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As everyone knows, this is the episode that launched the show. Philip Fry, an unremarkable pizza delivery boy from the 20th century, is locked into a cryogenic chamber and reemerges on the eve of the year 3000. He befriends Leela, a beautiful, strong-willed cyclops, and Bender, a smartass alcoholic robot. Together they become the new crew for Planet Express, an intergalactic delivery service run owned Fry's descendant Prof. Hubert Farnsworth.

Compared to most Futurama episodes, "Space Pilot 3000" doesn't pack in many jokes, nor does it feature a particularly intricate plot. What it does do is set a foundation for the series by painting a picture of the strange new world into which Fry emerges. It's a world of fantastic technological marvels, but it's also a world where individuality and personal expression are valued very cheaply and where human life is considered disposable, as evidenced by the street-corner suicide booths which so famously confused the Fox network executives when the show was first conceived. It's very much a reflection of creator Matt Groening's worldview, and indeed it makes the viewer wonder exactly how much different in spirit this futuristic society is from the present. As a bonus, this episode features a large number of easter eggs which are hatched in later episodes.

While this episode isn't necessarily representative of the whole catalog of Futurama episodes, it's absolutely essential viewing for anyone who wants to get into the show.

The second episode in the Futurama series, "The Series Has Landed", introduces the rest of the main characters at Planet Express and sees our crew make their first delivery -- to the moon. Fry is disappointed to discover that a cheesy amusement park has been established on the moon and subsequently drags Leela out on a dangerous expedition outside the park, while Planet Express intern Amy Wong discovers that she has misplaced the keys to the ship and sets about recovering them.

As in the pilot episode, "The Series Has Landed" brings out Fry's spirit of adventure and wonder, as well as his incompetent boobery. In stark contrast, Leela repeatedly belittles Fry's fantasies about exploring the moon while keeping the two of them alive. Leela's patronizing attitude is understandable considering the life-threatening circumstances, but still seems quite harsh. Highlights of the episode include the misappropriation of Jackie Gleason's famous Honeymooners line "one of these days, Alice...straight to the moon!" and the scene of Fry and Leela taking refuge in the original Apollo 11 craft as the Earth rises.

After squatting at Planet Express for a solid month and aggravating all of his coworkers, Fry sets out to find a place to live in "I, Roommate". Bender offers to let Fry live with him in his cramped quarters, but they soon find a plush, spacious new place. Unfortunately, Bender's antenna interferes with the apartment's television signal and Bender decides to move out, causing tension between he and Fry.

"I, Roommate" is possibly the episode that takes the least advantage of the Futurama universe; indeed, stories about roommate/friendship conflicts are legion throughout the sitcom universe. The episode does begin to establish Fry and Bender's relationship as best friends, and it's awfully hard not to feel pity for Bender's plight throughout. "I, Roommate" also fills out a lot of little cultural details about the Futurama setting ("All My Circuits", the fact that robots run on alcohol, and so on). Unfortunately, the episode loses points for employing a deus ex machina ending, but it's still an enjoyable look into the personal lives of our characters.

"Love's Labours Lost in Space" packs a lot of content into a single episode. It provides a glimpse into Leela's unlucky romantic life. It introduces three new characters: Zapp Brannigan (a starship commander best described, in the words of David X. Cohen, as "what Captain Kirk would be if he were actually William Shatner"), Kif (Brannigan's jaded, longsuffering squire), and Nibbler (a cute, furry animal with three eyeballs and a bottomless stomach who becomes a key figure in the Futurama saga in later episodes). It explains where dark matter, a valuable starship fuel, comes from. "Love's Labours Lost in Space" covers a lot of territory and does so in hilarious fashion.

After Leela has a couple frustrating nights out on the town, Professor Farnsworth sends the crew out to Vergon 6, a planet on the brink of collapse because its core of dark matter has been completely mined, and instructs them to rescue two of every animal species they can find. On the way they encounter Zapp Brannigan, who Leela initially fancies but who proves to be a pompous buffoon and throws the crew into prison after he forbids them to pursue their rescue mission. Brannigan then summons Leela to his chambers, and after Leela initially rejects his advances and crushes Brannigan's spirit, takes pity on him in the worst way possible. Brannigan eventually releases the crew, who go on to complete their mission.

As mentioned above, this episode encapsulates everything that is great about Futurama -- hilarious gags, twisted plots, sci-fi satire and character development. The only slight criticism is that Kif and Brannigan's voices aren't quite as convincing as in later episodes, but this episode rates as one of the all-time greats.

