Rent Futurama: Series 3 (2001)

Futurama: Series 3 review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

Series 3 of Futurama perhaps boasts the most high-concept of episodes. It is during this season that the writers dive deep into such topics as humanity, spirituality, legacies, intelligence, and nature vs. nurture. At the same time, though, it’s also incredibly funny with some of the most clever and unique writing of any animated sitcom of the era. It was a show that could be high-minded with its stories while still savaging science fiction with impeccable satire and parody.

All the being said, some episodes are rather questionable considering how poorly they’ve aged. The opening episode, "Amazon Women in the Mood", finds the Planet Express crash-landing on a planet of towering Amazon women who enslave the men for sexual pleasure. While the episode does have some intriguing aspects of gender-swapping authority, the episode is unfortunately mired with uncomfortable generalizations of gender as well as a key aspect of the Amazon society being raping men to death.

The episodes thankfully get better from there. "Parasites Lost" is a Fantastic Voyage parody where Fry finds himself infected with a parasite colony that turns him into a more emotionally aware and physically fit person, leading to Leela questioning how much she’s willing to alter a man she might love.

"The Luck of the Fryrish" is by far the most emotional episode of the season. Fry finds himself seeking out the grave of his long-dead brother Yancy who apparently stole his lucky four-leaf clover and became a success while Fry was frozen. However, as Fry comes to learn more about his brother, we see the true story of what happened. Yancy missed Fry and hoped that he could carry on the legacy of his missing bro by naming his first son after him. With a bittersweet ending drawing from The Breakfast Club soundtrack, it’s a great showcase of how Futurama can be a dark show but also rather heartwarming at times.

There are some wilder episodes present. "A Tale of Two Santas" continues the Santa Claus rampage of the previous year’s Christmas special but this time features Bender joining in the violent antics (sadly, John Goodman did not return for the role of Santa and John DiMaggio had to step up to the plate). "The Day the Earth Stood Stupid" features Fry as the only man on Earth stupid enough to stop the brain-sucking aliens of another galaxy, leading to some of the most hilarious lines of the show (“The big brain am winning! Now I am leaving Earth for no raisen!”).

"Insane in the Mainframe" features Fry being sent to the same insane asylum as Bender for robots, proving to be a weirdly chilling tale of Fry being forced to believe he is a robot. And, of course, one of the most fun episodes happens to be "Anthology of Interest II", a continuing anthology episode from the previous season. In this trilogy, Bender becomes a fat human, Fry has to fight video game characters (a concept ripped off by the movie Pixels), and Leela becomes stuck in a Wizard of Oz parody. These stories don’t really have much of a point aside from just being funny exercises in throwing the crew into unorthodox scenarios without a whole lot of exposition.

One of the most remarkable episodes is "Godfellas", where Bender finds himself lost in deep space and harboring an entire civilization on his chest. Acting as a god of his people, Bender learns first hand what it’s like to run a society of conflicting views that ultimately end with an apocalypse. There’s also a rather clever conversation Bender has when he meets an all-knowing entity of the universe, a stand-in for God.

As with the last season, however, there are a few duds. There’s a wild-west episode, an environmentalism episode, an Egyptian pharaoh episode, a time-travel episode, and an episode that was just a shameless promotion for Lucy Liu to take center stage. But even these episodes have their moments of brilliance, either through the clever visual gags or pop-culture satire. Overall, this is perhaps one of the best seasons from such a solid show that was stood out greatly from the typical crowd of animated sitcoms.