Futurama: The 10 Best Episodes (So Far)
Best Line:
80’s GUY:There are two kinds of people: sheep and sharks.Anyone who’s a sheep is fired.Who’s a sheep?
DR. ZOIDBERG:Err, excuse me… which is the one people like to hug?
80’s GUY:Gutsy question.You’re a shark.Sharks are winners, and they don’t look back because they have no necks.Necks are for sheep.
10.Godfellas – This high-concept episode leaves Bender adrift in space after an attack by pirates.As he drifts through the unending emptiness, tiny organisms evolve and build a society on his chestplate.They worship Bender as their god, which suits Bender just fine.And then everything goes wrong, when hundreds of tiny people die building a distillery for their god, and then a splinter group moves to Bender’s shiny metal ass and declares war on the chest tribe.Everybody dies, and then Bender meets God.Or the remains of a spaceship that crashed into God.Meanwhile, Fry is desperate to find his lost friend, and ultimately he and Leela have to rough up a group of monks.
Best Line:
FRY (after Bender is launched from the ship):You mean we can never catch up with him?Not even if we rub the engine with cheetah blood?
9.Insane in the Mainframe – Fry and Bender accidentally end up as accessories to a bank robbery when they run into Bender’s psychotic friend, Roberto.Thanks to the disinterested Judge Whitey, the two of them end up in a home for insane robots.This is relaxing for Bender, but it’s pure torture for Fry, whose soft pink body is easily bruised.Eventually, Fry goes mad and starts believing he is a robot.Ironically, the robot doctors take this to mean that he’s cured.There’s another bank robbery, a hostage situation, and Fry as the worst robot ever.(Robots don’t say “ye”!)Fry’s time in the asylum is hilarious, and Roberto is one of the funniest minor characters on the show.Something about a robot who carries a knife is inherently hilarious.
Best Line:
FRY:I’m not a robot!I don’t like having discs crammed in me!Unless they’re Oreos, but even then, only in the mouth.
8.War is the H-Word – Fry and Bender join the Army to get a discount on gum at the exact moment that war is declared.Serving under the always funny Zapp Brannigan, they’re deployed to a planet of Ball aliens, while Leela disguises herself as a man to keep an eye on them and ends up stirring some new emotions in Zapp.There are many, many ball jokes (“I have seen too many body bags and ball sacks”), battle scenes that are kind of exciting but also hilarious, and Bender is implanted with a bomb that will go off when he says the word ‘ass’.There’s a really good M*A*S*H* parody, a list of Bender’s most frequently used words, and the head of Richard Nixon up to no good.
Best Line:
BENDER:This is the worst kind of discrimination.The kind against me!
7.Anthology of Interest I – This particular gimmick was on its way to becoming an annual 
tradition, much like The Simpsons and their “Treehouse of Horror” episodes.The “Anthology of Interest” brought us three “What If?” scenarios, with the crew seeing alternate realities with the Professor’s What If machine.(Which is activated a different way every time we see it.)We learn what would happen if Bender were 500 feet tall (a city-destroying battle with a giant Zoidberg), if Leela were more impulsive (murder galore!), and what would happen if Fry never came to the future.While all the stories are great, the third one really scores when Al Gore’s Science Rangers have to force Fry into the future to save reality.Gore voices himself, as do Star Trek’s Nichelle Nichols, Dungeons and Dragons creator Gary Gygax, and Professor Stephen Hawking.(The other member is Deep Blue, the chess computer.)Al Gore is surprisingly funny, by the way.
tradition, much like The Simpsons and their “Treehouse of Horror” episodes.The “Anthology of Interest” brought us three “What If?” scenarios, with the crew seeing alternate realities with the Professor’s What If machine.(Which is activated a different way every time we see it.)We learn what would happen if Bender were 500 feet tall (a city-destroying battle with a giant Zoidberg), if Leela were more impulsive (murder galore!), and what would happen if Fry never came to the future.While all the stories are great, the third one really scores when Al Gore’s Science Rangers have to force Fry into the future to save reality.Gore voices himself, as do Star Trek’s Nichelle Nichols, Dungeons and Dragons creator Gary Gygax, and Professor Stephen Hawking.(The other member is Deep Blue, the chess computer.)Al Gore is surprisingly funny, by the way.Best Line:
NICHELLE NICHOLS:Something’s wrong.Murder isn’t working, and it’s all we’re good at!
