Futurama

Falling back on an easy topic, but it so happens that I just finished watching (the final) Season 8 of this show.     

Beginning.   This started in 1999.   It so happened that in October 1999, I started dating my ex-GF, Leila, right as the show was gathering steam.   Leila has two eyes and non-purple hair, but her own Brazilian charms.  Anyhow, Fox kept it until 2003.  In 2007 they released 4 direct to DVD films.  Seasons six, seven and eight were picked up and broadcast by Comedy Central.  I’d say throughout the entire series a remarkably high standard of quality was maintained.  

It centers on Fry, an underachieving delivery guy from 2000 who is accidentally frozen for 1000 years and wakes up in 3000 – and picks up where he left off, working at a planetary delivery company, Planet Express, in New New York.  Since everyone he knew from 2000 is dead, he has to bond with his co-workers, eventually developing an unlikely romance with Leela. 

Fry (Billy West).  The main character, shares most animated main male (?!?) characters’ idiocy (Homer Simpson, Peter Griffin, etc.) without being endearing.   I never liked him that much.   However, I do love the “Fry [not sure if…]” and “SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!” memes he inspired, and which I may well have posted in various ways on Facebook in the past. 

Turanga Leela (Katey Sagal).   Purple haired, one-eyed mutant with an impressive figure, voiced by Peg Bundy herself with just as much sass and arrogance as you might expect.  Don’t mess with her.  After believing herself an orphan, she finally discovered her parents, who live in the sewer (!).   Early on there was an episode featuring Ed O’Neill, best known as Al Bundy on “Married With Children”, as an alien with whom Leela hooks up. 

Bender Rodriguez (Jon DiMaggio).  The cynical, alcoholic robot.  Count on Bender to act in bad faith and epitomize any and all vices you can possibly imagine - including prostitution with robo-hookers.  Robots have an amusing and prominent role in the series, especially Calculon, the star of “All My Circuits” (Calculon: “I’ve been processing this for some time…”).  Or those “incompetent robot elders”….

Professor Farnsworth (Billy West).   Fry’s descendant – probably from his older brother.   The professor is predictably absent-minded.  Typically he can be counted on to invent whatever implausible but plot-required technology they need to get the episode going. 

Amy Wong (Lauren Tom).  The team’s other female, with an alluringly flat tummy and exposed belly button.   She doesn’t do much more than be cute, though.  Her parents fit the stereotype of Asian parents – they run a casino on the Moon. 

Hermes (Phil Lamarr, who I recall as the overstimulated UPS driver on "MadTV").  The team’s Jamaican accountant/bureaucrat.  His job seems to be to veto things which either cost too much or violate regulations, as prevalent in the 3000’s as they are now.   

Dr. Zoidberg (Billy West).  Actually somewhat of a lobster.  I’m sensing a heavy dose of Yiddishness injected into him, particularly his accent.  It’s like they wanted a Jewish character but didn’t want to actually make the character Jewish. 

Most of the adventures involve foreign planets or alien invasions.   Years ago, after digesting all 70+ episodes of “Star Trek: The Original Series” (ST/OS) I then watched all of the animated series shows from the early or mid-‘70s.  Of course, due to budget constraints all of live action Star Trek alien races - even on more recent series such as "Next Generation", "Deep Space Nine", "Voyager", etc. - have to be humanoid:  basically like humans with different hair or skin, but two arms, two legs, one head, etc.   With animation you’re freed from that constraint and can make any sort of alien you can imagine.  And the Futurama writers are certainly imaginative.   Of course they’ve got a fair amount of tributes and “in jokes”, the most recent I caught being the “Two Lane Blacktop” tribute episode and Bender’s encounter with Finn & Jake of Adventure Time, both from the final season which is obviously freshest in my mind. 

At this point I’ve seen all the episodes but the earliest ones - now 20 years old - are evaporating into the recesses of my memories.  Here’s a show where I’m seriously tempted to purchase the full set.  The movies I recall as being of equal quality.  Enjoy!

Rick & Morty

As promised, here’s my R&M blog.

With food, I like things simple.   No Big Mac or Whopper, with their cacophony of discordant tastes, including mayonnaise:  just the burger, the bun, and ketchup.  Pizza?  Plain.  Subs?  Just steak or chicken, provolone, and the bun.  When I went to Egypt, I just ate pita bread.   When it comes to food, I have zero tolerance for weird shit.  Well, my preference for ghost peppers and habaneros might be a little weird – make that LOW tolerance for weird shit, in the food department.

