Space: the final frontier … for package deliveries, of course. Since Futurama debuted in 1999, the series has released 160 episodes (including the Season 12 finale, “Otherwise”). Despite being canceled (two or three times), the Planet Express crew is still hard at work.
To celebrate 12* seasons of Futurama, and in anticipation of at least two more, Geek Girl Authority is counting down our top 10 episodes of the series (so far). While you’ll expect some that appear on this list, others will surprise you. Our number one choice is sure to prove controversial (but this author stands by it). Nevertheless, know that there were some very close contenders for the top 10 that occupy ranks 20 through 11. Here are our top 10 Futurama episodes.
*Season numbering reflects Hulu’s categorization for ease of streaming access. If you have the DVDs of the earlier seasons, figure out what discs they’re on yourself, Ms. Moneybags.
Where No Fan Has Gone Before
It’s no secret: Futurama is deeply informed by the greatest sci-fi Franchise to ever grace television screens, Star Trek. But perhaps no single episode pays homage to Trek as completely as Season 4’s “Where No Fan Has Gone Before.” Written by David A. Goodman (who would go on to work on Star Trek: Enterprise) and directed by Patty Shinagawa, this episode guest stars (almost) every then-surviving cast member of Star Trek: The Original Series.
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Sure, there’s the frame that parodies “The Menagerie” and the action that parodies, like, five episodes of The Original Series (perhaps especially “The Savage Curtain”). However, the best part of this episode is how it showcases both the best side of fandom through Philip J. Fry (Billy West) and the worst side of fandom through Melllvar (Maurice LaMarche).
Of all the many Franchise-related jokes in the episode, the reuse of the final line of “The City on the Edge of Forever” might be my favorite gag. Or the Jonathan Frakes cameo. Either that or the shot of Kif Kroker (LaMarche) in the credits. Or…
Reincarnation
Futurama has had an embarrassment of great anthology episodes, beginning with “Anthology of Interest I” and including the severely underrated and misunderstood “The Prince and the Product.” But my personal favorite has to Season 8’s “Reincarnation.” Written by Aaron Ehasz and directed by Peter Avanzino, this episode opens with God (first introduced in Season 4’s Top 10 near-runner-up episode “Godfellas”).
God begins by telling the audience that nothing ever dies, it is just reborn in a different form. This theme is central to Futurama and has been since the very first episode. However, in “Reincarnation,” this statement becomes more literal.
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Over the course of the episode, we see Futurama reincarnated in three different styles of animation. The first, a black-and-white cartoon that echoes the early work of Disney and Fleischer, is a visual feast. Plus, it has a hilarious twist ending. The final segment sees the crew reborn as anime characters and gives the often-overlooked John Zoidberg (West) a chance to shine. The best is the middle segment, which adopts a pixelated video game style and embodies a legitimate examination of a philosophy of science question.
How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back
Before Season 2’s “How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back,” written by Bill Odenkirk and directed by Mark Ervin, we didn’t know much about Hermes Conrad (Phil LaMarr). This episode fills in the blank in a hilarious and clever way. In the future, bureaucracy will be codified. Hermes begins the episode as a Grade 35 bureaucrat, but the actions of Bender Rodriguez (John DiMaggio) lead to demotion, causing him to have a breakdown.
Hermes is subsequently replaced by Grade 19 bureaucrat Morgan Proctor (Tress MacNeille), who begins an affair with Fry because she finds his wanton slobbery irresistible. This ultimately leads to Bender’s personality being downloaded to a disc and sent to the Central Bureaucracy to be filed (think “the DMV on steroids”).
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After escaping the forced labor camp, Zoidberg recommended as a spa, Hermes and LaBarbara Conrad (Dawnn Lewis) return for a show-stopping musical number that’s still stuck in my head two decades after I first heard it. Meanwhile, Hermes’ final “promotion” at the conclusion of the episode to Grade 37 is a funny gag. But it also showcases the show’s cynicism toward the oppressive mechanisms of society as opposed to its sentimentality about its characters.
Quids Game
At first glance, Season 12’s “Quids Game,” written by Cody Ziglar and directed by Crystal Chesney-Thompson, is an archetypical Futurama flashback episode. But there’s a twist!
Just when you think the episode will end on a more typical, sentimental note, there’s a devastating reveal. While Fry’s parents thought they were giving Fry a very special birthday, they were actually dealing him psychic damage that he’d be dealing with a literal millennia into the future.
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In addition, this episode features several elements that pay homage to Star Trek. Plus, it’s a showcase for some of the best (but underused) ancillary characters, including Dr. Lauren Cahill (MacNeille). And hey: who doesn’t enjoy hearing Tom Kenny guest star?
Into the Wild Green Yonder
The final of the four Futurama straight-to-DVD movies, Into the Wild Green Yonder, has a story by Ken Keeler and David X. Cohen, a screenplay by Keeler and was directed by Avanzino. Like several of the subsequent entries on the list, it was written with the possibility that it might be the series finale. However, Futurama‘s possible series finales tend to be quite strong.
In this movie, Amy Wong’s (Lauren Tom) father, Leo Wong (West), plays the role of capitalist antagonist. Obsessed with creating the universe’s largest miniature golf course, Leo even goes so far as to team up with the likes of Earth President Richard M. Nixon’s head (West). Meanwhile, Turanga Leela (Katey Sagal) joins the Feministas, a team of militant feminists who must go on the lam after accidentally killing Earth’s Vice President, the Headless Body of Spiro Agnew (LaMarche).
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This movie features an incredibly strong opening: an instant lounge music classic crooned by none other than Seth MacFarlane. And over the course of its four-episode length, we get to meet not one but two members of the ill-fated Waterfall Family (Phil Hendrie). Plus, Into the Wild Green Yonder is one of the most unapologetically environmentalist stories of the series yet.
