space thing. And then they're like, oh, we should have a will they, won't they thing. All these stuff that like,

Simpsons had none of that stuff. There's a linearity to it that Simpsons would never have. I think Futurama, and it's evident in its pilot, it's a response to the response to the Simpsons. So they want to start manufacturing things that people can speculate over,

immediately create a language that's hidden in the background. Yeah, alienese is right there from the start. And it was solved immediately. After the first airing. Yes, they had to create a language that's hidden in the background. Yeah, Alienese is right there from the start. And it was solved immediately. After the first airing. Yes, they had to create a... That's the first, AL1, I think they call it. I love...

I want to just say this. I think this is one of the best pilots I've ever seen. I think so, too. It's up there with Last Man on Earth for me as laying the groundwork. Although I will say, all the things they set up about the world don't matter anymore after this. The whole thing about the career chip, that whole element of this universe is disposed of completely. In this and only this episode, the entire world is built on what your job is.

It defines you. It is assigned to you. That never has happened. Like they get new jobs like it's nothing all the time. In season three, they make fun of the idea of the career chip lita's like don't you remember our career chips that's how i met you yeah that's right yeah con a bunch of stuff but there's all these hidden things in the pilot like slurm is there from the beginning there's these rewarding continuity things that happen within this pilot

i mean i think grain even admits like we over prepared as henry said like they had so much of a story bible written like all of these things they eventually wanted to do were figured out from the beginning they would unfold over time and be like well that's Simpsons never did that yeah did not unfold this information I imagine Cohen maybe more so than Matt looked at how people responding to certain

gags being discovered in the Simpsons and started to start designing things with that in mind yeah and that's another thing about this pilot is that the show is so dense. That really episode one and two. Were a pilot together. Because this only has space. To really introduce.

The entire high concept world. And then Fry, Leela and Bender. And Farnsworth. But all the other Planet Express folks. Who will be in every episode after this. That's got to be episode two. We got no time for these. I mean, episode one is like five minutes of introduction and then like 15 minutes of a chase scene showing you different parts of the world.

So it's very interesting. A chase scene to introduce the world is pretty good. Real pretty. I love this. I love this pilot. It is beautiful. So one last thing. The theme song is written by Christopher Ting, of course,

as with all the original music. But they wanted to get this song, Psych Rock, by Pierre Henry. It's one of the first pioneering electronical music songs. Electronical? Electronic music songs. I like electronical. And it sounds a lot like the Futurama theme. They wanted to clear it, but it cost too much, especially for something they would play in every episode.

So here is what they based the Futurama theme on. It's very similar. Whoa. I'm surprised somebody didn't get sued. Yes, exactly. That is very, very similar. Chris, that is a song in Mean Girls, not the Futurama theme. That's, I knew, I thought the exact same thing.

Yes, so. No, ours goes ding, ding, ding. It's not the same Mean Girls, not the Futurama theme. I thought of the exact same thing. No, ours goes ding, ding, ding. It's not the same. It's not the same. Yeah, I think they have a case on their hands even now. But yeah, it's a great song, and I would want to rip it off. And it fits the theme very well. Oh, I had one more production behind-the-scenes thing to say, too,

that the animation was done at Rough Draft, no longer with Film Roman, who do The Simpsons they went with rough drafts the korean studio started by greg vanso uh who him and his brother worked on a lot of the 90s animation but they moved over to korea just to just do it themselves like why are we we have all these middlemen in soul we should just move to soul and run our own animation studio that's right and then meanwhile they got rich moore who was a simpsons director from seasons one through four including monorail marjoris monorail then would be the director the series director on the critic and then would kind of float around a little bit in between the critic and futurama we'll come back strong with futurama and in a way there is a proto proto futurama collaboration in

the critic pilot episode oh for sure because beauty and king dork with the first like cg in an animated sitcom i believe they just put it in there, and that was Greg Vanzo and Rough Draft doing the early kind of work that they would do a lot of in every episode of Futurama five years later. Yeah, and they were pioneers of digital 2D animation as well, because they made the MTV show The Max, which is, there's very little animation in it, but it looks good, and it moves well, and it's fun to watch. They were able to turn that into a great animated show. And Futurama was digital from day one.

The Simpsons would take, I believe, four or five more years before they went exclusively digital on this. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, and this episode is written by Groening and Cohen is credited, and the directors are credited, Rich Moore and Greg Vanzo. Though I also forgot that i thought that cohen shared the co-creator credit on this but just like the simpsons it is created by matt graining developed by graining and david x cohen he should have gotten the creator credit too yeah i know

come on split up the money graining From 30th Century Fox Hurt a thousand years into the future one man discovers everything he's dreamed of tourist the adventure are you interested in becoming my new crew or what happened to the old crew all those poor sons of the romance strip naked and get on the probulator the danger we have you partially surrounded from the creator of The Simpsons, Futurama. Premiering Sunday after The Simpsons on Fox. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you.

Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs! Weird, I don't remember saying that part! Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care! Did I mention that we care? just while we're in the credits i want to in color good i love it in good in color gag uh but the to show an awesome old public domain cartoon, that was Futurama's couch gag. Yeah. And this one opens with Little Buck Cheeser. I never heard of Little Buck Cheeser.

There is a wiki that lists all of these, by the way. Theinfosphere.org has tracked them all down. It is a happy harmony cartoon. Oh, great. At a glance, not a lot of information on any of this stuff, so I'm glad someone went to the trouble, I love, you know, I love old timey cartoons. Also, this episode is the rare one that starts with a cold open. That's right.

No theme until the end. So here are the first words spoken in Futurama. Space. It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and the gorilla starts throwing barrels at you and that's how you play the game you stink loser hey fry pizza going out come on yeah so that's the very intro of futuramaama, cold open, very Star Trek-y. Yeah, I love the first thing we hear is Fry's voice. He is the main character.

Second thing we hear is that he's a loser who stinks, which is true about Fry. And then we get to see his boss, who will not be a regular character character but who will appear quite a lot and every time he appears again he is more disgusting while making yes quit picking that nose and need that dough that's a great john dimaggio voice yes so the series has like three minutes to establish who fry is in the present the present being 1999 yeah and that the that opening is such a great trick the first time you watch it especially okay imagine kids yeah it's march 28th 1999 you have been seeing tons of ads for this show futurama that in among other things promises you amazing 3d animation like you've never seen on a network sitcom and the first thing you see is an eight

bit spaceship barely moving i i just love the title monkey fracas jr it's so great uh just the the donkey kong monkey throwing barrels is beautiful though this also say the name of this episode messed me up in searching for this on fucking kazaa because well so this is a big difference between my experience with this and the simpsons i did tape the episodes that aired the same night as the simpsons which were only the first two after that i did have trouble following it and i didn't tape it regularly so when it came time to watch futurama i was going to steal it off of file sharing services i was there should have used morpheus. But every time, I think I switched between the two. File Donkey, was that real?

