Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Futurama’ Season 11 On Hulu, Where Fry, Leela And Company Return After Ten Years

The first new episode of Futurama in a decade literally picks up where the show left off, with the universe frozen in time, except for Fry and Leela. It’s been awhile since the show has been resurrected from the dead, so it was high time to bring it back. But will fans still watch?

FUTURAMA SEASON 11: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A recap of the last scenes of what was supposed to be Futurama‘s series finale in 2013, where the world is frozen in time except for Fry (Billy West) and Leela (Katey Sagal). Professor Farnsworth (West) tunnels through time, finds an old Fry and Leela — and cringes at their wrinkles — and offers to send them back to when time froze, but they lose their memories of their life together. They agree, and when they get back, time unfreezes. Amy (Lauren Tom) says, “Did someone switch the universe off and on?” Hermes (Phil LaMarr) says, “It feels like we got rebooted!”

The Gist: Yes, indeed, Hermes: Futurama has indeed gotten rebooted. Bender (John DiMaggio), frozen in the middle of chugging a beer, finds it’s stale, and spits it right into the mouth of Zoidberg (West). “Yay! I’m sharing backwash with friends!” exclaims the perpetually-sad crustacean. Bender lights up a cigar and says, “We’re back, baby!” before the credits roll: “Futurama: Avenged!”

Back at Planet Express HQ, the Professor brings up the atomic calendar, complete with pin-up model. It’s 3023, which means that Fry has been in the future for 23 years; he gets depressed that he’s accomplished nothing with all that time. He decides that he’s going to actually achieve a goal: To watch every TV show in existence. He subscribes to the fourth-most popular streaming service, Fulu (using his email address from Panucci’s, where he worked in 1999).

It seems like a stupid goal, but Leela decides that she doesn’t want to crush his dreams, as tempted as she may be to do it. He’s already watched a lot of what’s there, to the point where all he has left is All My Circuits. Problem is, it’s got over 10,000 episodes. He impulsively takes binging goggles that screw directly into his visual cortex — “Ow! My cortex!” — and Farnsworth puts him in a “sit suit” that pumps a steady stream of nutrition in and waste out.

Months go by. As Fry gets closer to the end of the series, Farnsworth is afraid that his consciousness will end with the series. His solution: Make more episodes. Leela and Bender go to Fulu and propose a reboot; they agree to it because Fry has bought merch from all their sponsors. They resurrect Calculon (Maurice LaMarche) from hell and get started. But things start to get insane when Fry doubles the viewing speed.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Futurama, Seasons 1-10 (or 1-7 based on the DVD releases. This is the 8th production season, but the 11th broadcast season).

Our Take: No matter how many times Futurama comes back from the dead — and this feels like the fourth time it’s done that — it always comes back as if nothing really has changed. And that’s the great thing about the Matt Groening and David X. Cohen’s series; the characters never change, even if their relationships evolve somewhat. And the plots of whatever new season there is tend to hook right into current pop culture with relative ease.

Sure, the first episode makes a ton of in-jokes about how many times the show has been cancelled and rebooted. “Any TV show that cares about its audience, that loves and respects them should… no, must be cancelled every few years,” Fry says when testifying in front of President Nixon’s head (West). That’s the last of a ton of jokes about cancellations and comebacks. It feels like a lot, but after ten years, we should give the writing staff the chance to get those jokes out of the way before getting to the stories they want to tell.

Still, the first episode was a funny takeoff on the binge culture that’s taken hold in the decade since the show was last making original episodes. The second episode, where Amy and Kif (LaMarche) become parents 20 years after Kif gave birth to tadpoles, is a better story than the first episode, which is more gag-heavy. But that’s not different than any other season of Futurama, where some episodes go for the rapid-fire gags and others tell a more affecting story between the somewhat less rapid-fire gags.

If you recall, DiMaggio held out longer in salary negotiations than the rest of the cast, but even though Bender isn’t front and center in the first two episodes, the vulgar “robut,” as Zoidberg calls him, is an essential part of every episode, giving his cynical one-liners and puffing cigar smoke in people’s faces. Another voice, or an AI version of DiMaggio’s, wouldn’t have been the same.

Was this reboot necessary? Not really, but no reboot really is. What’s good about this one is that, because of the opening Cohen and company gave themselves in the supposed series finale, things can just keep going like they have for the past 24 years.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: “Sobering thoughts from some drug-addled weirdo,” says Nixon’s head.

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to David Herman, who plays Scruffy the janitor and always has one or two funny lines per episode, and jack-of-all-trades voice Tress MacNeille.

Most Pilot-y Line: “We love everything about this show. It’s not working out at all,” says one of the Fulu robot executives to Leela and Bender when they cancel the All My Circuits reboot.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Listen, it’s Futurama. If you’ve been a fan of this show over the last quarter-century, you’re going to watch these new episodes, and they’re going to be as funny and sometimes frustrating as they’ve always been.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.