Part of what's been great about the new Comedy Central era "Futurama" episodes is how familiar everything has been - despite the new network, DVD movie run and "down time," everything has popped back into place like a comfortable old show... save for one difference: There's MORE you can do on cable than network, and the writers seem to have taken the newfound freedom as an opportunity to let loose all the pent-up "M-rated" humor and storylines they couldn't use before - "Futurama 3.0" is a MUCH raunchier, more bluntly-sexual show, even compared to the four movies.
It was a touch jarring, at first - the Zap/Leela-as-Adama/Eve episode was a note-perfect riff on the author-working-out-a-fetish substrata of pulp scifi - but in a way it's a logical progression. One of things that's always struck me about "Futurama" was the way it opted - being one of the only (or just THE ONLY?) successful animated sitcom that's not built around a related family - for a thoroughly modern vision of human (etc) relations: The core group of friends/aquaintances fool around, fall into and out of relationships, have quickies, flings and whatnot... without the story "insisting" that this cause long term problems. Fry and Leela remain on/off friends-with-largely-unrequited-benefits, Amy has been with Fry, Zap and Kiff, Leela and Amy had a "moment" while transmuted into fantasy-avatars... okay, so basically it boils down to "everyone gets at least one up-to-bat with Amy," but still it's a decidedly progressive dynamic that you seldom see on ANY TV, let alone animated, and I dig it.
But seeing it come to some kind of "head" in last night's ep, "Proposition Infinity," was pretty remarkable: Bender and Amy is the sort of character-hookup that makes perfect sense only after it's been done, and spinning it off into a social-satire riff as Bender attempts to legalize "Robosexual Marriage" turned out brilliant. Honestly, the whole thing would've been worth it for: "I'm a pre-op Transformer."
I love this show.
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