Well, it’s finally done. After more than 3 years of doing this, I have reviewed every episode of Futurama. All that’s left is to do the ridiculous and rank them. Rather than doing a literal ranking, I’m just going to divide them into tiers, the same way I did for Firefly.
From the bottom to the top:
F (6 episodes):
That’s Lobstertainment; The Duh-Vinci Code; That Darn Katz; The Futurama Holiday Spectacular; T.: The Terrestrial
These episodes are not good. These are probably the only ones that I would legitimately have skipped if I had a choice on this re-watch. They’re not funny, they’re not insightful, and they are barely memorable.
D (15):
The Cryonic Woman; The Route of All Evil; Spanish Fry; Bend Her; Lrreconcilable Ndndifferences; Yo Leela Leela; Cold Warriors; A Farewell to Arms; Decision 3012; The Thief of Baghead; 31st Century Fox; Calculon 2.0; Assie Come Home; The Honking; The Silence of the Clamps
These are not bad episodes of television and mostly have some entertainment, but they are not what you want when you watch Futurama. Some of these would be F, but they have one joke that works really well. Others just aren’t up to the usual standard I hold for Futurama.
C (33):
A Big Piece of Garbage; When Aliens Attack; Put Your Head on My Shoulders; The Problem with Popplers; Mother’s Day; Bendless Love; Insane in the Mainframe; The Beast with A Billion Backs; I Dated a Robot; Love and Rocket; Crimes of the Hot; Teenage Mutant Leela’s Hurdles; Bender’s Game; Rebirth; In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela; The Mutants are Revolting; Proposition Infinity; Law and Oracle; All the Presidents’ Heads; Mobius Dick; Fry am the Egg Man; Zapp Dingbat; The Bots and the Bees; The Six Million Dollar Mon; Near-Death Wish; Viva Mars Vegas; Simpsorama; Murder on the Planet Express; Bender Should Not Be Allowed on Television; The Butterjunk Effect; A Clone of My Own; The Deep South; The Inhuman Torch;
These are the baseline for Futurama. They have good jokes and solid writing, or at the very least mediocre writing and one hilarious joke, and they will keep you entertained. They’re not exceptional, but they will give you a good time. I’ll admit, many of them just don’t age well, and that’s what caused them to be down here.
B (34):
Space Pilot 3000; The Series Has Landed; I, Roommate; My Three Suns; A Flight to Remember; Mars University; A Head in the Polls; Xmas Story; Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love; Raging Bender; Bender Gets Made; Anthology of Interest I; War is the H-Word; Amazon Women in the Mood; The Day the Earth Stood Stupid; The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz; The Cyber House Rules; A Tale of Two Santas; Where the Buggalo Roam; A Leela of Her Own; A Taste of Freedom; Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch; The Sting; Bender’s Big Score; Into the Wild Green Yonder; Neutopia; Attack of the Killer App; Benderama; The Tip of the Zoidberg; Fun on a Bun; Naturama; Forty Percent Leadbelly; Saturday Morning Fun Pit; Leela and the Genestalk;
If you do the math, this is actually the largest category. Somehow the majority of Futurama episodes are above average. I know I might be a bit biased, but that’s just the nature of this series: It was, for the most part, better than the average show. Even adjusted for the internal scale, I just had to say it often exceeded even what I would have expected.
A (26):
Love’s Labours Lost in Space; Fear of a Bot Planet; A Fishful of Dollars; Hell is Other Robots; I Second that Emotion; Brannigan, Begin Again; A Bicyclops Built for Two; Parasites Lost; Bendin’ in the Wind; Roswell that Ends Well; Anthology of Interest II; A Pharaoh to Remember; The 30% Iron Chef; Where No Fan has Gone Before; Less than Hero; The Why of Fry; Obsoletely Fabulous; The Devil’s Hands are Idle Playthings; A Clockwork Origin; Ghost in the Machines; Overclockwise; Reincarnation; Free Will Hunting; 2-D Blacktop; Fry and Leela’s Big Fling; Stench and Stenchibility
These are the really good episodes. These are the ones with fun concepts and great writing that represent exactly how well setting a show in the future can relate to our real lives. They’re fantastic to watch and rewatch and they seem like they’ll age well in the future.
S (16):
Fry and the Slurm Factory; The Lesser of Two Evils; How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back; The Luck of the Fryrish; Time Keeps on Slippin’; Leela’s Homeworld; Godfellas; Future Stock; Jurassic Bark; The Farnsworth Parabox; Three Hundred Big Boys; Lethal Inspection; The Late Philip J. Fry; The Prisoner of Benda; Game of Tones; Meanwhile;
These aren’t just great episodes of Futurama, these are great episodes of television. Some of these should be considered art; others should inspire deep philosophical discourse. A few are just so damned funny that they will make me laugh no matter how much I’ve seen them. The fact that there are more than one of these for every ten episodes of the show should tell you exactly how great this series was.
LAST THOUGHTS
This has been a big part of my life for several years and I can’t help but tear up a little now that it’s over. I want to thank all of you who read these, whoever you are. You have helped me keep going at this and sometimes that’s helped me keep going in general. It’s a gift to have motivation in the darker times.
Well, for the last time,
The Joker On The Sofa 