Reviews of the Bosch

In 2014, a year after Futurama ’s second cancellation at Comedy Central, Matt Groening’s other show The Simpsons extended an olive branch with a crossover episode called “Simpsorama” -it wasn’t particularly good but it allowed the Futurama characters one more appearance on TV before presumably fading away. Of course, nine years later it got to come back again on Hulu, and now Futurama is in the position to return the favour to Disenchantment , another Groening show that was canceled by Netflix in 2023. It is fitting, Disenchantment shared a lot of the same writers and voice actors as Futurama , and as a medieval fantasy series functioned as something of a genre counterpart show. So “A New New York Yankee in King Elfo’s Court” doesn’t feel as out-of-place as “Simpsorama” (or the even worse Simpsons - Family Guy crossover); the pitch of both shows is hit quite well. They are still contrasts, but contrasts that gel together amicably. It begins in the (relatively) ordinary world of F...

Though some of the writers on the Hulu run of Futurama have been necessarily younger, let it be remembered that the show is primarily staffed by b oomers and the oldest of Gen-X. An episode like “Oceans Three”, with a demographic audience age of about seventy-five, is a reminder of that. None of its trilogy of parodies are very culturally understood among people under forty, even the one that is only about thirty years old. I’m aware of them because I’m a nerd for movie and TV history, yet some referential jokes even flew over my head. And maybe this genre of sixty-year-old pop culture pastiches would work fine if they didn't come boxed in another lame anthology episode. After last season didn't include one I believed the Futurama writers had realized the gimmick had run its course, but apparently no t . "Oceans Three", as its title implies, is a collection of stories set out on the sea . A particular thing that does distinguish this one is that each narrative ...

“What we see, what we feel, what we observe. That is all that is truly real.” Occasionally in “Lord Nibbler in the Nothingverse” an emphasis is placed on the physiological importance of observation -and yes there is a Schrodinger’s Cat reference. It is a thematic tenet of the episode as well in the relationship between Leela and Nibbler, particularly on Nibbler’s end of how different he is when not recognizing Leela -the meaning of that recognition is reinforced heavily by the end. It is a strong centrepiece to an episode that I wish had matched it in substance -in spite of a heartfelt core this is the first mediocre outing this season since “Beef” . Nibbler is the primary character though, and we see that his relationship with Leela is showing a little more sign of wear. He’s still her “schnookums” but he can get on her nerves by scratching up her boot or eating a whole massive can of food before it lands in his dish. He is contacted though by his people who give him a new final missi...

As much as I love Futurama for its outrageous concepts and sense of humour, the episodes that have always resonated the most for me have been the sweet ones. Silly though they may be, I really love these characters and I like seeing them in contexts that are a little more earnest, revealing, that connect you more to their humanity -even the ones who aren’t human. “Late Bloomers” does that, specifically with two characters, and while it goes down a couple strange paths, it comes for the heart. And it makes you feel good. The episode is in fact a direct follow-up to two previous shows, starting with “Planet Espresso” . That episode ended with Hermes’s father reincarnated as a coffee bean plant, and here we see he is living with the Conrads -though only speaks to Hermes. Badrick as it turns out is dying from some plant disease, and Hermes not wanting to go through the death of his parent again, especially now that they are on better terms, is desperate to save him somehow. This leads int...

Well, there’s some unfortunate timing on this episode’s part. Or maybe on my part because Hulu dropped it a few weeks back despite being out of order and I haven’t watched it until now. Either way it’s weird at this moment to be seeing a caricature of Dolly Parton in a Futurama episode. Perhaps that’s not exactly what Idabelle Sue is meant as, but Tress Macneille is very clearly doing a Dolly Parton impression for her generic sultry southerner voice. It’s a connection hard to miss and it is a little distracting -though that is of course not any fault of the episode “Catfish Hunter”, which is rather good otherwise. An episode about scams and catfishing, naturally it is a Bender show. It also naturally begins with unfortunately an instance of elder abuse. Bender takes Fry to visit his Abuelatron (as seen in “The One Amigo” ) who has left Mexico and moved into a nearby retirement home called Rusty Acres where Bender has made a point to see her once a year. Against the snapshot of her dour...

  It’s been a long time since Futurama has engaged in a relevant way with popular music. Depending on your mileage, it's either when Beck showed up to go on tour with Bender in season three or when the Beastie Boys made a prominent appearance back in season one. That was over twenty-five years ago and the music industry has changed dramatically -it is an ample environment for the show to comment on. And “The Charm Offensive” does just that and in a pretty good way as it targets the pop stardom of figures like Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter. Admittedly some of the jokes are very easy and others quite cliché to Futurama ’s brand, but you can’t really knock the episode for them. The subject demands it. Coco Charm is the pop megastar stand-in here, a teen sensation poised to sell out Madison Cube Garden within quantum-seconds for her upcoming concert. Amy is apparently a big fan and her birthday is coming up so Kif determines to get tickets for her, expressing a certain insecurity...

A story inspired by Larry Niven’s Ringworld series and yet it still gets named after the work of a more prominent genre legend. It is a cool thing to see manifested in Futurama anyways though, especially given how few adaptations of that story and concept have actually made their way out of literature. It is a reminder of how nerdy the writing staff on this show is, who in the early days often mined the more obscure avenues of science-fiction as much as the iconic ones. It comes here in the context of a story that is also interesting if perhaps not very original. We’ve seen a few times now on the show the evolution of a civilization out of something mundane – "Parasites Lost" , "Godfellas" , "A Clockwork Origin" -the last of which this episode has the most in common with given it is another case of one of the Professor’s experiments evolving an entire world and civilization. "Lords of the Ring" doesn’t compare to any of those, a story more conv...