Entertainment

Remembering Futurama’s ‘Jurassic Bark’, The Saddest TV Episode Of All Time

I'm not crying, you are.

by Millie Roberts  17 December 2021
futurama

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It’s been nearly 20 years since Futurama first aired one of the saddest episodes in TV history ever made.

‘Jurassic Bark’ continues to pull on the heartstrings of dog owners everywhere, by exploring the powerful, never-ending love of man’s best friend that literally transcends time and space. In 2018, culture critic Scott Meslow described the ep as “legendarily gut-punching”, with an astounding ability to “reduce any non-sociopath to sobbing by the time the credits role” in GQ.

The tearjerker episode centres around main character Fry, who we learn had a dog named Seymour Asses when he was alive back in the late ’90s. A thousand years in the future, he visits a museum chronicling the olden days and finds the fossil of his old pup on display. A flashback reveals how the pair first came together — Fry finds the stray in an alleyway while delivering pizza and the two instantly become inseparable.

“His name was Seymour,” Fry earnestly recalled. “He was once intimate with the leg of a wandering saxophonist. He had wet dog smell, even when dry. And he was not above chasing the number 29 bus.”

Back in the past, Seymour instinctively tries to stop Fry from going on that fateful pizza delivery trip which sees him getting trapped in a cryogenic freezer for a millennium on New Years Eve in 1999. “I won’t be gone that long Seymour! Just wait until I get back,” said Fry, patting him on the head.

The dog scampers around town in the days that follow, searching for clues as to where his master went in a desperate, yet futile attempt to reunite with his best friend.

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Meanwhile, Fry’s robot bestie Bender becomes jealous of the rock version of a dead dog, and after failed attempts to prove that he’s cooler and better than the furry friend, then tries to sabotage efforts to clone Seymour’s DNA by hurling the fossil into molten lava.

Fry hurls off his clothes and tries to jump into the molten liquid to save the carcass, decrying that Seymour would come after him if the roles were reversed before being stopped by his friends from launching to his death. Bender, seeing the error of his ways, ends up rescuing Seymour by diving in himself.

Professor Farnsworth reboots the cloning machine and muses that Seymour died aged 15, more than a decade after Fry got frozen. “Seymour lived a full life after I was gone,” said Fry as he stopped the process going ahead.

“I had Seymour until he was three. That’s when I knew him, that’s when I loved him. I’ll never forget him — but he forgot me a long, long time ago,” he said, finally letting go.

Cue the most depressing montage of all time. Taking Fry’s final command to him to heart, Seymour waited outside the pizza shop day in and day out until his last dog breath.

The painful ending is seared into the memories of everyone who’s seen the clip ever since. I’m not crying, you are.