David X. Cohen Talks About Futurama's New Season 246
joelkeller writes "I spoke to David X. Cohen, executive producer of Futurama, about the upcoming season, which premieres on June 24 on Comedy Central. He talks about the season finale (!) and how the show is always on the precipice of cancellation."
So what? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good News Everyone! (Score:2, Insightful)
First two were funny, can't wait for more! :) Pre-release ftw!
Yes, because everyone pirating a show like this will surely ensure it will get an another season.
If there is one time you should watch it legitly, do it now. Even from Comedy Central's website so they get the advertising revenue. Otherwise Comedy Central wont be doing another season (and no, DVD sales don't help much - if they just get DVD sales revenue, it's back to Futurama Straight to Video movies again)
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Simpsons has a broad appeal to the typical soccer mom family. Futurama is a nerdy show which was a Leela/Fry romance about as awkward as The Big Bang Theory with a lobster from outer space. Futurama has to hit home runs with their target demographic because it's small, the Simpsons haven't done that in years. They keep being sufficiently successful because they don't age, every year there's a new year's worth of children identifying themselves with Bart and Lisa. Live actors won't be the same, for example right now we have the Harry Potter generation, people that grew up alongside the actors but the next generation will find someting else. They might still watch the Simpsons though.
Re:Penalty: Intentional Grounding. (Score:1, Insightful)
Has there ever been a show getting canceled that slashdot doesn't blame on the time slots and/or episode ordering? Seriously people, if the audience had been big enough and the ratings high enough, they would have moved them to prime time slots. The last pick of the shows also get last pick of the time slots, either deal with it or stay off the air then. It's just getting really tiring to hear every time someone's pet show gets canceled that it was never the show's fault. It was never a weird and obscure show that not many liked, it was always some external reason for its failure. I'd like to say the same about a series of space cowboys, but then I'd probably get lynched even though I bought both the DVD set and the movie. I liked it, but I also know it was way off mainstream. Same goes for almost everything sci-fi, almost by definition it's a narrow genre. At least fantasy has had a real uptake with LotR and Harry Potter and the Narnia series, though something like the Legend of the Seeker still gets canceled.
Re:Penalty: Intentional Grounding. (Score:3, Insightful)
Fox hasn't learned anything. Remember, this is the network that cancelled Firefly.
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say the exact opposite there. The big bang theory has romances that are awkward because they don't fit. There's no reason for the people dating in that show to be dating. There's no chemistry, and the writers just never seem to know what to do with them together. Fry/Leela are great because the characters are well written. Each has issues of abandonment and isolation within the greater society at large which act as a common bond.
Re:Penalty: Intentional Grounding. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, there are plenty of shows that deserved to die. You don't generally hear much about them because they deserved to die. Nobody invests time and effort begging to have them back, and for the most part they are so forgettable that you never hear about them again.
The reason that most canceled shows that you do hear about are spoken of as being canceled unfairly is simply a selection bias. To throw out one that I do remember - SeaQuest. I think it was a good premise, but by the third season it had gone so far from what they had originally intended that they lost off of their fans, but never managed to attract their new target audience. No amount of scheduling games would have made up for the sheer badness of some of the episodes. Scheduling games didn't help the continuity when a character was mourned, got killed off and then was alive and well, never to be seen again. Still, the show wasn't all that dependent on the continuity, so the executives who rearranged the episodes didn't have a huge negative effect.
OTOH, for Firefly they refused to show the damned pilot at any point in the original broadcast run. If "Lost" had been treated as badly as Firefly, it never would have made any money either.
Re:Penalty: Intentional Grounding. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. First, "Slashdot" isn't an entity which expresses opinions of the type you describe, different groups of individual slashdot posters express such opinions, and the opinions you describe have been expressed on slashdot regarding a handful of programs that have been cancelled over a period of very many years, out of the dozens of series that are cancelled each year.
Showing episodes out-of-order, when they are written with a broad story arc, clearly interferes with developing an audience(the Firefly issue), as does not showing a show consistently at all (the Futurama issue, which wasn't about timeslot so much as about following NFL football and thus frequently being either cancelled entirely or joined "in progress".)
The Futurama scheduling decision is clearly the kind of thing a network does because it doesn't think a show has that much value to start with -- it is treating the show as disposable filler and isn't even pretending to try to market it effectively. It's perfectly reasonable to believe that that kind of behavior interfered with the show reaching an audience that it otherwise would have. In fact, the DVD sales which evidenced that there was such an audience that the original broadcast schedule had failed to reach is the reason the show was renewed after the first time it was cancelled, and the fact that it has remained on the air since (whether in danger of being cancelled each season or not) pretty clearly indicates that even Fox thinks that the show is viable, despite it not having appeared to be under the initial treatment Fox gave it.
