Anyone Who Laughs Is a Communist!
By Steven Lloyd Wilson | Posted Under Trade News | Comments (29)
In a move that would make even the spacing between seasons of “The Sopranos” seem timely in comparison, “Futurama” begins its fifth season tonight a little over eleven years since the broadcast of the first episode! With enormous DVD sales, and good ratings on the four movies last year on Comedy Central, the disposable network executives at Fox decided that they’d give it another shot, albeit on Comedy Central instead of the network where science fiction goes to die.
The first two episodes of the fifth (or sixth if you count the movies as a season) season will air tonight on Comedy Central, followed by one per week until the twelfth episode (and hundredth of the series) closes out the season. Fox has already ordered a total of 26 episodes, on which the animation has already been started on 24, according to showrunner David Cohen. So, it’s highly likely at this point that even in the worst case scenario short of the destruction of the universe, that we’re getting at least 26 more episodes. So the summation is: 12 episodes in 2010 (starting tonight), 14 more in 2011.
David Cohen has a good interview up at TV Squad in which he discusses the new run of the show and a bit of the history behind it. Here’s a great quote on one of the episodes of the new season:
So this was an idea Matt Groening had, where the Professor invents a time machine that can only go forward, and a couple of our crew members accidentally get started on that journey in this episode, which will be the 7th one this year. And once they get going, they have no recourse except to keep going forward, looking for a time when people have invented the backwards time machine to get them back. So this is a real epic, in terms of episodes where we get to see the future of, at many, many points into the very distant future. So it’s a kind of visually spectacular, and that’s one of my favorites, definitely, of this season.
To tide you over until this evening, Comedy Central has a “5 seasons in 7 minutes” recap clip, narrated by Zapp Brannigan. Inform the men.
| Futurama | Thursdays 10pm / 9c | |||
| Recap-O-Rama: 5 Seasons in 7 Minutes | ||||
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Comments
Posted by: Anna von Beaverplatz at June 24, 2010 10:11 AM
You know, I got so excited about the return of Futurama, and then in the teevee guide this week I got UBER excited when I saw the blurb for the premiere tonight, and then I READ it, and they're showing Into the Wild Green Yonder. Which I've had on DVD for, like, 2 years. So now I'm a little disappointed.
But, I shall take a deep breath and wait for the ACTUAL new episodes to begin in a couple of weeks and be DELIGHTED that it's back. HUZZAH!