Futurama Should Not Make Me Sad
By Matt Baker March 4, 2009
One of my all-time favourite episodes of Futurama is Jurassic Bark but I tend to avoid watching it. If it is on tv I change the channel and it is always one of the last I watch on DVD. Why, you may ask? Because it makes me cry. Well, not actually, but really damn close. If I wasn’t so gruff and masculine tears would be streaming down my cheeks.
How dare they?! I watch Futurama to laugh, not to become emotionally involved in a touching and poignant story of lost friendship. Television characters, especially those of cartoon sitcoms, should be static and one-dimensional, not complex characters that change and grow over the course of the series. If I wanted to see emotional growth I’d have a kid.
For those that are not familiar with this episode, Fry finds his dog, Seymour, fossilized in a museum and wants the Professor to clone him. At the same time, the B story is told through flashbacks cleverly cut into the A story. During this time Bender becomes jealous of Fry’s obsession with bringing back Seymour, leading to an eventual confrontation. I will not share the outcome, but up to this point the episode has been funny and enjoyable, with some great lines. We’ve gained a bit of insight into Fry’s past and his relationship with Bender. But then it all goes wrong. The episode ends with a montage of Seymour waiting for Fry to come back, and aging over the years while a horribly sad song plays (sample lyric: “If it takes forever, I will wait for you”). Even thinking about this now I get teary. The fourth season has quite a few of these episodes where we learn about Fry and Leela, but this is definitely the most emotionally (and consequently least funny) of the bunch. So I want to thank the Futurama team for having the cajones to make an episode that is not overly funny but focuses on the characters and story. You were always one of the best shows on tv, but this kind of writing is what put you at the top.