Emule. Emule. File Donkey must be the Simpsons parody. But you'd get it by, that's when I finally started learning the episode names for these things because that was how the files were titled. And I thought, oh, I've watched every episode. Oh, but wait, what's Space Pilot 3000?

And I click on like, you should call this episode one or the pilot. The word pilot's in the title. It made me think it was about a cool episode about him becoming a pilot. They were being clever about it, perhaps too clever. Too clever by half. Fry, at this point in the series, he is not defined by his stupidity. He's defined by being just sort of a mediocre loser. And in this opening scene scene we see his girlfriend

leaves him he has nowhere to live his girlfriend will show up in season 2 played by Sarah Silverman I think she just played by Tress McNeil in this little scene

Tress is the go-to woman for most voices on the show most famous is mom but I know we were all super nerds about

Ren and Stimpy made me want to learn everything about animation which made me learn everything about animation which made me learn everything about voice acting which introduced me to a man named Billy West and so

I knew who Billy West was at this point and this seemed like his big break and it was like just made me so so fucking happy because in both well Billy West had abandoned Doug like that Doug

movie we talked about he wasn't in it they recast him at Disney and Disney had to pay like four people to replace him because they wouldn't give him what he was asking because he's fucking Billy West and he's worth it man and Billy West is such like a goofball

and a dork he is a Mel Blanc of our generation which he intentionally wants to be yeah and he's a cartoon dork yeah a huge one his WTF is both fun and depressing you can hear him doing impressions of everybody but you can also like how did you make water sound with your face like you can just do anything but now after praising him i will insult him and say like i just he

shouldn't be a regular guy lead of a show it's like especially in this episode as fry he's just like i'm a regular guy me fry it's like he gets this episode as fry he's just like i'm a regular guy me fry it's like he gets fry gets so much more character after this but his pilot voice is yeah he's pitching it up a little too much because he's like a man in his 40s playing a man in his 20s it's almost billy west normal voice it's almost to it yeah it's it's billy west in his 20s when he wasn't as depressed but i also i mean yeah you listen to wtf billy west learned his funny voices to entertain his depressed parents or else they would have beat him it's a bad childhood that turned to a good career though yeah they did later what i also

love in this basically origin scene of fry you have his girlfriend who will then later reuse in another episode you have his pizza guy boss will appear a ton of times. If they thought of showing his dog, they would have showed him too. But it reminds me of, as a comic book nerd, I love Spider-Man, and new writers are always trying to find new things to mine from his past. So they're like, well, in Spider-Man's first appearance, any character that said one word in it, someone did a story after. Like, oh, Spider-Man asks out this girl named Sally in one panel. Well, we got to make her a regular in this flashback series.

So it's the same deal. This is such a primordial moment in the show that there's always tons of cool nostalgia you can go back to just by pulling any character out of this. I never noticed for years that there's a shadowy figure near Fry when he falls into the... I didn't know until the commentary. The cryo tube, but just a shadow of an eyestalk, which could be anything. It could be a shadow of anything until you meet Nibbler.

But they said it was intentional. They wanted to set up something. We knew people were going to pick this apart. Another distracting thing in this episode is just it takes me back to being on the precipice of pre nine 11 and not knowing it. It was just like, Oh,

these late nineties time. And that's sorry. That's an excellent point too. Cause you'll never, you'll never be able to recreate this, but remember how scared everybody was of 2000. Oh yeah. Both scared in that.

Like we thought it would mean something more than it did. Like we were, I remember just from when I was born, like I'm going to live to see the year 2000. And when we got up to it, there's all this Y2K crap. It's scaring the hell out of you well this show is very much built around the excitement over 2000 like the the giddiness over a new a new century we're living through a new century and I was there and I lived it and I swear to Christ I can't explain it to you

it's like it's like cheering the clock turning 12 there were new kinds of spaghettios that's basically it all of a sudden we got a fantastic new kind of New Year's fun glasses. Oh man, finally, yeah. Now it's gone. We can't do it anymore. I think I spent the night on the phone with my first girlfriend who doped me. So Fry is pranked and that's how he makes it to the future.

Hello? Pizza delivery for uh, Icy Wiener? Oh, crud. I always thought by this point in my life I'd be the one making the crank calls. Here's to another lousy millennium. Ten! Nuf! Oto!

Saba! Exi! Wu! Char! Tatu! Ni! Wan! Kip! And he's locked in the tube for a thousand years.

So what we as viewers don't see is that Nibbler called in that order to bring him there. And Nibbler gives him the extra shove to fall into it. Though also under that desk, and we will later find out, is not just Nibbler, but also Fry. Fry is there who will give himself the shove from the future. When they get into time travel,

it really starts fucking with it. There's a reason they held off on time travel in continuity until Roswell that ends well in season three. It's an excellent episode. And that image of Fry in the tube, like, frozen holding a beer was, like, the first thing Matt Groening drew, like, as an idea for the series.

And, I mean, it's a great shot as New York is destroyed, rebuilt as a medieval city and then destroyed again to be new New York. And in Bender's big score will be revealed that that is Bender flying those ships chasing after Fry and destroying things. Like I said, it's like comic books.

They have to explain every joke in another episode. I also think that comes from all the stop and starts they had. Because they give you these weird ideas like, wouldn't it be crazy if we did this? I think an ongoing show wouldn't have gone into that kind of detail. Another thing about Fry's design, just like

Homer with the M and G in it, Fry his ear is the G and his cowlick is the M to put in the Matt Graney. I love it there. I was reading that he's designed after James Dean in Rebel Without a Claw. That's right, he's wearing

the same outfit. He's wearing the same outfit and I forgot this Claw That's right he's wearing the same outfit He's wearing the same outfit And I forgot this that he's named for Phil Hartman I think he's also named So the protagonist of The Simpsons is Homer Named after Homer Groening Homer Groening's full name is Homer Philip Groening And Homer Groening died in 1996 When they started working on the show

So I think this is also a tribute to his father as well Well Phil was supposed to be Right right And died working on the show. So I think this is also a tribute to his father as well. It's both. Well, Phil was supposed to be... Right, right. Zap Brannigan. Zap Brannigan and died. That's why he's drawn to look like Troy McClure and why Billy West does a Phil Hartman type voice for it because he would have been him.

