Though it’s not as widely beloved as “The Simpsons,” Matt Groening and David X. Cohen’s “Futurama” has amassed a dedicated and vocal cult following since its initial run that has all but earned the show a guaranteed place in the 21st century pop cultural canon. “Futurama,” an animated sci-fi sitcom about a pizza-delivering everyman named Fry who is transported to the year 3000, ran for fourteen years and seven mostly good seasons on Fox. While it may not boast as many memorable characters, moments or catchphrases as Groening’s biting dissection of the American nuclear family, “Futurama” was its own unique embarrassment of riches for those attuned to its strange wavelength. The show’s influence extends to many of today’s better animated comedies, from Dan Harmon’s gloriously whacked-out “Rick and Morty” to “Bojack Horseman.”
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Surely, Groening could have cashed in his chips and phoned in another family sitcom with a bumbling paterfamilias at its center, but “Futurama” is not that. Rather, it’s a neat reversal for those who were expecting Groening to repeat himself, as well as a grandiose sci-fi adventure laced with moments of character and world building that rivaled pretty much any other animated show on television at the time. It was a deft blend of satire and situational comedy, using the imagined absurdities of the future to comment on the inanities of the present.
“Futurama” is also notable for putting its nerd credentials front and center. The creative brain trust of the show were once referred to as “the most overeducated cartoon writers in history,” and when you’ve got three PHDs, seven masters degrees and fifty collective years spent at Harvard University on your team, that’s a hard claim to dispute. A new video essay titled “Futurama: The Science of Comedy” examines how a genuine love for science and math was translated into the show’s authorial voice. The video makes particular note of the excellent third season episode “Godfellas,” in which the show’s abrasive, hard-drinking resident robot Bender becomes his own microcosmic God. Taken on its own terms, it’s a neat gimmick, but Groening and Cohen transform the episode’s goofy narrative into a sly metaphor for humanity’s often desperate need to believe in a higher power.
Absolutely none of this is lost on the show’s creators. It’s hard to believe that a show that once featured Richard Nixon’s floating head in a jar as a recurring character could also tackle weighty subjects like global warming and systemic racism, but according to Cohen, the two approaches are more symbiotic than you might think:
“There’s not a lot of things in that category, comedy-science fiction,” Cohen says. “There weren’t a lot of role models. The more seriously we took the science and the science fiction elements, the better the comedy worked. We’d have a serious set-up, and then the character’s petty concerns played against the fate of the universe and billions of years of history.”
What’s your favorite “Futurama” episode? Let us know in the comments section below. In the meantime, watch “Futurama: The Science of Comedy” here.