6.Time Keeps on Slippin’ – This episode begins with an alien race of Harlem Globetrotters challenging Earth to a basketball game.(“There are no stakes!I repeat, nothing is at stake!”)Professor Farnsworth creates a team of atomic monsters, but in order to speed their growth, he harvests chronotrons (time particles) from the edge of the universe.This damages the space-time continuum, and suddenly time starts lurching forward at random intervals.Like, time moves forward a few minutes (or longer) without warning.Events occur as they would have, but nobody has any memory of them.With the universe threatening to unravel, Farnsworth has to team up with the Globetrotters, who are also crack astrophysicists.Complicating things are Bender’s desire to be a Globetrotter, and the fact that one time jump leaves Fry and Leela married and with no recollection of how Fry finally won her over.It provides a real emotional core to a story that is inherently silly.It’s great fun.
Best Line:
PROFESSOR FARNSWORTH:At this rate, by Tuesday it will be Thursday.By Wednesday, it will be August.And by Thursday, it will be the end of existence as we know it!
5.The Devil’s Hands are Idle Playthings – This is the episode that ended Futurama’s original run, and it went out in grand fashion.Desperate to win Leela’s heart, Fry attempts to learn the holophoner, the most difficult instrument in the world.It’s sort of like a recorder, but it also creates visuals keyed to the music.When he turns out to be terrible at it, Fry makes a deal with the Robot Devil and ends up with the Devil’s hands.They make Fry a brilliant holophonist, but the Devil is horrified at his new hands (“They keep touching me… in places.”)He puts an elaborate plan to trick Fry into trading his hand’s back, and it all comes to a head at the premiere of Fry’s opera.It’s overly complicated, the musical numbers are really funny, and most of the supporting cast gets one last appearance.The ending is sweet, too.I’m thrilled that it’s not the end of the series after all, but for a few years there, it was a darn good way to go out.
Best Line:
BENDER:Sure, I can help you, but we might have to metaphorically make a deal with the devil.And by “devil”, I mean “Robot Devil”.And by “metaphorically”, I mean “get your coat”.
4.Roswell That Ends Well – An accident with Jiffy-Pop sends the Planet Express ship back to 1947.Specifically, to Roswell, New Mexico.Until the Professor can fix the ship, the crew tries to
blend in, but the people of the 30th Century have only a vague understanding if the 20th Century, and think everything happened at the same time.(See the Professor’s zoot suit and Leela’s poodle skirt.)Dr. Zoidberg is picked up by the military, Bender’s body is destroyed, and Fry accidentally becomes his own grandfather.It would be best not to think about it, but you don’t have a choice in the matter.The whole thing is hilarious from start to finish, with a two-fisted Harry Truman, Fry’s horrifying courtship, and a really satisfying sequence where the Professor decides he doesn’t care about history and it’s time to kick the past’s ass.Also, it’s a key episode in Futurama continuity – the fact that Fry is his own grandfather turns out to be significant in later episodes (especially “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid”), and it’s the reason that he needs to go to the 30th Century.
blend in, but the people of the 30th Century have only a vague understanding if the 20th Century, and think everything happened at the same time.(See the Professor’s zoot suit and Leela’s poodle skirt.)Dr. Zoidberg is picked up by the military, Bender’s body is destroyed, and Fry accidentally becomes his own grandfather.It would be best not to think about it, but you don’t have a choice in the matter.The whole thing is hilarious from start to finish, with a two-fisted Harry Truman, Fry’s horrifying courtship, and a really satisfying sequence where the Professor decides he doesn’t care about history and it’s time to kick the past’s ass.Also, it’s a key episode in Futurama continuity – the fact that Fry is his own grandfather turns out to be significant in later episodes (especially “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid”), and it’s the reason that he needs to go to the 30th Century.Best Line:
PROFESSOR FARNSWORTH:You mustn’t interfere with the past!Don’t do anything that affects anything.Unless it turns out that you were supposed to do it; in which case, for the love of God, don’t not do it!