I think they probably recorded some stuff with him before because he was murdered not long before the series premiered in 98. Yeah, May of 98. They would have been recording stuff at that time. Had it not happened, we'd have Phil Hartman as Zapp Brannigan and you would have had Curtis J. Fry. Yeah. Well, this wasn't a disagreement I'd had with Dave Rudden

in that we would get explained to us by an unexpected source. So I'd always heard Icy Wiener as Icy Y Wiener. That's a joke. It's in a cold wiener. Now, Dave Rudden, meanwhile, he told me, I thought the joke was I space S-E-E Wiener. Yes, as in I have witnessed the wiener. I have witnessed the wiener.

Icy Wiener. I'm a wiener. Witness me. Now, we had a disagreement on that, and I was like, oh, maybe it is that. And then Eric Rogers, who was a writing assistant in the first season of Futurama, who would later become a writer on Futurama, he said, I was in the room. It is icy as in cold. Because of the cryogenics. Because of the cryogenics. Because of the cryogenics lab.

Holy shit. That's explained right there by old Eric Rogers. So thanks, Eric. On Twitter, someone told me there's a future joke that the name is D, as in the letter D, Defrosted Wang. So yeah, I think they were going for the frozen wiener. So fries in the future. And I think he likes it my god it's the future my parents

my co-workers my girlfriend i'll never see any of them again. Yahoo! Excellent. I love that intro shot of seeing the big city, like all of it in CG. It's them showing off. They're like, this is what this show's gonna be. The Simpsons wouldn't do this, baby. Even on this viewing, the opening is surprisingly subdued. Like, I thought this looked better. Oh, they waited.

Yeah, I mean, smartly, they have to copy so the 3d models are copying 2d animation and trying to look like 2d which is why it holds up because it's not trying to be like photorealistic 1999 era it is trying to ape a two-dimensional image which is why it still looks pretty good yeah and as i obsess over things like tomorrowland that's what the world of futurama is to me it's it's like the 1960s version of what we're living through now and sucks in a way it was cutting edge on cel shaded just like from uh 1999 well it saw the release of the dreamcast but i think it was the next year that jet grind radio came out that was i believe the previews came out

for it as because i recall that sega complained that like we showed this too early that everybody ripped us off like that was that was their feeling but so this was also way ahead of the curve on that of having cel shaded you even see I was really impressed on first viewing in 1999 of seeing they don't move but in the pneumatic tubes the 3d models of the Futurama characters going through i was like wow that's impressive yeah in the opening right yeah right right there in that opening and also the opening is full of sign gags that are meant to be switched around they learned a ton from every show after the simpsons was like well what if we had a one-off gag we just change out every time, like the chalkboard and the couch. Yeah, it's very modular. But this one has like eight times the modularity.

Slurm is there from the very beginning. Right there. Slurm, Bachelor Chow, Mom's Oil, all of it's there. And you get, well, actually mentioning 9-11, that crash into the screen at the very start. After 9-11, for a little while, they did not show that. Oh, you're right. Everybody was like, oh, if somebody sees a thing crash into a building,

it'll remind them of 9-11 and make them sad. And that's not the only thing they edited out of this episode. Oh, yes. Well, let's get to it. We'll get to it. So, yes, Fry is unfrozen. He's pretty happy about it, and he meets his fate reassignment officer, Lila. Wait a minute. Is that blimp accurate? Yep. He's pretty happy about it and he meets his fate reassignment officer Leela. Actually, I'm glad. I had nothing to live for in my old life. I was broke. I had a humiliating job.

And I was beginning to suspect my girlfriend might be cheating on me. Well, at least here you'll be treated with dignity. Now strip naked and get on the probulator. So right before that, we see Terry of the World of Tomorrow guy who appeared in like a dozen other episodes of the show. I didn't get the clip because it is our now, our news clip for every episode, so you'll hear him a lot. And I also love the gag.

It's one of my favorite first future gags that sets up all later future gags on Futurama of, oh, this is just like Star Trek smashed in the face by the door. I thought that gag was awesome. I love it. You imagine, it is about imagining what the future is like and then

humorously undercutting it and that's the entire basis of futurama and especially that mission impossible for nothing works that somebody would say oh just like star trek like that's it though as we know canonically star trek is illegal to say in the world of futurama why the door tried to stop him, Henry. It all makes sense. Oh, you're right. It was trying to cut him off before he got in trouble. That's also, speaking of running eggs in the Futurama world,

it is quite a trope for Fry to be stripped naked in probe. We see a lot of naked Fry. And then humiliated. When he gets put in the robot insane asylum, he is stripped naked and probulated quite a lot. And I think they say on the commentary that originally they pitched, oh, Fry should just be naked the whole rest of the episode. They wouldn't give him clothes.

Like, that's too weird. Oh, something that struck me strange about this episode, kind of my only complaint about it, is, like, did you notice how silent it is? Is there almost no score or music? that's a good point it looks like you know those you ever see like one of those south parks they have to rush out and there's like accidentally no score oh yeah or even sound effects yeah that's that's what this felt like yeah they kind of hold the looney tune show i i i know matt graining really loves things to be like given space to let a joke hit so I think

maybe that could explain why they kind of held back sounds. There's so much so many overtures themes I'm used to hearing in Futurama that are not here at all. I think there's just like there's not enough time for establishing shots where you would get that music so it has to move at a breakneck pace so there's music during action but

most of the dialogue scenes are music free and again not a lot of establishing shots and if they are there they're very brief no way to zoom in on professor farnsworth delivering good news i haven't met him yet and also that lila is this really establishes lila and not a great way for a character just like well what's lila's character for the beginning well she's a boring person who explains things and is constantly saying like no fry you have to do this and then fries like i don't want i want to have fun and be silly like it took a while for the show to find more to do with leela than just have her be the guy who saves the person who saves fry and the person who

explains things to fry and then says fry please you have to do this i think she starts out in the default setting for any adult female character in an animated sitcom where she is that person like just like peggy hill and just like francine from american dad they eventually became like the best characters on the show but they were they were stuck as the sort of the boring like foil to the more interesting wacky characters and i do love when she sends him to farnsworth or tells him about farnsworth for the first time it is on black and white old printer paper that shoots it off. I know this was in a world before tablets,

but it's a great backwards-ass thing there. That's the one thing no future show predicted was that everyone would be staring at a screen, which I think was just too depressing of a prospect for anyone to think of, oh, the future! Look at your screen all the time. Maybe Star Trek.

I would bet by the year 3000 that tablet technology will just be like paper as well. They're like, oh, I'll just print you a tablet there. Look at this picture there. There'd just be a tablet on your cornea. Yeah, that's true. Opening tabs on your eyeball. Or, I mean, we're just all dead. That's another option.

