Are We Waving Goodbye To The Wrong Groening Show?

Most of us aren’t new to the emotional rollercoaster ride that is devoting one’s heart to the whims of American network television. Even my dad, a veritable Phil Ivey of feelings who rarely goes in for pop culture, was visibly crushed when The X-Files stopped being a thing.

So it was a pretty colossal bummer to find out that Futurama had begun its final run of episodes for Comedy Central; season 7B premiered in the same week that the sixth season of True Blood made its face-clawingly disappointing debut (the show’s always been hammy, but this wasn’t even entertaining). Particularly because the flagellated corpse of that other show bearing the Matt Groening banner, The Simpsons, is still being strung up and made to dance like some sad, Weekend at Bernie’s-esque marionette.

Aired alongside its sibling on Fox in 1999, Futurama was “created” by Groening, based on another one of his high-concept premises — but it’s widely credited to be the brainchild of clever producer David X. Cohen. In 2003, the show was cut as short as Zapp Brannigan’s uniform, only resurrected as four straight-to-DVD movies (which would later be chopped up and broadcast as season five) after the success of the reruns on Comedy Central’s Adult Swim. The network gave it 56 more episodes, and 7-B will reportedly be its final 13-episode stint.

Almost as significant to me as golden-era Simpsons, Futurama’s novel premise of a dim 20th-century pizza boy thawed-out in the distant 3100s not only created the conditions for imaginative storylines and hilarious retroactive political commentary (Richard Nixon’s head is the overlord of the universe); it was also written with an astounding amount of heart, that far exceeded any incredulous Lisa or near-breakup of Homer and Marge.

People are still reeling from the closing scene of season four’s ‘Jurassic Bark’, a sequence so devastating that setting a still from the episode as my Facebook cover photo elicited a slew of teary emoticons and accusations that I’m a monster for having done it. (News surfaced this morning that Fry’s dog Seymour will be coming back in the final season.)

But for all our moaning that it’s finally (probably) done forever, Futurama’s disappointing ratings suggest that Comedy Central is making the right call. While characters like Fry and Farnsworth (voiced by the amazing Billy West), Leela (the cycloptic space captain played by the brilliant Katey Sagal), and Bender (John DiMaggio) remain in the forefront, others have become mere plot devices or, like Zoidberg (West), caricatures of their already-far-out selves.

And while excavating the beloved Seymour is one thing – it’ll drive up ratings by drudging up fond and painful memories of the show’s greatest moments, and at the same time serve as a fitting goodbye to a stalwart of animation history – installing eternal bummer Seth MacFarlane as his voice is quite another.

Smell ya later, Futurama. Smell ya later forever.

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Dijana Kumurdian writes about art, design and expensive things (like yachts) at her day job at Vogue Living, and in her spare time is a freelance music writer, Photoshop hobbyist, hip hop DJ and longtime slacker rock fan.