3.Less than Hero – This episode combines two of my great loves when superheroes come to Futurama.Fry and Leela get superpowers from a tube of Miracle Cream, so Bender joins them in a super-powered trio.Fry:Captain Yesterday (Per his theme song:“Captain Yesterday is fast / Not just fast, he’s from the past”).Leela:Clobberella (“Cloberella beats you up, beats you up, beats you up / Who does she beat up?You!”).Bender:Super King (“Super King has all the powers of a king, and all the powers of Superman / Also he’s a robot, ain’t that cool?Super King, you rule!)It’s a hilarious satire of superheroes, including even an archvillain known as the Zookeeper.(His animal army includes an elephant who never forgets… to murder, a badger with a troubled past and nothing to lose, and Lucky, a seldom-used hermit crab better known as Citizen Snips.)This episode is incredibly goofy and it’s just so much fun.This one might make me laugh harder than any other.
Best Line:
LEELA:I’ve been looking for a way to serve the community that also incorporates my violence.
2.Bender’s Big Score – This was the first of the DVD movies, and it’s a hilarious and complicated piece of storytelling.Basically, nudist alien scammers take over Planet Express and reprogram 
Bender to steal history’s greatest treasures, using the formula for time travel that is tattooed on Fry’s butt.Fry ends up both in the past and the future, while a strangely familiar guy named Lars shows up to romance Leela.We learn that time-lost duplicates of things are prone to disaster, we see the love of a man for a narwhal, the last day of 1999 keeps getting more and more complicated, and the whole thing is awesome.There is some real emotion to Fry’s story, besides the sheer lunacy of the time travel and Bender’s murderous reprogramming.As a reintroduction to the world of Futurama, it could not possibly have been better.
Bender to steal history’s greatest treasures, using the formula for time travel that is tattooed on Fry’s butt.Fry ends up both in the past and the future, while a strangely familiar guy named Lars shows up to romance Leela.We learn that time-lost duplicates of things are prone to disaster, we see the love of a man for a narwhal, the last day of 1999 keeps getting more and more complicated, and the whole thing is awesome.There is some real emotion to Fry’s story, besides the sheer lunacy of the time travel and Bender’s murderous reprogramming.As a reintroduction to the world of Futurama, it could not possibly have been better.Best Line:
BARBADOS SLIM:You haven’t seen the last of Barbados Slim.Now, good-bye forever!
1.Jurassic Bark – Hey, do you feel like a good cry?Then you’re going to want to see my favorite episode of Futurama.When the fossilized body of Fry’s dog (Seymour Butts) is discovered by archaeologists, it triggers a flood of memories back to Fry’s happiest memories of the 20th Century.Bender, who’s practicing to become a magician, is jealous.Now, I can’t even go much further than that, because I refuse to ruin the hearbreaking ending.Trust me, if you like dogs or have a heart that’s capable of love, you won’t be able to get through this one with dry eyes.
Best Line:
BENDER:Fry, I’m sorry.I should have understood how someone can love an inferior creature… because I love you.Not in the way of the ancient Greeks, but the way a robot loves a human, and a human loves a dog, and, occasionally, a gorilla loves a kitty.
I can’t wait for Thursday – Futurama is one of my favorite shows ever, and the fact that we’re getting new episodes after all this time is really exciting.Come watch it with me, and we can talk excitedly about it on Friday!