So, yes, this is part of the story Bible or part of the premise that we never really see again in that in this world in this future world you're given a job from birth it is assigned from birth and if you don't do it you are executed yep via sun cannon that is pretty wild yes it's a good joke but when you extrapolate that to being defining society it's like oh that's a bummer this is it's actually a pretty like oppressive world here i mean i can forgive them never using this again because it does constrain what the characters can do but also i feel like for the first time i don't know why it never hit me before but it's like oh this episode is an exploration of free will of the power of free

will yeah because everyone in this episode fry lila and bender they break free of their like uh destiny or their fate rather and they they decide to become a different thing and that way it is in this episode, Fry, Leela, and Bender, they break free of their destiny, or their fate, rather, and they decide to become a different thing. In that way, it is like a classic sci-fi story from the 50s of a guy coming from the past who's like, don't you guys remember freedom? Learn, learn, except it's a very stupid guy,

which, oh, it's filled with sci-fi stuff from the past. The time travel sequence is like the time travel sequence in The Time Machine, which I always encourage animation fans to watch because it's not only great,

right before that happens, you can hear Alan Young as a Scottish character. So it's the first time you'll hear Scrooge McDuck, the original Scrooge McDuck, coming out of a human's face in that movie.

Oh, you know, also the you gotta do what you gotta do poster. That guy shows up a few times. It reminds me of one of my favorite things that Futurama does is that when they take a saying from current day and then show how people misuse

and misunderstand it in the future like we do with tons of like Shakespearean terms that were to thine own self be true you gotta be cruel to be kind yeah you gotta do what you gotta do it's not taken literally like or you will be executed you have to do this

the chip is reminiscent of Logan's run and the suicide booth I love Soylent Green Edward G. Robinson right yeah he commits his own suicide and L.V. Booth looks at wonderful imagery. So Fry gets a nice sort of save the cat moment. I wrote the same fucking thing

I know. It's quote save the cat because he tricks Leela into a cryo tube to escape when she's trying to chip him but instead of sending it to a thousand years he gives her five minutes. So he could have just doomed Leela to wake up in the year 4000 but it was a nice way to see like fry is not a total dick yeah fry has fry has compassion for this woman who's also trapped in a bad situation

he cares for her and it is the beginning of like i guess i knew at this time post ross and rachel every show had to have a well yeah they think so thing. So the second I was like, well, this is the first woman Fry meets, so they're probably going to be in a Ross and Rachel situation. Shop around, Fry. This one's got one eye. I did like his bits on, let's deal with the eye. Yeah. Is it about my eye?

She is Officer 1BDI, so that's pretty cruel that they gave her that designation. And then the door smashes him in a different way. Yeah, sideways. Which is another, right from the beginning, much like Fry is a younger Homer in that he is very dumb and gets way dumb way fast. But also, horrible violence happens to him all the time. It's okay to hurt Fry. Yeah, it's only funny. When he escapes via the hamster habitrail vacuum tubes, we do see the one thing they change because of a celebrity death.

The original destination for the pedestrian was JFK Junior Airport. It was changed to Radio City Mutant Hall, even on the DVDs. JFK had just died in a plane crash. He would die in a year. And obviously, this rich people don't fly planes. You'll die. Maybe you don't know how to fly a plane. You know what's better than flying a plane crash. He would die in a year. And I'll say this, rich people, don't fly planes. You'll die. You maybe don't know how to fly a plane. You know what's better than flying a plane? Being rich and alive. And paying someone to fly a plane

for you. Exactly. Especially if you're a Kennedy. Don't take any chances. Just stay in a soft room the rest of your life. I think it's more odd that it remains changed. Yeah, I mean, I wonder, that feels like it was not just sensitivity but creator intent like that matt graining or david x call was like when you really care about someone

you shouted from the mountaintops so on behalf of deja d'un insurance i'm standing 20 000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? This joke says a different thing now than we wanted it to say, and I don't want to say that. And I'd say Radio City Mutant Hall is maybe a better joke.

It's fine. It's a fine question. I could see someone not having an interest in restoring it, but apparently if you live abroad, you still hear the JFK Jr. line. Yeah, I mean, you can find it if you really want to hear that line. But it's not on the new DVDs. The Americans don't have the access. It makes me feel like it's just grating, like, this joke says a different thing now.

It sounds like we're making fun of a guy crashing a plane. Even though the gag is about JFK Junior Airport. JFK Airport is now JFK Junior Airport. It's funny. It's a cute thing. Also on the sides we get Slurm. And we get Angelina, which is a parody of Angeline. The billboard model in LA.

Like it's only a local LA joke. If you would drive around LA, you would see this billboard for Angeline, the billboard model in L.A. Like, it's only a local L.A. joke. If you would drive around L.A., you would see this billboard for Angeline. Advertising nothing. Yes, just a platinum blonde with pink lipstick who drives around L.A. in her pink Cadillac. She is just a local character of L.A. Yeah, and I think someone recently wrote a story uncovering, like, who is this? BuzzFeed uncovered it, I believe it was. And I've got to say, just leave her alone.

I just wanna miss her. I don't wanna know where she went to high school or that she's Jewish or any of those things. In the future on the billboard, she is breathing out of an oxygen tank, implying that she survived this long or something. Not even to be a head, but that she is still in her body. So Bender wants to call his great-great-nephew Farnsworth. He gets in line for what he thinks is a phone booth. Listen, buddy, I'm in a hurry here. Let's try for a twofer.

Please select mode of death, quick and painless, or slow and horrible. Yeah, I'd like to place a collect call. You have selected slow and Horrible. Good choice. Ring it on, baby! That's a great act break. I love that scream, and also the rippling scream of mouth of Fry as well.

The characters are allowed to be animated more than a Simpsons character. They're allowed to pop between more extreme expressions you know you know go off model a bit it's ultimately what i really like about futurama yeah it's allowed to be a cartoon a lot more than this i i also like uh bender literally cheats death he gets his quarterback and the final twist of the knife that comes out is slow and painful just like oh that 3d knife is beautiful like you are now dead but just think all the people in line in front of fry were murdered by the suicide booth yeah they never

come out where the bodies go i don't know it's an internal spray maybe for like an extra quarter you get cremated i also i do love that in the future things are still a quarter and yeah the and the gag being such a 1930s cartoon gag of taking your quarterback with a string and the bender who brought in his intention of like well i'll be dead he should just think like i why am i keeping a quarter i'm going to be dead because fuck you that's what much of a cheat he is though knowing how durable bender will be in future episodes the things that come out of the suicide booth i don't believe would kill him they wouldn't mangle him they wouldn't kill him but then again a reference to 1937's Modern Inventions

a cartoon where Donald goes to try out the future and everything almost murders him oh I also right before the suicide booth there's the pneumatic tube travel

which is really just show offy and has some cute gags in it we get Blinky we get Blinky though he's green not orange

but it's so weird different universe because the Simpsons have never really entered in the Futurama universe. Oh, they will. Bender has showed up on the Simpsons. No, but the Futurama characters, I think the year after their last cancellation, yeah, they appeared in the Simpsons in the 2060s.

