In Where I Talk Cartoons

[moonshayde]

My stress level has been high again, mainly do to panicking over the real life job issue. Namely, wanting so bad to get a job where I can support myself and be reasonably happy. I can teach now, want to teach, and no jobs! *cries* That stress is hindering my fannish life and my original writing and...*sigh*

So I've been trying to escape through Futurama. I'm still tense, but I'm trying. I'm really trying.


I'd forgotten how much I loved this show. It was so SMART.

I remember when I first watched it I wasn't very impressed. I was a junior in college when it premiered and one of my roommates and I decided to watch it. I was all about The Simpsons back then and my precious X-Files and I had no intention of watching something I thought would be stupid.

It didn't take long for me to start to really enjoy it, though. Needless to say, I really hated Fox for preempting it all the time and putting it on air at lousy times.

I don't know. It's just good. Great for scifi fans. I guess if you're not into scifi, most of it wouldn't make sense, but what I loved about the show is that it had this way of still staying culturally relevant to today while still taking place in the future. And it is really nothing but a satirical look at our society with pop culture thrown in to keep it funny. The dialogue and one liners were amazing. And while Fry isn't the brightest bulb, I think a lot of people can sympathize with him. He really represents the audience in the context of the show as he tries to fit into a futuristic world different than our own.

But what I think what I liked most about it was it also had the ability to be touching. The Simpsons also had this ability back in its first seasons, too. I could be laughing one minute and suddenly something poignant would happen to leave me stunned. I'm thinking of episodes like "The Luck of the Fryish" and "Jurassic Bark" to name a couple. I find that those moments came through the most when the story focused on Fry and the life he left behind as well as Fry and Leela struggling to be comfortable with each other. I know many people will just shrug it off as a cartoon, but I take cartoons just as seriously (or not) as everything else.

And seriously? It has some of the best 'ship on TV. And it's a cartoon. Crazy how the cartoon relationships seem more real than the ones I see on life action shows.

I really loved this show. It's been to smile again with it.

Comments

[lyore.livejournal.com]

I've never really seen Futurama. Perhaps I should watch.

(And good luck with the RL-job things, as well)

[moonshayde.livejournal.com]

Oh I highly recommend it. Especially if you're a scifi fan. The show is written by smart geeks, basically. So not only do you get tons of Star Trek and Star Wars jokes, but you get math and science jokes too, all in the context of history and pop culture with a side of black humor.

I don't know what you know about it, but the premise is that a loser of a person, Philip J Fry, a pizza delivery boy, delivers a pizza to a science lab and gets accidentally cyrogentically frozen on New Year's Eve, 1999. He wakes up in the year 3000. basicaly, he has to adapt to all the changes so you see everything through his eyes. The best episodes focus on his past or when he tries to fit in, or when he struggles to express his feelings for one of the other characters named Leela. Most of the show is based on old scifi cliches :)

A couple of quotes:

Chief Giant Brain: Pathetic human race. Arranging their knowledge by category just made it easier to absorb. Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands! Ha ha ha ha!

Episode concerning a trip to the moon...
Narrator: No one really knows when, where, or how man landed on the moon...
Fry: I do!
Narrator: ...but our Fungineers imagine it went something like this...
[Animatronic whalers emerge from a lunar lander]
Animatronic whalers: [singing] We're whalers of the moon.
Animatronic gophers: We carry a harpoon.
Animatronic whalers, Animatronic gophers: But there ain't no whales, so we tell tall tales and sing a whaling tune.
Fry: That's not how it happened.
Leela: I don't see you with a Fungineering degree.

Professor Hubert Farnsworth: Most video tapes were damaged in 2047 during the second coming of Jesus.

On a random note, all of this reminds me that I really want to watch Star Wars again.

[lyore.livejournal.com]

Argh! Stop making it sound good! The last thing I need is another show to obsess over!

all of this reminds me that I really want to watch Star Wars again.

*nods* You should, watching Star Wars makes everything better :)