Hello and welcome to Project Nitsuj. Welcome to another edition of Animation Bang. I can’t deny it, I love Futurama. Futurama is one of my all-time favorite adult-animated shows. Matt Groening’s sci-fi comedy has aged like fine wine. While The Simpsons seems to have soured with age, Futurama seems to be the show that keeps on giving us good and memorable episodes. The story of delivery boy Fry getting frozen and waking up in the year 3000 was a funny and clever satire on what everyone thought the future would be like if we as humans lost all restraints on reality. The show has had eight seasons so far and a total of 152 episodes with memorable characters and great sci-fi stories. While the series has had multiple finales over the years it always seems to come back up and give us more adventures with these lovable characters. With so many great episodes, it seems right to honor what I consider the best. I’m Nitsuj and these are the Top 11 Futurama Episodes. Let’s begin.
#11. The Anthology of Interest 2
Similar to the Treehouse of Horror episodes minus the horror. This episode was a collection of short what if scenarios featuring the cast. While the first one was okay, the second one is where they really went all out and delivered. We see Bender become a human. What the world would be like if it was a video game and a parody of The Wizard of Oz. All three were funny stories with creative premises and conclusions. It honestly feels like these scenarios could have worked as full episodes. While there haven’t been any more Anthology episodes the idea has popped up a few times in later seasons (i.e Naturama, Holiday Spectacular, and Saturday Morning Fun Pit) and they’ve been good attempts that feature some good stories. However, nothing will beat this anthology.
#10. The Sting
This episode was a mindfuck, but in a good way. After Fry dies protecting Leela from a bee, she mourns his death and keeps seeing him come back to life only to find out it was all a dream. Fry keeps popping up and Leela wonders if this is survivor’s guilt or if she’s just crazy. This honestly feels like Inception before Inception. It’s an episode that has you guessing what’s going on until the end when everything gets revealed and by God is it a great reveal. Just when you think you’ve got it figured out the episode just gets weirder and confusing. The ‘it was a dream’ trope has been around for a long time and rightfully gets bashed by viewers but this is the episode that makes it work.
#9. Teenage Mutant Leela’s Hurdles
Getting old is never fun and in this episode, everyone becomes fed up with Farnsworth’s old age. So the crew takes him to a youth-regenerating spa where they all get splashed with de-aging tar that threatens to keep de-aging them until they’re un-birthed. This is an episode that has a lot of good laughs. Mostly from Farnsworth. The man is like a time card for every decade and he delivers one of my favorite lines from the series. Leela uses this chance to reconnect with her parents and get that teenage experience she always wanted to have with them which is also funny and leads to her making a life-altering decision. A good episode with some good laughs, a good scenario, and some great lines.
#8. The Late Philip J. Fry
Everyone considers seasons three and four the very best of Futurama. However, the revival seasons also have some good episodes like this one. While helping Farnsworth test out his new time machine that only goes forward, Fry, Bender, and Farnsworth accidentally wind up in the distant future where society as they know it has collapsed. The trio continues to travel into the future hoping civilization can create a time machine that’ll return them to their time but the further they go into the future the further they get away from home the more hopeless it becomes. There’s some funny future scenarios, a good song number, and a touching moment between Fry and Leela through it all. The episode does a good job keeping you guessing how they’re going to get back and the way they do get back is very clever and smart. Futurama is at its best when it blends together comedy and heart into one and this episode does all of that.
#7. Leela’s Homeworld
One of the big mysteries in the early seasons was where is Leela’s homeworld? She was orphaned on Earth where she has no idea where she’s from or even what kind of alien she is. Well this episode finally explores Leela’s origins and answers the questions we’ve been having about her. After spotting some mysterious mutants in the sewer who seem to be stalking her life, Leela goes on a journey into mutant territory to discover who they are and what they know about her. It’s a heart-pounding episode that leads to the big reveal that Leela isn’t an alien but instead has been a mutant this whole time. She had the least disfigurement among the mutants and her parents wanting to give her a better life put her up for adoption. It’s a beautiful episode that puts everyone’s theories to rest and shows us how Leela’s parents have secretly been watching over her throughout her life. Proud of who she’s become and loving her every step of the way. Not every superhero wears a cape and tights. Sometimes they just need to be called mom and dad.
#6. Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love?
Now Zoidberg is on the list. It’s mating season for Zoidberg’s race, so Fry, Leela, and Bender return to his homeworld so he can find a mate and get lucky. When Zoidberg finds a woman he’s interested in he has no luck, so Fry teaches him how to win her over with love. A concept that doesn’t exist on his planet. Emotions run wild, feelings are hurt, betrayal is in the air, and a fight breaks out between colleagues all in the name of love. This is one of the funnier episodes from the series that leads to one of my favorite lines and shows Zoidberg at his funniest and craziest. Let’s never return to this planet again.
#5. Roswell That Ends Well
This is another time-traveling episode that is way funnier than it has any right to be. Fry, Leela, Bender, Farnsworth, and Zoidberg get sent to the past and get stuck in 1947 Roswell. The crew does their best not to alter time only to keep messing up. Bender’s body parts get found by the military who believe it’s a UFO saucer, Zoidberg gets brought in for dissection where he annoys everyone, and Fry kills his own grandpa leading to one of the funniest and most disturbing reveals in the series. It’s an episode that makes me laugh every time I watch it. Almost every scene gets a good chuckle and smile out of me. No matter how much we think we screwed up history it always has a way of fixing itself.