Yeah, Simpsons-rama, I believe it is called. Not to be confused with future drama, a different Simpsons episode. And Bender also would have a one-off gag in another simpsons episode where he'd fall into a car that homer barter and he's like and then bender the voice with john dimaggio's voice says yay new friends and then homer says you're not invited and shoves them out of it uh i also like the gag of the guys go like tourist implying that i thought that's a great joke it's like how you'd say, these tourists don't understand mass transit in San Francisco.

When an asshole doesn't know how to get off the BART fast enough, you always say that in your brain. They stand on the wrong side of the escalator. Boo. So yes, in case you missed it, the suicide booth is from the Stop and Drop Corporation. And we see Leela's very poo-like boss. A decade after a poo, it's still like,

no, voice him with a white guy. So that's Billy West telling Leela to get a poo-like boss. Yes. A decade after a poo, it's still like, no, voice him with a white guy. So that's Billy West telling Leela to get back to work, and she's on the way to find Fry. And then we hear Bender's backstory, which is very un-Bender-like. Why would a robot need to drink? I don't need to drink. I can quit any time I want. So they made you a delivery boy, huh?

Man, that's as bad as my job. Really? What do you do, Bender? I'm a bender. I bend girders. That's all I'm programmed to do. You any good at it? You kidding? I was a stud. I could bend a girder to any angle. 30 degrees, 32 degrees, you name it. 31.

But I couldn't go on living once I found out what the girders were for. What? Suicide boots. Well, Fry, it was a pleasure meeting you. I'm gonna go kill myself. Wait, you're the only friend I have. You really want a robot for a friend? Yeah, ever since I was six.

Well, okay. But I don't want people thinking we're robosexuals. So if anyone asks, you're my debugger. So I've seen maybe a hundred episodes of Futurama after this. Bender should not care about the death of humans. He should be reveling like, yes, I make

things that kill humans. Kill all humans. This is a weird level of morality for the most amoral character in Futurama. This is pre-emotionship, too. It even sounds like a much more subdued Bender. No, I mean, this Bender is John DiMaggio doing a voice of a blue-collar worker. I think by the end of this season, Bender will just be John DiMaggio going like, Look at me, look, bop-a-doo, bop-a-doo, bop. He is a wonderfully bizarre person to meet

because if you're at a bar or a place with an open bar, let's say, it is just Bender. He's a fun guy. We accosted him once outside of a show at SF Sketch Fest. Really nice. We asked him for an ident for Talk Radar, our old, old, old podcast. I'm embarrassed.

And we're like, hey, you ought to be a go-getter and ask for that. And he did it. He was very nice. Oh, he did well. for an ident for talk radar or old old old podcast i'm embarrassed and uh well like hey you gotta be a go-getter and ask for that and he did it he was very nice he did well he's great but like also as a big cartoon nerd i love it when i don't like what i had my problem with recognizing billy west is like i know who this is already ben john dimaggio was a voice i'd never heard before and i think i'm just scrolling through his imdb this is like his first year of voiceover yeah he was a straight actor before this this led him into the voice acting click which also let him be like i i i'm not making a comment on john dimaggio's body what i'm saying is if i had to be hollywood fat even meaning skinny i would be so happy to be like oh i can just be a voice actor now and just be like fat, fat.

Awesome. Yay. No more caring about being in shape or having a nice haircut or facial hair. I think I've always appreciated the one voice actor on a show who's kind of the outsider because you get a different take. It's less polished. It's less, I guess, it's less what you would expect. Like people like John Crickfalusi doing Ren and Paul Rugg doing Freakazoid and Justin Roiland and Throp Van whatever doing Flapjack like I love when creators or just

outsiders are the voices of cartoon characters or JG Thurwell on a regular show yeah that you get a very special type voice out of that and we didn't mention uh the the voice of Leela as well yes yeah straight straight off of Married with Children, which I think probably had just been cancelled at that point. 97, I think. Way too late for Married with Children. Yeah, that Katie Segal.

Yes, Katie Segal. Sorry. Yeah, it was keeping it in the Fox family. Unlike John DiMaggio, who just became a regular voice actor, she still doesn't really do much voice acting. I think the big thing she did after futurama was uh the biker show on fx sons of anarchy why i always predict

speaking of voice actors it's why i always predict that we have not seen the end of futurama because the voice cast seems to love going places and doing anything you do not see the cast of the simpsons showing up many places meeting fans and doing the voices in person you know that's true yeah though i i would also bet that it's because the futurama guys never got paid three hundred thousand dollars an episode maybe i bet they get paid well i think actually a whole a brief holdout on bringing the show back on comedy central was they weren't originally going to pay the voice actors what they were worth, and then they did it, which was good. I think while the next show, Disenchantment, is in the works and while it airs, I think Futurama is definitely on hold, though, because it's a lot of Futurama people on that show, right? Yeah, I think a lot of the same animators.

David X. Cohen is a consultant on the show. The show is being show ran by Josh Weinsteinstein who coincidentally was a creative consultant in the early years of futurama so it's been a switcheroo of sorts for cohen and weinstein on the show but and in this scene is the slurm and alien ease in the background which everybody used to decode it there because it was a copy of the english language slurm ad earlier in the episode. It's like, okay, then this letter is this, this letter is this. And again, continuity nerd.

But when Bender says he can stop drinking anytime he wants, no, robots run on alcohol. He needs to drink. He doesn't, he can't, unless he still intends to die and that is stopping whenever he wants, Bender needs to drink. Well, I mean, it is funny because that's a line an alcoholic would tell you. Anytime I want, I can just stop drinking.

But to escape Leela, they go to the Head Museum, which is free on Tuesdays, and meet a very familiar friend. Welcome to the Head Museum. I'm Leonard Nimoy. Spock? Hey, do the thing. I don't do that anymore. This is unbelievable. What do you heads do all day?

We share our wisdom with those who seek it. It's a life of quiet dignity. Feeding time. This little jumping for it. Headflakes. Yeah, so let it anyway. We don't have a death jingle yet, but he is dead. Dead.

He died in what, like 2014, 2013? Yeah, only a few years from this recording. A real bummer. There was a laser time about Leonard Nimoy. There is. You can hear about the Battle of the Bilbo Baggins. In search of. Yeah.

