Search - Futurama, Vol. 1 on DVD

Best New TV Series

Brad | USA | 11/02/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Futarama is the best new TV series. If you only watch "Simpsons", "Family Guy", or "King of the Hill" then what the heck is wrong with you. Futarma is so funny on so many different levels. They have so many guest stars like Pamlea Anderson, a couple Star Trek members, and the voice of Richard Nixon. The three disc collection contains episodes 1-13.



The show is about Fry (Phillp) who a loser pizza delivery boy that has nothing to live for. His girlfriend leaves him he always gets fake deliveries. He ends up getting frozen for 1000 years. He wakes up in December 31, 2999. He goes out nd meets a robot and ends up running into Leela which joins him for the rest of the show. Fry trys to find a reletive in the future. He finds Professor Farnsworth who is some 100 year old man which ends up being his nephew. He hires them as his delivery crew on go on all kinds of exciting and funny missions. Here is a list of the episodes and what there about:





Disc1

1.Space Pilot 3000

After an accidental cryogenic freezing, Fry awakens at the dawn of the year 3000. With the help of his two new friends, a swearing robot, and a cute one-eyed alien named Leela, Fry defies his life assignment as a delivery boy. He tracks down his great-great-great-etc. nephew, Professoe Farnsworth, who hires the three to work for his intergalactic delivery service.



2.The Series Has Landed

After delivering a pacgage to an amusement park on the moon, Fry shows Leela how to appreciate the celestial body. Meanwhile Bender finds a little robot romance with a farmer's daughters, which puts the whole crew in jeopardy.



3.I,Roommate

Fry is such a slob that he is forced to move out of the Planet Express offices. But friendship makes for strange bedfellows when he moves in with Bender and discovers the nuts and bolts of living with a robot.



4.Love's Labours Lost In Space

On a mission to save endangered animals from a collasping, lonely Leela meets legendary starship captain Zapp Brannigan - who (at least in his own own opinion) is the universe's greatest ladies man.





Disc 2

5.Fear Of A Bot Planet

While delvering a package to a planet inhabited by robots, where humans are killed instantly, Bender becomes intoxicated with the robot lifestyles and must choose between becoming a celebrity of sorts or saving his friend's lives.



6.A Fishful Of Dollars

Fry discovers he's a billionaire because his savings have been accruing interest for 1,000 years. Caught up in the excitement of his riches, he squanders his fortune to buy an unopened can of anchovies - extinct since the year 2200. What he doesn't realize is that Mom, the head of mega-conglomerate, will do anything - even use Pamela Anderson's head in a jar - to get her hands on those anchovies.



7.My Three Suns

The crew visits a planet inhabited by liquid aliens. Fry, after delivering a package under the scorching heat of the planet's three suns, finds a bottle of cool blue liquid to quench his thrist. But when that liquid turns out to be the civilization's ruler. Fry finds he has become the new leader. Initially drunk withpower, he soon discovers his life is in danger and must turn to his friends to help him dry out.



8.A Big Piece Of Garbage

A gigantic ball of garbage carelessly launched off earth in the 21st century returns on a collision course for NNYC and Fry and the crew set out on a mission to destroy it.



9.Hell Is Other Robots

Bender puts his sinful lifestyle behind him when he joins the Temple of Robotolgy. But after returning to his old ways, he is banished to Robot Hell where, in a musical extravaganza, he faces the Robot Devil and endures tortures unimaginable to man.





Disc 3

10.A Flight To Remember

Professor Farnsworth treats Planet Express crew to a vacation on the largest, most luxurious space cruise ship ever built - the Titanic. Once in space, love is in the air as Bender falls for a beautiful robot Countess and Fry dates both Leela and Amy. Captain Zapp Brannigan sets a course for adventure when he decides to steer the Titanic through a swarm of comets, or as calls them, "the icebergs of the sky."



11.Mars University

When Fry returns to college to prove he can be just as good of a dropout as he was in the Twentieth Century, Professor Farnsworth surprises him with a dorm roommate, a super-intelligent monkey. Meanwhile Bender, a legend of the robot fraternity "ERR" leads a revenge of the robot nerds.



12.When Aliens Attack

The Omicrons threaten to destroy the earth if they can't see the last episode of the lost 20th Century TV series "Single Female Lawyer" starring an unmarried human female, who wears very short miniskirts, struggling to succed in human man's world. Because the last episode was destroyed by someone spilling beer on the transmitter (Fry), the crew from Planet Express must deliver their version of single Female Lawyer.



13.Fry & The Slurm Factory

Fry opens a "Slurm" beverage container bearing the golden bottle cap and wins a tour of the "Slurm" Factory (a la "Willy Wonka") to see how the world's most deliciously addictive soft drink is made. Wandering off from the tour, Fry is horrified when he accidently discovers the top-secret ingredient that makes "Slurm" so impossible to resist.

"

The kind of place where there could be a monster, or some ki

Alexiel | United States | 08/27/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

""Futurama" Season 1. I love Futurama. Absolutely love it. There's a lot of hand-wringing about what's better, Futurama, Simpsons, etc., and I will say this - Futurama is far better than the Simpsons have been since Season 7. It's very much a mixed blessing that we'll never get to see Futurama go down the tubes with ridiculous, unfunny plot lines like The Simpsons did.



