Hulu’s ‘Futurama’ Reboot Is Brilliant, but Inside Jokes May Alienate Newcomers: TV Review
Hulu’s ‘Futurama’ Reboot Is Brilliant, but Inside Jokes May Alienate Newcomers: TV Review
There appears to be a collective disdain toward reboots in films and television, yet, at this point, Hollywood is locked into the format. Creators are reviving some of their most precious and well-…
The Hulu reboot of Matt Groening's 'Futurama' is brillant but newcomers may feel alienated.
inside jokes may alienate newcomers
oh, shut up and watch the first 7 seasons, you lazyass. they're a comedic masterpiece!
128I’ve never gotten around to watching futurama, but I wouldn’t jump straight into the 8th season and then complain about inside jokes…
21Seriously. What a stupid take.
4
It’s almost as if you shouldn’t start watching a show in its 11th season without having seen the previous seasons.
99As an Futurama addict, did I miss a few seasons? This is season 8 right?
11Broadcast order vs production order weirdness.
20Tbh I’m not sure. That’s what this upcoming season is being labeled as
5I think series 4, 6 and 7 are all considered two series each in the US due to the way they broadcast them. I know the classic runs boxsets only reached series 4 in the UK then one for the films.
3Depends on whether we go by broadcast or production numbering. Some production seasons got spread out across two broadcast seasons.
3https://thetvdb.com/series/futurama#seasons
You can switch between all the different possible orders and season breakdowns and not make Hulu Season #11.
By broadcast, the first 4 produced seasons were broadcast as 5 seasons with weird breaks (Typical Fox).
Example, season 1 was produced as 13 episodes, Fox aired 9 episodes, then aired the last 4 episodes of season 1 as the first of season 2.
This is the reason why Plex season 2 episode descriptions are off by about 4 episodes if you ripped your DVDs but play them through Plex.
The fox run ends with "The Devils hands are idle playthings"
The Comedy Central run starts with "Rebirth"
Between the two there were 4 movies which are broken down into 16 episodes for broadcast.
I can't make it make sense...
4 Fox (production) seasons + 1 season with the 4 movies + 3 Comedy Central Seasons = 8 pre Hulu seasons making the Hulu season #9
Hulu season is #8 if you don't count the DVD season
Hulu Season is #9 if with Fox 5 aired seasons + DVD + 3x CC
Counting each DVD as a season (which seems very wrong) makes it either 12 or 13.
The view and season order I go by:
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Who writes these stupid articles? What’s next? “Don’t watch Avengers Endgame. Too many inside story arcs?”
What idiots
52Bite my shiny metal ass!
41Fuck them newcomers
27I don't feel like there will be very many newcomers, and I don't think that will harm the show in the slightest.
18Yeah we’re talking about a show that first aired over 20 years ago and was cancelled twice. Are “newcomers” really the target demographic?
223x actually, at least.
5
Hey, I'm here for the inside jokes!
14I'm 40% inside jokes
14Clunk Clunk
5
To everyone saying, "That's a stupid take," or, "But who cares?" Probably Hulu.
It's a numbers thing. You have fans of Futurama, that's one market, and you're likely to get a good percentage of those as people coming in to watch the reboot, but not 100% of them. But if they're the only ones who stick around to watch the full new season, that's a really limited market. That's a relatively teeny tiny audience. There are plenty of shows that tried to continue marketing themselves in their later seasons, especially episodic (as opposed to serial) shows. Because you always want your numbers to grow. You want to bring in new fans.
I also don't see it being a huge thing because I don't think a lot of people who have never heard of Futurama before are going to be particularly interested in the reboot, but the thing is that some would be. And hitting them with inside jokes that they're not going to get without having watched the rest of the series, yeah, it's going to make some of them turn the show off instead of going back and watching the older stuff or keeping going. We've seen that happen before. And that risks making the audience shrink instead of grow. That's bad. That will probably lead to it getting canceled again. If the creators are fine with that, I as a long-term fan am going to watch the new season anyway and would prefer a good, clear artistic vision to shine through than something that's simply looking to draw in the widest possible prospective audience, but from a publisher standpoint, from the viewpoint of a new fan, and even from the viewpoint of someone who simply wants more seasons, I can kind of understand why potentially alienating new viewers would be seen as a concern.
9If the previous seasons are available to watch on Hulu as well, then dependence on those seasons might be a feature and not a bug. “Check out this new episode! Oh, there’s a joke you didn’t get, better binge the old seasons. And now that you’ve done that, gotta watch the new ones a second time to get all the jokes now!”
11Certainly something I'd considered as well. Though, I would say that kind of strategy hasn't generally proved successful in television in the past, at least not over the average. However, streaming kind of makes that a little foggier. Futurama, along with The Office, were some of the most repeatedly streamed shows on Netflix before their contracts got canceled and they were moved to Hulu (The Office eventually moving to Peacock). So while that strategy tends to not work very well, every time that it does work may be a big enough boost to retention that it's considered a viable strategy. I don't know, of course, since I don't work for Hulu or in any relevant field, so it's all amateur speculation.
4
Just watched the first one and throughly enjoyed it.
3Just watched it and it was awesome.
"We're back, baby!"
3I had no idea they brought it back, thanks for posting!
3“Oh, no room for fuckReddit bot, huh? Fine! I’ll go build my own lunar lander, with blackjack and hookers. In fact, forget the lunar lander and the blackjack. Ahh, screw the whole thing!”
2
That could be said for the original run... and the movies... and the Comedy Central run... maybe that's just what the show is... 🤔
Seriously though, I think people forget how niche Futurama was/is. It has always been a minimum of good, but only appealed to the hardcore nerds way into science, sci-fi, animation, and occasionally fantasy.
2Permanently Deleted
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