I loved Leonard Nimoy when he was alive, but when he passed away, it made me really realize, like, boy, he was great. Like, he was just a constant in our our lives seemingly never had any scandals we heard about so a good a good guy too and that he would he had a great sense of humor about himself he's doing this after two simpsons appearances that's right he was in for though obviously now that he is gone this living death as a head in a jar which was already a morbid joke. You don't know that it's not happening. He could be dug up and reanimated as a head in a jar.

It's not to say it wouldn't happen. They chopped off his head before he died and put it in a jar. This is an ingenious invention to get current day guest stars in the year 3000 as themselves. How are we going to get Conan O'Brien or Weird Al Yankovic in here or al gore well they got to be ahead in a jar put them on a robot body too if you want yeah just

that nixon shows up this early yes i completely forgot that he will soon be president of the world i think yeah but it's what a great device to like continue kicking someone you hate and also what a simpler time when nixon was the worst president i mean jesus when i saw the jar head presidents i was like now i have to imagine trump is there just off screen yeah didn't draw him in he gets the biggest jar and we do get yeah they i get the most fish food he does have the biggest head i would bet he really does president it's a real pumpkin head on that but the but i i love i'll just praise it now while i have a million excuses to it but billy west nixon is so great like it's based on anthony hopkins in the movie

nixon because uh billy west says it sounds like he's turning into a werewolf as nixon that's why that's why he literally goes charleston chew! Charleston Chew! Arrgh! Nice and jelly. I fucking, I love that so much. But one thing about... Fighting their arms! Yes, luckily in fact, one thing about the Leonard Nimoy appearance, that introduction,

I think it is a parody of In Search Of, which only comedy writers who grew up in the 70s were obsessed with. I've never seen it. It's on the Springfield Files. That's what the framing device is. Hello, I'm Leonard Nimoy. That's exactly what the In Search Of is.

The only other reason I've watched one episode of in search of the bigfoot one is because in one of the in the first john hodgman book uh areas of my expertise he has a very specific joke about the bigfoot episode of in search of i was like well i should just watch this i've got it's 2005 i have youtube now i'll watch this I found it through a Tenacious D lyric. That was a kick-ass insert show. Only children of the 70s give a shit about that stuff. We're children of the 80s. The 70s were awful.

So Bender and Fry hide behind a wall of heads in the two spots that are open. And here we see... A real cartoon joke. Yes. The heads that are legible, I guess, are Johnny Carson. David S. Cohen is there. Gillian Anderson. David Duchovny. Liz Taylor. Dennis Rodman.

Matt Groening. And Barbara Streisand. Nice. There's only one dead guy. I was glad they got their cameos out of the way early. And that's where Leela knocks Fry into Nixon. Yes. Who breaks the...

I guess they can live outside the jars. I never really thought of it that much. So that's another thing, though. This introduces early on in first episode that Leela is meant to be a kung fu badass. really thought of it that much though that so that's another thing though the uh this introduces early on in first episode that lila is meant to be a kung fu badass yeah that is her thing she can kick yeah it is miss piggy powers true damn you're right and this was the first time i got the joke of hey eyeball keep your big nose out of this nobody makes fun of my nose not i obvious the joke is she should be sensitive about her eye which she is but instead it's the nose comment and there's

a great little uh so leela has her moment of change and it really speaks to the uh the message of free will in this episode where the cops are beating fry and bender with their wimpy laser batons and then to that's such a great gag you think like oh lightsabers they sound like them and just clock they're just like wiffle ball bats almost they're a baton which you club people with but lila is like chastising the police officers like you don't be brutal and they say you got to do what you got to do and that's the eye-opening moment no pun intended for lila like maybe this this this fake crap or this predetermined fake crap is not good i also love the gag of her saying like you can't be that vile he's like it's our job we're peace officers

that's right and yeah that's that's what made this moment for the first time in my viewing of this feel like classic one-off sci-fi stories of everybody conforms in the future and you need a man from the past to tell you like wait no it's to make you realize how different things are you need that fish out of water so bender and fry hide in the hall of criminals i don't think any of these criminals are actually criminals maybe they thought these jokes could be too dark if it's like jeffrey domer's head yeah john wayne gacy said but they're just sketchy dudes. Hal, we're trapped! Wait a second. You're a bender, right? We can get out of here if you just bend the bars.

Dream on, skin tube. I'm only programmed to bend for constructive purposes. What do I look like, a debender? Who cares what you're programmed for? If someone programmed you to jump off a bridge, would you do it? I'll have to check my program.

Yep. Open up! Come on, Bender. It's up to you to make your own decisions in life. That's what separates people and robots from animals. And animal robots. You're full of crap, Fry. You make a persuasive argument, Fry.

So Fry can convince Bender, but being electrocuted does convince Bender. Yeah, this also Bender's AI gets much more imaginative in later ones. But this gag here of the Bender had to be electrocuted to basically rewrite his programming. Maybe you could read it as, oh, this is why bender is an amoral sociopath every moment from this point on though i am certain there are flashbacks to bender before he meets fry being a horrible monster and like stealing i what defines bender for me his amorality is when fry is thinks yes and he's like and i know more than once he tried to steal my blood, but I wish Bender was back. Well, he makes them have a fake funeral for him so he can watch it.

That's right. He goes louder and sadder. And yes, but this is Fry affecting Leela and Bender at the same time. Yeah, it's very good storytelling. It is. For a one-off episode. And this is not who Fry is to anyone in any future episode he is not an inspiration no basically ever again no i do more a disgusting rock bottom so they escaped to the

sewer to go to uh old new york and i love the little joke where bender is so excited to bend a new thing but he doesn't have to but he does anyway so fry just opens the sewer grate and then bender reaches up and bends the bars for no reason. I just love Bender's. Oh. I also just the dynamic of a that makes it so different. The Simpsons that know the two leads in the Simpsons. If you could call them, I guess it'd be Bart and Homer. They are not equals. They are not roommates.

They are not buddies. It is father and son dynamic. So one is socially above the other. But in this, they're equals. Fry and Bender are on the same level and are just buddies. And so you get more buddy schtick with them. And you could also even say that Bender kind of looks more like Homer, but Fry is more of Homer. It's like Bender got all of the drunkenness of Homer, while Fry is the stupid.

And also food monster. He definitely indulges. Except he's younger and played video games that are somewhat current. Yeah. And I, hey, I love Beneath the Planet of the Apes.