#4. Meanwhile
Futurama has had four series finales so far and each one has seen the show come back for an encore. That has to be a record. However, the best by far has to be the fourth finale. Fry finally works up the courage to ask for Leela’s hand in marriage only to accidentally stop time leaving him and Leela in a frozen world for themselves. Rather than panic the two make the best of the situation. They have a wedding, explore the world, and grow old together enjoying every minute of it. When Farnsworth appears he says he can restore time to the point before he created the device. However, they’ll lose all their memories. Despite having lived a wonderful life together, Fry and Leela both agree to relive their lives knowing that no matter what happens they’ll be together somehow someway. This is hands down one of the best series finales you could have asked for. It’s emotional, funny, and ends on a high note that leaves you smiling and crying. Fry and Leela’s ‘will they won’t they’ relationship has always been a central focus in the series and this finale showed us that you could reset the universe a million times and these two will ultimately be together no matter what. I don’t know if they’ll be able to top this ending but for me, this was the perfect ending to Futurama.
#3. Godfellas
Futurama is known for getting profound with their stories, and this episode might just be their most philosophical. After accidentally being blasted into space, a micro-civilization begins to grow on Bender calling him God. At first, he tries to help them survive only causing more harm. Then he decides to leave them alone which results in nuclear warfare wiping each other out. Bender then comes across a cosmic entity he believes to be God who shares its previous experiences with him and tells him that the trick is to use a soft touch. Interfering but doing it in a small way where people aren’t sure if you’ve done anything at all. If you do too much people get complacent and lazy, but if you do nothing at all they lose faith. By using a soft touch you let people know you hear their needs but at the same time they have to put in the work to get what they want. It’s a great message that puts a good perspective not just on Christianity but religion in general. Whether you’re a believer, agnostic, atheist or somewhere in between this is a message that I feel everyone needs to hear and will resonate with. Personally, I believe God is out there and is helping the world but just doing it in a way where we’re not sure if He’s helping us or not.
#2. Amazon Women in the Mood
Hands down the funniest episode in my opinion. While on a double date, Leela, Amy, Kif, and Zapp crash land on a planet. Fry and Bender go to rescue them only to find out that it’s a planet ruled by large Amazonian women who hate men. This episode just keeps the laughs coming with each scene. Zapp is hilarious throughout the episode with his misogynistic behavior but not to the point where he becomes annoying. The men get sentenced to death by snu-snu leading to another one of my favorite lines in the show and we got Bea Arthur guest starring as the ruler of the Amazonian women. John DiMaggio goes on record calling this one of his favorite episodes as he got to work with her and loved every minute of it. She got the jokes and was just as dirty as the rest of them. The episode also ends on a good note with Kif and Amy becoming an endearing couple and even starting a family together down the line with each other. I always found them to be a cute couple who helped each other grow for the better. Honestly, I might like their relationship more than Fry and Leela’s.
And number one. . .
#1. Luck of the Fryrish/Jurassic Bark/Cold Warriors/Game of Tones
Or as I like to call them: Fry’s Family Loves Him. When Fry gets unfrozen in the future you would think he’d be sad that all of his loved ones are dead, but he was fine. He admitted to having a dead-end job, a girlfriend who cheated on him, and a family he didn’t think would miss him. As the episodes went on we saw these claims backed up in flashbacks as well as in an episode where his girlfriend returns and abandons him for Pauly Shore of all people. We came to see Fry getting frozen as a blessing in disguise. However, in season 3 they decided to show us just how much Fry had an impact on his family and how much they loved and missed him. In Luck of the Fryrish we explore Fry’s relationship with his big brother Yancy who would always copy him and steal his dance moves. When Fry attempts to reclaim his seven-leaf clover from his old house he finds out that Yancy stole and used it to not only become the first man on Mars but he stole Fry’s name in the process. Fry goes grave-robbing only to find out that Yancy named his firstborn child after Fry to continue his legacy. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. In Yancy’s case, he loved his brother so much that he wanted to be like him and wanted to keep his legacy alive that he broke a family tradition where the firstborn is always named Yancy. Yancy’s son could have used that clover to be anything he wanted in the world, yet he chose to continue on the life and legacy of an uncle he never met. If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.
In Jurassic Bark, we meet Seymour, a dog who was Fry’s best friend. When Fry finds the fossilized remains of Seymour at a museum exhibit, he does a hustle strike to get his friend back so that he can revive him. When he succeeds, he discovers that Seymour lived a long life even by dog standards and decides to keep him fossilized believing that Seymour lived a good life forgetting him and finding a new family. Except, he didn’t. Seymour spent every day outside of the pizza parlor Fry worked at waiting for him to return until he finally lays his head down and closes his eyes for the last time. It’s the saddest moment in the entire show and even makes me tear up to this day whenever I watch it. Fry will never know just how loyal Seymour was to him until the very end.
Cold Warriors and Game of Tones came in the revival seasons and while they’re not as good as Luck of the Fryrish and Jurassic Bark they’re great episodes that show Fry’s relationship with his parents. Cold Warriors shows Fry’s dad always being hard on him not because he hated him but because he wanted him to have the mental fortitude to tackle any adversity he would face in the future. I like to believe that the reason Fry was able to adapt to the future so well is thanks to his dad’s love. Game of Tones explores Fry’s relationship with his mom where we find out she always thought of him after he disappeared and loved him dearly. When Fry is able to go into her dream and see her he hugs her. No words are spoken, pretty much everything he wants to say to her can be summed up in that one hug. I’m fine. I miss you. I love you and so much more. These four episodes show us that at his core Fry is a tragic character who was loved and missed by his family. They each showed their love in unique ways and just like they had an impact on his life he had an impact on their life. Like I said before, Futurama is at its best when it blends together comedy and heart and these four episodes accomplish this perfectly.
And that’s my list. What are your favorite Futurama episodes? Let me know in the comments below. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time on Project Nitsuj.