In Season 13, ‘Futurama’ Is Just Fine — And That’s Not Bad

When it comes to the Futurama episodes that aired on networks or platforms other than Fox — which, as of the Season 13 drop earlier today, now outnumber the original five Fox seasons — I’m on record as a skeptic. Even though many of the original writers have come back for the latter seasons, their seeming determination to comment on current events, particularly in tech, have been outdated by the time they make it in front of an audience; outside tech topics, it’s miserable to think of a 31st century in which, for instance, COVID vaccine disinformation and the environmental impact of fast fashion are still urgent concerns. But even though some apocalypse or other is never far from any episode, the 13th season has generally lightened up: The platform has made the choice to dump the whole season at once just as Futurama’s creators have made Hulu’s most savor-able season.

Since the show’s been around so long — this season of Futurama comprises the 161st through 170th episodes of the show — it’s getting easy to predict the mix you’re going to get. There’s a scary one about the environment (Episode Two: “The World Is Hot Enough”). There’s one about Amy (voice of Lauren Tom), Kif (Maurice Lamarche) and their children (Episode Five: “Scared Screenless”). There’s one where Fry (Billy West) has to convince Leela (Katey Sagal), again, that he’s a viable partner for her (Episode Three: “Fifty Shades of Green”). There’s a pop-culture spoof (Episode One: “Destroy Tall Monsters”). And, for the finale, there’s a time- and mind-bender (Episode 10: “The White Hole”). The universe, as the show has repeatedly taught us, may be infinite; the possibilities for a season of Futurama aren’t. 

Of course, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. One of the reasons we get hooked on TV shows is that we like spending time with our pretend friends, which can be fun even when they’re doing pretty much exactly what we expect them to. Consider “Crab Splatter,” one of the season’s best. Zoidberg (West) loses his lease on the dumpster out back at the Planet Express office; when he’s too disruptive crashing with Leela and Fry, she suggests that he move in with her parents. Leela has only learned later in life that she wasn’t an orphan, and adding parents into her life has required her to make emotional adjustments. Sometimes she wants to impress them and earn their approval; other times, she’ll have a fit of adolescent rebellion — literally, in the case of “Teenage Mutant Leela’s Hurdles,” in which she undergoes an advanced spa treatment that causes her and all her colleagues to age backwards. 

Though Leela starts “Crab Splatter” feeling smothered by her parents’ interest in her, seeing them take to Zoidberg makes her see all of them differently; hearing her father Morris (David Herman) call Zoidberg “the child we never had” is particularly tough. Leela’s arc in the episode is about acceptance of the fact that, as her mother Munda (Tress MacNeille) insists, they have enough love to smother both Leela and Zoidberg. But there are a lot of good jokes about parent-child relations along the way, as when Zoidberg eats a roll of paper towels (Munda: “See? Someone likes my cooking”), or when Leela’s parents mistakenly think they’ve hung up a video call with her and Leela hears Munda tell Morris, “God, she looked awful.” That the writers are finding new and emotionally truthful angles on the whole Turanga family is one of the best reasons for the show to have continued.

“The Numberland Gap” takes as direct a route as possible from Fry’s new hobby doing paint-by-numbers art to Professor Farnsworth (West) entering a world of pure mathematical abstraction, where he meets both personified numbers and Georg Cantor, who discovered of the hierarchy of infinities. This is the kind of episode that’s going to have the math heads hooting and hollering. If you’re not among them, there’s also a sweet B plot about Fry’s artwork and which seemingly minor achievements are worth celebrating. Unlike Homer on Futurama’s sister show, The Simpsons — who can range from knowing the laws of thermodynamics to lighting a Q-Tip on fire to try to see inside his own head — Fry’s level of intellectual impairment has been fairly consistent over the years; he’s doing well, including in “The Numberland Gap,” for someone who’s his own grandfather.

This season’s most political episode is “Murderoni,” about a crass New New York businessman, Fishy Joe (LaMarche), who tries to win a city council seat by smearing his opponent with entirely unfounded claims. Said opponent is one of the Cygnoid entrepreneurs who runs Family Bros. Pizza, so yes, as you’ve already guessed, said smear is that the shop’s pepperoni is so tender because it’s made from human babies, who are butchered in the pizzeria’s basement. I guess there’s never a wrong time to remind one’s audience of how careful they should be about spreading sensationalistic conspiracy theories, but if there is, it might be nearly one full decade after the one you’re parodying flared up, only to have been succeeded by much bigger and crazier ones that have ruined even more lives. I could link to one but, truly, you can take your pick.

“The World Is Hot Enough” is commendable for the lesson it’s trying to teach us, particularly the part about rejecting climate doomerism of the sort Professor Farnsworth’s nemesis Wernstrom (Herman) espouses in the episode when confronted by a terrifying graph. “If only the good people of the 21st century had had this information,” says the Earth President, the preserved head of Richard Nixon. “They might not have suffered so horribly in the climatastrophe.” 

In the episode’s penultimate scene, Professor Farnsworth realizes that the graph that’s been so alarming — and which we then see again — isn’t current for the characters: It’s from 2025. “Let me get this straight,” says Fry. “This is the actual data from 2025?” “That’s right,” says Professor Farnsworth. Fry: “The actual data.” 

They go on like this for another 20-plus seconds of screen time. I can imagine how frustrating it is to have to lay out the realities of climate change again, two and a half decades after “Crimes of the Hot,” because no real action has been taken by the governments running the world’s biggest industrial powers. I know why a graph of rising Earth temperatures got roughly as much screen time in the episode as Fry. I just wish the episode had been written a little more artfully, considering most of the people watching it probably don’t need convincing. 

At the end of 2023, Futurama was renewed for two more seasons, so — barring any un-renewals, which aren’t very common among animated shows, given the production lead time required — there’s probably more to come next year. The show may not still have the power to surprise us the way it did in its early days, but if it continues on the flight path Season 13 is charting, that could be just fine. After close to 200 episodes, “just fine” might be the best we can hope for.