So anytime you have an underground version of New York that somehow has a roof over it, I'm behind it 100%. The only negative is there's no mutants here yet. I was going to say that. This is where the mutants live

and we'll see a lot more mutants in future visits to old New York. That was something I guess I should save it for the mutant episode. But I had never seen Beneath the Planet. I hadn't seen Beneath the Planet of the Apes before I watched the mutant episode. You poor bastard. So there's that great joke in it, like, you guys worship a bomb? Like, yeah, I guess. Not really.

You don't? So Leela confronts Fry, but she's very sympathetic. Can't you leave me alone? I'm miserable enough already. Look, I know it's not much consolation, but I understand how you feel. No, you don't. I've got no home, no family. No friends.

My whole world is gone. You can't possibly understand what it feels like to be so alone. I understand. I'm the only one-eyed alien on this whole planet. My parents abandoned me here as a baby, and I don't even know what galaxy they were from. I know how it feels to be alone. Look, Leela, I don't understand this world, but you obviously do. So I give up. If you really think I should be a delivery boy, I'll do it. So we eventually meet Leela's parents, who are very, very, very Jewish mutants.

Yes, yes. It's like, Joy Park was not enough. I mean... Mr. Cohen. Cohen is Jewish. There's a lot of... Cohen is Jewish? There's a lot of... Well, I like to imagine the parents are just off screen watching her as they always are.

Yeah, tucking her in. But that is something that kind of not hurts but changes Futurama in reviewings when you know every secret, or at least every secret I think they had at the time, but it changes it. If you haven't seen it in a while, it's awesome to see how many seeds they lay in the beginning i mean just i couldn't i was so astonished she looked lila looks different the whole episode and then eventually rips her jacket off like we just watched her become lila in like 20 minutes and there's also a great gag i never noticed in the first viewing that she has a ring on her pinky that you never see her wear ever again i was like why is there a ring in that shot that you never see her wear ever again.

I was like, why is there a ring in that shot? And then it's because... And then Bender solves the mystery of the missing ring. That's the mystery of the missing ring. Let's have a drink. That was great. So Dick Clark is our other guest. And there's not really a joke outside the fact that he's still alive and looks young. And, I mean, that was the joke in the 90s before his massive stroke.

Like, Dick Clark will never die. Dick Clark never ages. clark never ages until his stroke when this gets really uncomfortable i miss making that joke it's depressing you can't i remember actually around the same time the treehouse of horror of this year that's right had dick clark as a robot malfunctioning when when y2k happens and he that's the explanation of why dick clark never ages and yeah it was boy seeing him make his first post-stroke appearance it's like i good on you for getting back on tv and improving you this wasn't wasn't gonna stop you but you kind of got a gasp the

first time you should have just waved and said yeah how dare you remind me of my mortality i'm a young man yeah uh dick clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve. Who hosts it now? Seacrest. Oh, yeah, Seacrest inherited it, though. I'm more of an Anderson Cooper guy, though. And fucking him and Kathy Griffin were such a funny pair. I'm gay and I can say this.

The fag and the fag hag. They were so funny together. It was a great odd couple for millennials. Especially when he was not out yeah that she would keep going like here's a gay joke he's like please i can't stop oh is he actually out now yeah oh he's been out for a while i didn't realize that but like i would watch this uh the new year's rockin eve with my grandma and my parents and stuff growing up i'm like nothing says rocking like spending a new year's eve with a 63 year old man

i don't understand it's like uh maybe you're a rockin in the 60s dick i don't a new year's eve with a 63 year old man i don't understand it's like uh maybe you're rocking in the 60s dick i don't know new year's rocking eve i mean most viewers of american bandstand are dead now like so they don't remember that it would be hard to describe the genre of american bandstand to people now what would it even be but no idea go back in time 20 years and watch the reruns on vh1 dance to music. It's got a great beat and I can dance to it. The most expensive show to license from here on out. But there's some also good book ending of this episode. We start with a countdown in 1999.

We end with a countdown in 2999. The countdown in the Planet Express ship too. And it's something I liked on the show as it would go on that. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.comcom care and get insurance that's

really big on care did i mention that we care the characters aged i mean they weren't drawn differently but it would be 3009 in the show and they would bring it back when it was 2009 fry is 25 like canonically born in 1975 though they for real have died or have been chemically de-aged so many times on the show that you can't even say like oh fry doesn't look like he's 40 it's like well this is fry like 18 bodies later or this is the fry from a universe that died two times over it while from a time machine. If you recall that, they have many creative ways to not have to make new character designs. But yes, here we meet Farnsworth who sounds very different by the way.

God, I am your nephew. This is absolutely incredible. Can we have some money? Oh my, no. Let me show you around. That's my lab table. and this is my work stool and over there is my intergalactic spaceship and here's where i keep assorted lengths of wire whoa a real live

spaceship i designed it myself let me show you some of the different lengths of wire i used Let's go. Can we call that line of the show like, oh my, no. Yes. It's very funny. Oh, wait, you're serious. Let me laugh even harder. Excellent. That's the line of the show.

My only other nomination was fill his ass full of laser. But I definitely got a better laugh. We have you partially surrounded. Yes, Farnsworth is not the Farnsworth we get to know later either. Everybody's pretty different. That's the most pilot-y thing about it, I think, that all the voices haven't kicked in yet. Yeah, like usually if you go back

to the first episode of any animated program, everyone is way too laid back and low energy. Or slower. I have to convey information it's a pilot and then after this like everything speeds up Farnsworth is very pleasant and not doddering enough this is this is before the angry dome I'll be angry though why

I love the Farnsworth of the of like even 10 episodes from now just the guys like you idiots you did this wrong like don't you know that this thing is this he might be my favorite and uteramaker way more willing to kill his entire crew yes yeah though he's he's he's kind of ambivalent to their deaths in this but yeah he also has not got his catchphrase yet of good news everyone and uh but i i still love this voice billy is doing is more like an old man that ren and stimpy would have visited who would have said oh let me show you these things like that that's who his voice is here

and farnsworth is named after the inventor of the television that's right philo farnsworth and i also just love like this is the future and the way they test their dna is to each put their finger in a device that has a light bulb on it and And if the light bulb lights up, they're related. The nephew testing machine. The 1960s future alive and well. Just like the cryo tube. It has like an egg timer bell. Yeah, it's so great that it is the future but also old.

Like it's something in future episodes you'll see that a futuristic bus still has air brakes or the sound of air brakes. That's right. Actually, Henry, you pointed out the parallels between the beginning and the end. It's fun to think about, like, so the beginning, the 1999 New Year's was the worst night for Fry, sitting alone, drinking a beer.