When it comes to many other things, like music and TV, I’m the opposite:  count me as High Tolerance for Weird Shit.  Woohoo!

Case in point: Rick & Morty, a three season animated TV series.  It began loosely based on Doc & Marty from “Back to the Future” and rapidly generated into something far stranger.   Rick Sanchez, the Mad Scientist, is Morty’s grandfather, the father of Morty’s mother Beth and often a nemesis to Morty’s father, his son-in-law, Jerry, while Morty has an older sister Summer who is fairly normal.  I only watched it recently, initially turned off by the crude animation – which had originally turned me off South Park as well.  Like South Park, once you get past that you can actually enjoy it. 

Rick is usually involved in some bizarre scheme for which he drafts Morty.   Time travel, other worlds, dimensions, you name it.  Nothing is too weird or bizarre.  In fact, you can count on it.  An entire dimension full of nothing but Ricks and Mortys?  Gotcha.  Meet up with Ice-T himself (the rapper)?  Yes. 

South Park criticized The Family Guy as having its joke pattern be diversions into irrelevant tangents – and even went so far as to elaborately speculate on exactly how those tangents are developed (hint: manatees).   R&M has its own pattern, which is Rick being able to have a normal conversation or discuss mundane issues, or to hold that conversation, with whoever, while all sorts of bizarre stuff is going on.  Not quite the same, but I’d say equally entertaining.  Another amusing feature is that Beth, Jerry and Summer frequently wind up participating – usually less than enthusiastically – in Rick’s adventures to other dimensions.   

It was originally on Adult Swim, from 2013 to 2017, consisting of three seasons of 10 episodes each, with more coming up in the distant future – 70, which implies 7 more seasons.   If you share my High Tolerance for Weird Shit, you may well be advised to see what I see and enjoy it yourself.  

TV

It’s been around longer than I’ve been alive (41 years) and still going strong, in fact now available in HD.  For the purpose of this blog, I’ll include cable TV, not simply broadcast.  Here are my thoughts.

 B&W.  Plenty of TV shows from the mid-60s and early were originally in black & white, but I recall us having a small black & white TV in the guest bedroom in the 70s.  Europe switched over in the 70s to color TV, with Romania and Albania being the last (1978).  I can’t really think of many early 60s and earlier TV shows I really cared for – including “The Honeymooners”.

 Cable.  Growing up in the 70s, we knew NO ONE who had this.  In fact, we were unaware it even existed until the early 80s and MTV.  By far, MTV is what put cable TV on the map.  This was back when they actually played music videos (if anyone can remember that).  I was never that impressed by HBO, though the new Pacific series has me vaguely tempted.

 FOX & UHF.  Back in the 70s, there was no “FOX”.  We just had the big three: ABC, NBC, and CBS.  There were various UHF channels, plus PBS.  PBS mainly gave us “Sesame Street” and “The Electric Company”, and also showed “Benny Hill” and other British shows.  The UHF channels mainly showed offbeat movies.  The prevailing wisdom was that no one could compete with the big three.  WRONG.   Fox gave us “Married With Children” and “The Simpsons” and has been going strong since then.  

 Game Shows.  I prefer “Jeopardy”.  I like to play along at home.  If I don’t know the answer, I’ll come up with something.  “He invented mustard.” “Who is...Madonna?”  The “$64,000 Pyramid” was also damn good.  Sometimes I wonder if the point of “Let’s Make A Deal” was specifically to ridicule and lampoon game show contestants – “Jerry Springer”, ahead of its time.

 Sit-Coms.  Usually these are stupid beyond words.  But “Two and a Half Men” is hilarious, despite its dull and unoriginal premise.  Is it my imagination, or did the sit-coms get duller and more wholesome in the 80s?  I’m thinking of “Family Ties”, “Growing Pains”, “Full House”, all those family shows with annoying little morals and squeaky clean kids.  Not that “Roseanne” was really any better.  Back in the 70s, the shows were more cerebral and pretentious: “The Odd Couple”, “Rhoda”, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” (check her out in the opening credits wearing a purple Vikings jersey, #10!).

 Soap Operas.  Daytime, I never watch – usually I’m at work anyway.  These are clearly for people who stay at home during the day.  I am catching up on “Dallas”, and follow “Desperate Housewives” (as mentioned earlier).

 Late Night.  First there was Johnny Carson.  ZZZ – humor for the WWII generation, of which I’m not.  Leno, in that respect, was a big improvement (plus he’s a huge car guy).  Letterman I never liked: he’s an uptight doofus pretending to be a cool guy.  Conan is probably the best of the three, very real but funny.  And remember Arsenio Hall?  Or Chevy Chase?

