by Sol Harris
At this point, it’s passé to point out that Futurama has been brought back from the dead more times than Jason Vorhees. Still, ten years on from the show’s last series finale, “Meanwhile”, here we are, ready to go again.
The first time the show was cancelled, fans were desperate for a revival. It felt like there was unfinished business because, well… there was. Among other things, Fry and Leela were yet to get together. The last time it was cancelled, however, it all largely felt right. The show seemed like it had now been able to say everything it had to say – a sentiment echoed by showrunner, David X. Cohen, in several 2013 interviews.
On top of that, “Meanwhile” was the most perfect finale the series could have hoped for. It was hilarious, imaginative and genuinely beautiful – both emotionally and literally. It left us with Fry and Leela married and having lived an entire, blissful life together into old age. It was the sort of thing a Pixar movie would stick in its opening 20 minutes to ensure they win a few Oscars that year.
With all that in mind, does “The Impossible Stream” manage to live up to the absurdly high standards it needs to achieve to feel justified? …Not really, no. The plot inexplicably focuses on the incredibly low-stakes, sitcom-y plot of Fry deciding to binge watch everything on the streaming service Fulu. It’s a strange choice for following up “Meanwhile” which featured, among other things, time-travel, a wedding and the potential end of the world. And the contrast in scope is exacerbated by the fact that this new episode’s cold open picks up directly from the end of “Meanwhile” before shrugging and moving on.
Inside-Hollywood episodes of Futurama were never the show’s best. “Bender Should Not Be Allowed on TV” and “That’s Lobstertainment!” are largely seen as two of the original run’s worst entries, so focusing on parodies of streaming TV and meta gags about reviving the in-universe soap opera, All My Circuits, ten years after its cancellation are an odd choice for the season premiere. That said, it’s very exciting to us that Leela and Bender pitch the revival as “20 episodes with an option for 20 more… maybe a movie”. Here’s hoping we finally get that theatrical Futurama movie we’ve wanted for so long once the show is inevitably taken from us yet again.
“The Impossible Stream” isn’t hilarious but there are a handful of great gags in the mix including numerous future streaming titles like Cosinfeld, Alien vs. Predator vs. Bluey, The Queen’s 8-bit and The Friends Reunion Reunion and the show’s ongoing Twilight Zone parody, The Scary Door, being replaced with Black Mirror pastiche, The Scary Mirror. The show’s revival is seemingly not constrained by runtimes anymore with this new episode running at 24 minutes – 2 minutes longer than previous episodes. This often leads to severe pacing issues with comedies (see Arrested Development), but there are none here.
One sour note is that John DiMaggio is now top-billed in the credits – presumably the result of his widely publicised contract disputes before signing on to reprise the role of Bender. Billy West, the formerly top-billed voice of Fry, The Professor, Dr. Zoidberg and Richard Nixon (to name four characters in this episode alone) is undeniably the show’s lead, so it’s a shame to see him needlessly bumped down a peg.
Also of note: Cara Delevigne makes a bizarre surprise cameo in the new episode as a robot with no lines. We hear her screaming at one point when she gets accidentally crushed and that’s it… but she’s right there in the credits. We’ll have to keep our fingers crossed for a home media release (and the return of Futurama’s beloved audio commentaries) so that we can hear if this is the result of her being friends with someone on staff, a die-hard fan of the show who asked to be in it or something else entirely.
“The Impossible Stream” sadly ranks among Futurama’s weaker episodes to date, but it’s not even close to being the worst. It’s still absolutely Futurama, baby! In fact, it’s almost uncanny how effortlessly the show manages to pick itself up and start walking again. The episode is arguably a much stronger outing than the previous time the show had to bring itself back from the dead with “Rebirth” – and, despite that shaky start, production on season 6 ended up being fantastic overall, featuring several of the greatest episodes of the show ever made. With season 8 getting off to an even stronger start, things are looking very good!