The 3000 New Year's is escaping on a spaceship in the future with all of your new crazy mutant robot friends. It's the exact opposite of the old new year's he just lived through new year's 99 i trade it for a second whatever fry gets and the countdown to blast off is great though i got nudity again in the very next episode is established that they need no countdowns for blast off and that they fly to the moon in four seconds that's right well he is counting down to 10 they got got a new engine, let's say. Sure. And in the

countdown, it's implied that they no longer speak French in France. French is a dead language in the future. Yes. They'd say they instead of saying whatever Frenchies say for two. I mean, hot shots. I don't look. Oh, yeah. Do. Yeah. I took Spanish, not French in high school. I took French and I learned nothing. And also, well, anyway, it's a nice anti-French joke, but those would be less funny after invading Iraq. Yes. At least to the lefty liberals who watch Futurama.

Post-Freedom Fries. And then we get to see the Planet Express ship in the first episode, too. You kind of have to set that up because that is their starship enterprise that will take them to new fun adventure and it has a simpsons overbite even the ship does that's right so uh after abandoning their career chips fry bender and lila are fugitives or are they so i guess without jobs we'll be fugitives forever not necessarily are you three by any chance interested in becoming my new spaceship crew?

New crew? What happened to the old crew? Oh, those poor sons of... But that's not important. The important thing is I need a new crew. Anyone interested? Yes. Yes!

That's exactly the job I've always wanted. Thanks for the offer, Professor. But we don't have the proper career chips. Oh, that won't be a problem. As luck would have it, I saved the chips from my previous crew. This is awesome! Are we gonna fly through space, fighting monsters and teaching alien women to love? If by that you mean transporting cargo, then yes.

It's a little home business I started to fund my research. Cool! What's my job gonna be? You'll be responsible for ensuring that the cargo reaches its destination. So I'm gonna be a delivery boy?

Exactly. Alright! I'm a delivery boy! Exactly. All right! I'm a delivery boy! Great ending. It makes you think the entire episode was kind of pointless because if Fry got chipped at the beginning, he could have just went to Farnsworth and got hired immediately with the career chip in his hand.

Oh yeah, you could be my delivery boy now and that would be it. But it is a great premise to set up all future episodes of, well, what's going to get them in a new situation? Well, they'll fly somewhere to deliver it, and then an adventure will happen like that. Though they get kind of bored with that pretty quickly,

the premises for the show. So I love the future that they are still using manila envelopes to hold chips. By the way, contents of Space Wasp's stomach. Yes. Which will be addressed again. Yes, it will be. But they were bees on the episode,

not wasps. It's a kind of bee, I guess. I think you also might need to explain to younger people the air tubes in general, because that is how we did our banking in the 80s. Oh, yeah.

Those don't exist anymore. I do not believe they exist anymore. There's got to be, like, in the Midwest, there's got to be some tubes still rushing around. I mean, I haven't been in a car in a decade, so I have not had a reason to go through a drive-through at a bank and deposit money. But it's...

Me neither. It's awesome to think, if you watch any sci-fi from that era, those sucky tubes. Delivery system is all over everything. We all thought pneumatic tubes were the future. Is that what pneumatics... Is that what he said?

Oh, yeah. Pneumatic tubes. Actually, I worked in an ancient office building, probably built in 1910. And on every floor, all over everything. We all thought pneumatic tubes were the future. Is that what pneumatic is? Is that what he says? Oh, yeah. Pneumatic tubes. Actually, I worked in an ancient office building, probably built in 1910. And on every floor, there were tubes running all throughout the floor. And guess what?

With a picture of Mr. Zip. Wow. Did they operate? No. Oh, my God. Because I was youngstown, Ohio. Only one floor of 30 had businesses in it. So there you go. That's how we used to send our dick pics, kids.

Pneumatic tube. Well, as Homer says, the tube knows what to do. in it so there you go that's how we used to send our dick pics kids pneumatic tube well as homer says the tube knows what to do i i think that is a great ending and that it completely sets up who philip j fry is which is a guy who learns no lessons and is happy with being exactly the same exactly has no goals it crams in a ton of information and premise and doesn't overload itself waits a little bit to introduce the other characters. I think it's perfect. It's one of the best pilots I've seen.

Yeah, it's good. It got me so excited as a 16-year-old, almost 17-year-old. Like, yes, more of this. More, more, more. When I was 16, I really enjoyed it. I would say the only thing that hurt it for me was that I watched all of the commercials 8 million times for it in my excitement without realizing it was almost every joke

from the pilot. Yeah, I mean, Bender shitting a brick when the cops show up. Which is now a gag in every single DreamWorks movie. It really is. Someone just dropping something heavy out of their pants. Depends on what it is. It'll be like an egg if it's a chicken.

Well, Pixar would do it too multiple times with Mr. Potato Head. Finding Nemo, the ink from the octopus. Yeah, which the ink does not come out of their anus. Like, come on. Yes, so that was Talking Futurama, folks. I got to say, great job, everybody. I thought we did an amazing job.

But at home, you're like, I love Talking Futurama, Bob Mackie of Talking Simpsons fame. Where can I have more of this? Well, I'll tell you what. If you didn't listen to the beginning, the second episode is now live on of Talking Simpsons fame. Where can I have more of this? Well, I'll tell you what. If you didn't listen to the beginning, the second episode is now live on the Talking Simpsons Patreon. For just $5 a month, you'll get that, all the future episodes, which won't be free, and everything we've done so far, which is too much to list. But, Henry, do it.

Jesus Christ. Talking Critic. There's an interview with Mike Scully and Bill Oakley. Two interviews with Bill Oakley. Two interviews with Bill Oakley. Paul Provenzano, the producer. I'm trying to, I've sat through a lot of these.

We've had to hear it a lot. It is a three minute speech. Is it Mimi Rogers? Yeah, we have an interview with Mimi Rogers. No, not Mimi Rogers. Mimi Rogers is different. Oh, my bad, not the actress. That would be pretty irrelevant.

Keep going. Oh, also, every season wrap up of the show that we did, deleted scenes. We did the entire series of Talking Critic that was like the predate to this. And there's tons more coming after that. Oh, and our monthly community podcast where we chat or we talk through some of our favorite comments.

Yes. Episode two is waiting for you. Why don't you reach out and give it a call? Go to Patreon.com. Talking Simpsons. Five bucks will get you that and all the rest. They won't be free. I'm sorry,

but we got to make a living, folks. Shut up and give us your money. Exactly. Okay, that's good. That's a good sales pitch. Maybe consider listening to Laser Time 302010 or Fidget Game Apocalypse.

Do it or suck my tiny metal dick. Not as appealing. Thank you for listening, folks. We'll see you next week, or maybe even now, for episode two. The series has landed. See you then. You are now dead. Thank you for using Stop and Drop,

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