This might anger a lot of people, but Futurama is actually better than even Family Guy. Family Guy may have brilliant moments, but Futurama has a heart and a soul - Family Guy has cutaways and flashbacks but there's no warmth. Futurama expertly balances genuine emotion with sidesplitting comedy. Futurama is probably my second favorite show of all time, hands down. I love it. It's like somebody with my exact sense of humor wrote this show. "Let's try and get out through this steam pipe. No good, it's full of steam!" Oh man.



Anyway, enough of that. This is the first season of Futurama on DVD. First of all, let me say that, unlike Family Guy, I really ejoy the fact that they have commentaries on all of the episodes (take that FG and your 2 commentaries per disc). The commentaries make watching the episodes over and over again a must. In a way, they almost double the number of episodes in the series - the antics of John DiMaggio, Billy West, David X. Cohen, and Maurice LaMarche in particular (Morbo, Horrible Gelatinous Blob, and Lrrr sounds nothing alike) are at times almost as howlingly funny as their onscreen counterparts. By all means, watch *all* the commentaries.



With that said, let's not gloss completely over the negative. Why Futurama is an amazing show, Season 1 is the worst season of Futurama. They haven't quite found the groove yet, in the commentaries or the episodes. The voices aren't as good or as funny as they would come to be. Hermes, Zoidberg, and The Professor are too subdued. Bender's voice is more gravelly and less madcap craziness. The plots aren't as sharp and developed, and the jokes are less sure of themselves. But cheer up! They only pale in comparison to the following seasons of Futurama, which are among the best TV episodes I've ever seen broadcasted on television. No joke.



Without further delay, I'll briefly rate and review the episodes of the first season. If they seem harsh, keep in mind this was the first season, a time of growing pains, the show was still opening into what would become a beautiful crysalis. Anyway:



#1- Space Pilot 3000 - 6/10. Good but not great. A nice way to open the show, but doesn't blow you away. On another note, I never get tired of seeing the construction worker from the "You gotta do what you gotta do" poster show up on weird posters through the series.



#2- The Series Has Landed - 5/10. Simply average. This episode doesn't really do anything for me, the show is still laying a lot of groundwork at this point. My favorite line: "Jackie Gleason wasn't an astronaut. He was using space travel as a metaphor for beating his wife."



#3- I, Roommate - 6/10 - This episode is a little better than the first. Fry gets kicked out of the Planet Express building and moves in with Bender. Wackiness ensues as they search for an ideal place to live (not in New Jersey). You feel the show take a big step towards what it would become.



#4- Love's Labours Lost In Space - 9/10 - Now you're talking! Introduces characters like the hilarious Zapp Brannigan and Kif Kroker. These two are great. "And what's the name of the law, Kif?" "*Sigh. Brannigan's Law." This is one of my favorite episodes of Season 1. The commentary is good too.



#5- Fear of A Bot Planet - 4/10 - And back down we go. This episode has an interesting premise, but Bender being nastier than usual, and not in a funny way, kind of hurts it a little, besides the fact that the jokes are somewhat weak.



#6- A Fishful Of Dollars - 6/10 - Fry's bank account has drawn a lot of interest in a thousand years, so with his newfound riches, he wants to buy anchovies. Okay, I didn't describe it in the most glowing terms, a number of people really like this episode, I'm not one of them.



#7- My Three Suns - 7/10 - Fry becomes emperor of a desert planet. It's funny, but it could have been a lot funnier.



#8- A Big Piece of Garbage - 2/10 - Probably in my bottom 5 of Futurama episodes. There is very little to like about this episode at all. The title fits.



#9 - Hell Is Other Robots - 7/10 - This episode has been called one of the best by some people, I like it as well, but not as much as others, again. Bender undergoes a voyage of self-discovery that takes him from seedy dens of electrical vice (jacking on), through religious renewal, and finally to the depths of hell itself. Luckily he has good friends to help him out.

#10- A Flight To Remember - 9/10 - Equally touching drama, epic space-fantasty, and hilarious parody, Futurama does a great job with its send-up of Titanic, and as always, it's great to have the Zapper and Kif back. While it has some dynamite lines (Brannigan's "learning disability") it also has some touching moments - Fry and Leela, standing together, lonely yet not alone, admiring a far-off nebula as untouchable as Leela must seem to Fry, and Bender's love for a robot above his own station in life. This is a great episode that has a little bit of everything.



#11- Mars University - 7/10 - A number of threads revolving around the title university take center stage in Futurama's sendup of the classic movie "Animal House." The talking monkey, Guenter, is endearing and comical, and as always there are plenty of laughs (Fry's spit-take from a glass of punch that appears out of nowhere) but after the near-perfection of A Flight To Remember, this one falls a little short.



#12- When Aliens Attack - 7/10 - The beginning is a little slow, but it really picks up when the Planet Express crew is forced to act out the last episode of a cancelled FOX television show from the 1990s - or else face total annihilation.



#13- Fry And The Slurm Factory - 8/10 - Nearly a 9, in my book. Hilarity ensues when Fry wins a tour of the secretive factory of Slurm, a repulsive but popular 31st century drink. What's the secret ingredient? You may not want to know. Fry's addiction to Slurm ("damn arms!") and his and Bender's adventures with the Z-Ray in the beginning are definite highlights of this fine episode.



Keep in mind, if you think I've been harsh on these episodes, starting with season 2 when I get around to finally reviewing them (I've seen them all when they were originally aired and have watched all of them a number of times since) you'll be seeing a lot more 9s and 10s. These early episodes are only appetizers to what will be a very pleasing main course. The season gets a little weak in the middle but it finishes strong."