Re:precipice? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, it was canceled, and rightly so.
It may make me unpopular, but I fully believe that it's important to bow out before you're useless. Far too many shows wait until they're beyond all hope before bowing out.
It may not have been the choice of the Futurama crew to bow out when they did, but they had one of the best endings I've ever seen in my TV viewings. It was emotional and inspiring.
Then Comedy Central comes along an tries to bring it back to life. It's like Frankenstein, creating a monster that is, but not completely, unlike anything a human would ever enjoy.
Re:first two episodes... (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree the second was better than the first, though I also thought the double take by the guys *after* Amy's reaction was even better ("Oh wait, will you guys be there too? Ummm maybe not!").
I love Futurama, but not just for the intellectual side. How many comedy cartoons have had really good tear-jerker moments? Fry's dog, the story of his five-leaf clover, Leela's parents, etc. That's a damned rare thing for me, and like most guys pretty hard to admit, but Futurama's been able to pull it off more than a couple times.
Re:precipice? (Score:4, Insightful)
You, and whoever modded me troll, seem to misunderstand me. I'm in no way saying that Futurama will never be good again.
What I'm saying is that it died a good death. Perhaps it died far too early, but it had the best death imaginable.
I know that we all are left wanting more, but it ended at exactly the right time.
Re:Everyone now senteced to... (Score:4, Insightful)
The spirit is willing, but the flesh is spongy and bruised.
Re:Dumb TV (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I really don't get this. With the relative sophistication of fios set-top boxes, you'd think they'd gather every channel change, data link is taken care of, and Verizon would be frothing at the mouth to sell some of this data, no?
Not sure why the world is still relying on Nielsen ratings in this day and age.
I have to agree on Futurama and time slots (Score:4, Insightful)
When I launched, I checked it out. I was a Simpson's fan at the time so made sense. I was amazed at how good it was. Very rare to have a show that polished out of the gate. If you watch the first season of most animated shows you'll discover that it takes awhile for the voices to get in their groove, for the animation style to solidify and so on. Not Futurama, it was dynamite out of the gate.
However, I found it very hard to keep up on. The fucking thing was never on when it was supposed to be. I'd try and tune in and it wouldn't be on the air. Then they seemed to start shuffling it around. They'd move it to a time slot, I'd learn that, and it'd vanish and move.
I finally gave up.
I suppose it makes less difference now what with DVRs but pre DVR and pro digital cable, it took some effort to track down a show that got moved all the time, and it was real annoying to be on the correct channel at the correct time according to the guide and not see what you want.
Re:Penalty: Intentional Grounding. (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know about that. I suspect that Firefly was the victim of the fact that not many people enjoyed it. The fanbase is devoted, but pretty damn small.
I personally couldn't stand it, and I was predisposed to enjoy it, because I generally enjoy sci-fi (unlike most people). It's not that difficult to believe that the masses saw nothing to like, and the show was canceled as a result.
Re:Penalty: Intentional Grounding. (Score:2, Insightful)
/. (and me, personally) cared a lot when Jericho got cancelled.
Re:That show is total soul-fluff. Meaningless. (Score:1, Insightful)
All I have to say to that is "I waited for you Fry"
Re:Penalty: Intentional Grounding. (Score:4, Insightful)
Seinfeld was given an starting order of only four episodes in order to hold Jerry under contract so he couldn't start a competitor to The Tonight Show and still be in the running for the job that eventually went to Jay Leno. NBC was going to burn them off... then they hit it big and the rest is history.
Re:So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure we can say that's categorically true. Both have hidden depths, the Simpsons is prima facie a show about a goofy guy and his family and friends and Futurama is prima facie a sci-fi show about a goofy guy and his family and friends, one of whom is a crazy space lobster, but while Futurama has lots of in-jokes and hidden references, these are mostly related to the fields of science and sci-fi culture. The Simpsons has just as many clever references, but they're pretty evently spread spread over popular culture, film noir, politics, history, classic art and writing, etc. I'm not sure that spotting an obscure Kirk reference shows a keener intellect than spotting an obscure Austen reference, for instance (and I say this as someone who loves both shows and doesn't have a clear favourite, even though I "get" more of the Futurama references).
Re:That show is total soul-fluff. Meaningless. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That show is total soul-fluff. Meaningless. (Score:4, Insightful)
Futurama never had a soul. -Which is a shame, because it could have done. It offers a huge and fun world to explore, but it never gets serious for even a second
Are you fucking *kidding* me? Have you never watched "Jurassic Bark", "Luck of the Fryfish", or "The Sting"? The Simpsons had some brilliant, emotional moments in it's golden years, but Futurama is easily its equal.
Re:So what? (Score:1, Insightful)
Are you sure she enjoys the show? Maybe she's just happy to be spending time with you.