 TV nonstop.   I am not one of those people who watches it nonstop, putting it on as soon as I get home from work and leaving on all the time, even while I sleep.  I watch it when I have something I want to watch.

 “Reality” TV.  Whether it’s “Jerry Springer” or “Survivor”, I zone out.   What annoys me about the “Survivor” shows is that it’s 30% “actual survival” and 70% “stupid office intrigues, personality conflicts, ratting people out”, things of that nature which never interest me.  The same with “Biggest Loser”, which seems at least as much of this backstabbing and personality conflicts as about... losing weight?

 Drama.  I tend to ignore most of these.  I don’t watch “Grey’s Anatomy”, any “CSI” or “NCIS” show where they cleverly solve all sorts of crimes with advanced technology.  Give me “CSI LONDON 1888” where clever Scotland Yard detectives FINALLY tell us who Jack the Ripper was.  And please bring back “Life on Mars”.

 Crime/Cops.  I never watched “Miami Vice”.  I wasn’t really into “Starsky & Hutch” (though the car was cool), “Knight Rider” (it was on when I was in France, I only got into after I bought my black Firebird), “Baretta”, “Mannix”, “Hill Street Blues” (talk about a bewildering array of characters on that one), “The Rockford Files”, “The Streets of San Francisco”, etc.

 Sports.  Usually I watch NFL and soccer (including the World Cup).  I ignore most of the Olympics, ESPN, baseball, basketball, hockey, tennis – and GOLF is dull to watch, only marginally less dull to play.  I’ve finally got RedZone, but haven’t had a chance to watch it yet.  But I am not one of these guys who zones out in front of the TV for a game, which during football season would be 1 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Sunday, with a break between the end of the 4 p.m. game and the beginning of the Sunday night game for dinner + Monday Night Football.

 HD.   FINALLY I got an HD TV, and scroll down past channel 702 to get all the HD channels.  The resolution is astonishing.  It simply has to be seen to be believed.

 The Best.  If I had to name the best, I’d say here are a few:

“Two and a Half Men”.  Charlie Sheen plays Charlie Harper, a jingle writer, single with no kids.  His brother Alan (John Cryer), is a divorced chiropractor who moves in with Charlie after his wife Judith kicks him out.  He has a young son (the same actor all this time).  The humor is astonishingly adult for a sit-com, and Sheen’s real life is mercilessly ridiculed. 

 “My Name is Earl”.  Quality insanity from Jason Lee.  He’s got this list, see?  And he has to keep crossing off the bad things he’s done and make up for them, one by one.  His brother Randy isn’t too bright, his ex-wife Joy clearly uses those white trash bags, but the latina maid is very hot.  I like the odd mix of low-class & deep philosophy.

 “M*A*S*H”.  I’ve already gone on about this at length.

 “Friends” was OK. I got into this because it came on after “Seinfeld”, and continued to watch it after “Seinfeld” ended, following it until this show itself ended.  With “My Name is Earl” gone, Thursday night is basically “The Office”, which while good doesn’t compel me to set aside the evening for TV.

 The Office.  No laugh track, simply humorous situations, particularly Michael Scott (Steve Carell) who is (of course) consistently unintentionally funny, which is the whole point.  I loved the one where Dwight (Rainn Wilson) “catches” Oscar playing hookie, oblivious to Oscar’s much more controversial secret, his special friend (!).  Or when Michael is unaware he’s wearing a suit designed for Hillary Clinton.

 “The Simpsons”.  Remarkably, this has not “jumped the shark” (peaked) but is still getting better.  Matt Groening is the Steven Spielberg of TV.  I don’t know how they keep coming up with new ideas, but somehow they do it.

 “Seinfeld”.  This show was fantastic.  You never knew what was going to happen, it was completely unpredictable.  And they would run with stuff – George didn’t lose his Yankees job in the next episode, nor did Elaine’s job with Peterman fizzle out by the end of the episode.  About the only thing you could predict is that whatever idiotic scheme Kramer and Newman had, it would end up badly. 

 “South Park”. Winding up the three S-shows.  Although it can be extremely offensive at times, Parker and Stone leave you wondering: did they deliberately try to mess with us, or is this just their twisted sense of humor?  No one is tackling delicate and controversial issues more directly and more humorously.  And this is a crudely animated cartoon show about 4 10 year olds in Colorado.  Sad to say it, but “Family Guy” – as clever and funny as Seth McFarlane may be – is simply a tagalong copycat.