Jurassic Bark
What’s the hardest you’ve ever cried at a cartoon? For more than a few readers, the answer is sure to be Season 5’s “Jurassic Bark.” Written by Eric Kaplan and directed by Swinton O. Scott III, the episode sees Fry discovering the fossilized remains of his 20th-century pet, Seymour Asses (Frank Welker).
Fry is excited when Hubert Farnsworth (West) reveals he can clone Seymour back to life. But when Fry realizes Seymour lived more than a decade after Fry had been cryogenically frozen, he feels it would be unfair to resurrect the dog after he lived a full and happy life.
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But a final devastating flashback reveals that, contrary to Fry’s assumptions, Seymour didn’t live a happy life. Instead, he waited patiently for Fry’s return … which never transpired (alternate Bender’s Big Score timeline notwithstanding). Many viewers remain traumatized by the final montage, set to “I Will Wait For You,” and its conclusive shot of Seymour dying of old age while still loyally awaiting Fry’s return.
Meanwhile
Another Futurama series finale ahoy! In Season 10’s “Meanwhile,” written by Keeler and directed by Avanzino, a near-death experience at the theme park on Earth’s moon serves as the catalyst for Fry finally proposing to Leela. This coincides with the unveiling of Farnsworth’s newest invention, a button that can cause everything outside the immediate vicinity to be rewound 10 seconds. Fry is inspired to steal the device so as to ensure the moment he asks Leela to marry him can be extended as long as they desire. It’s a legitimately romantic idea.
But things go awry when time travel-related shenanigans leave him erroneously convinced that Leela has rejected him. Thus, he throws himself from the roof of the Vampire State Building. But as he falls, Fry realizes that Leela was going to accept his proposal. Fortunately, he has a device that can reverse time. Unfortunately, the revelation took more than ten seconds. He’s stuck in a nightmarish loop that causes his death … repeatedly.
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Fortunately, Leela and the rest of the PlanEx are able to rescue Fry from the loop. Unfortunately, the button is destroyed in the process, and time freezes for everyone but Fry and Leela. Eventually, Farnsworth is able to rescue them and reset time to the point before he invented the device. But in the meantime, Fry and Leela get to live an entire life, along together on a frozen Earth. Equal parts science fiction, sentimental love story and gruesome Fry death, this is Futurama at its finest.
The Late Philip J. Fry
In “The Late Philip J. Fry,” written by Lewis Morton and directed by Avanzino, another one of Farnsworth’s time-traveling devices complicates matters for the PlanEx crew. Wanting to avoid another incident where someone becomes their own grandparent, Farnsworth creates a time machine that can only travel forward in time. But while testing the device with Fry and Bender, he accidentally sends them thousands of years into the future. Thus begins a musical montage that sees our heroes traveling into the far future in search of the backwards time machine.
Meanwhile, Leela and the rest of the PlanEx crew are left to pick up their lives in the wake of what they assume to be the trio’s death. This is a nice opportunity to see how Leela rises to the occasion, seizing control of PlanEx and elevating it far beyond Farnsworth’s capabilities. However, she eventually discovers the truth about what happened to Fry and sends him a letter across the eons. Leela’s life doesn’t end when Fry disappears. But she does come to understand that her time with him constituted the happiest years of her life.
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Fortunately, the trio of time travelers eventually discover that time is cyclical. After the end of the universe, another Big Bang occurs, creating a nearly identical iteration of the universe. Using the forward time machine, our heroes are able to return to the “present.” And because this iteration of the universe is a few feet lower than the one they came from, the time travel duplicates are crushed to death by the arrival of the time machine.
In a final tragicomic scene, Fry and Leela share a romantic evening on a Central Park bridge while Bender buries the three corpses below.
The Devil’s Hands are Idle Playthings
Yet another Futurama “series finale,” Season 5’s “The Devil’s Hands are Idle Playthings,” written by Keeler and directed by Bret Haaland, features the return of one of the show’s greatest guest stars: the Robot Devil (Dan Castellaneta). Desperate to win Leela’s heart, Fry strikes a deal with the Robot Devil to improve his skill at the holophoner, which won Leela over in Season 3’s “Parasites Lost.”
This all culminates in an operatic debut that occupies the entire third act of the episode. The extended musical number sees everyone’s feelings laid bare – even Amy’s (who is skeptical the whole musical number could be ad-libbed).
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With a final jab at Nixon and a sweet conclusion that shows the connection between Fry and Leela, this episode is one to remember … especially if you were watching back when it wasn’t clear that there would be any further development of their relationship. But one of the best aspects of this story is the subtle ways that it shows how Fry’s presence in the future has changed and influenced Leela and Bender’s lives.
All The Way Down
And our number one episode of Futurama is Season 11’s “All The Way Down.” Written by Cohen and directed by Ira Sherak, this episode sees the PlanEx crew asking, “What if we really are living in a simulation?” And then, it definitively answers that question: they are. And furthermore, they ultimately discover this to be the case. The catch? On the next level up, they’re going to overload the computer running the simulation due to the method of their discovery.
This is a legitimate science fiction story that doesn’t shy away from very hard questions. Ultimately, simulated Fry concludes that, simulation or not, their feelings for one another are real, and that’s what matters. But unbeknownst to them, next-simulation-up Farnsworth has underclocked the computer, slowing their timeline … but not from their perspective.
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In the final shot, Fry and Leela move in for a kiss as time slows down. In this simulation at least, their romantic moment has been indefinitely extended. We should all be so lucky.
All these episodes (and 150 more) are currently available for streaming on Hulu.
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