"Fear of a Bot Planet" is an extended look at robot-human relations in the future. In the human-dominated society of Earth, robots are considered second-class citizens who perform automated tasks and aren't allowed to play in the human Blernsball leagues, while in the robot-dominated world of Chapek 9, robots are conditioned to view humans as mortal enemies through a combination of propaganda and mythology that is uncomfortably reminiscent of societies such as 1930s Eastern Europe and 1800s-era America.

While watching a Blernsball game (a ridiculously souped-up futuristic version of baseball), Bender bitterly grouses to the others about the fact that there are no robots in the major leagues, and he further objects to being sent on a delivery to Chapek 9 during a robot holiday. He reluctantly joins Leela and Fry on the journey, and while attempting to make a delivery he is imprisoned on suspicion of working for humans, but gains the favor of the people of Chapek 9 by claiming to be a prolific human hunter. Leela and Fry set out to rescue Bender and experience the absurdities of a robot-dominated society.

"Fear of a Bot Planet" packs plenty of gags and sharp satire, but unfortunately the final two-thirds of the episode centers around robot society, making it feel one-dimensional and a little tedious at times. Still, it's a clever exploration of social problems as they might exist in the future.

"A Fishful of Dollars" is one of those episodes where the writers take some crazy idea from the future and extend it to its most logical, ludicrous and hilarious conclusion. In this episode, Fry discovers that thanks to the magic of compound interest, the $.93 he had in his bank account in the year 2000 has grown to .3 billion. He indulges himself and his friends in his newly found wealth, discovers that he can purchase some treasured relics from the 20th century with his money, and somewhat predictably starts to lose touch with reality, abandoning his friends as he attempts to recreate his former life. Along the way we get a bunch of jokes about the advertising industry and the culture divide across millennia -- Leela's matter-of-fact categorization of Sir Mix-a-Lot as "classical music" is particularly funny.

The episode introduces industrial magnate Mom, who plays an elderly, folksy Southern lady in the public eye and reverts to a evil, ruthless megatycoon in private. Tress MacNeille does a fantastic job switching between the two personalities, and the antics of Mom's three dimwitted sons Larry, Walt and Igner are always funny. Mom and Fry cross paths when Fry outbids Mom -- to the tune of million -- for the last known canister of anchovies in existence. Larry, Walt and Igner then abduct Fry, break into his bank account and empty his account, hoping that Fry will sell the anchovies back to Mom. The ending is quite predictable and trite -- Fry turns down the offer so that he can share the anchovies with his friends -- but it is a fair representation of Fry's personality. "A Fishful of Dollars" is not the most compelling episode of the first season, but it's still enjoyable.

So, what happens when you visit a planet inhabited by liquid beings and drink the emperor? You become the new emperor, obviously. "My Three Suns" is an episode where some completely bizarre concept from the Futurama universe gets stretched to its ultimate conclusion. It's completely insane, yet it holds together logically and is hilarious.

While Fry, Leela and Bender go shopping for exotic groceries in a sketchy neighborhood of Little Neptune, Fry runs afoul of a shady street doctor, and after rescuing him Leela lectures Fry about his naivete. The crew then set off to deliver a package to the planet Trisol, and after a particularly salty meal by Bender and the burning heat of Trisol's three suns leave Fry completely parched, Fry drinks a bottle which happens to contain the emperor, thus acquiring the throne. Things quickly turn sour, however, after it is revealed that the emperor is still alive in Fry's stomach and the people of Trisol attempt to violently extricate him from Fry's person. The litany of liquid gags are consistently funny, and very few episodes come even close to exploiting Fry's shortsightedness and obtuseness as cleverly as "My Three Suns" does.

From the beginning of the series, series creators David X. Cohen and Matt Groening pledged to run one environmentally-themed episode of Futurama per season. "A Big Piece of Garbage" is Season 1's entry, and as with all of the other eco-conscious episodes, it gets it point across in a completely irreverent and non-patronizing manner.

After an embarrassing incident at a symposium dinner, Prof. Farnsworth unveils an old invention that had been lying unused, the Smell-O-Scope. The joy of scientific discovery quickly turns to horror when our heroes discover that a huge ball of garbage is headed on a collision course with Earth, and horror turns to indignation when it is revealed that the garbage ball was created by people from Fry's time and thoughtlessly launched into outer space. After a failed attempt to blow up the garbage ball, Fry comes up with an alternative solution -- a solution which the writers very intentionally and ironically used to undercut any sensible and moralistic conclusion that the viewer might have expected.

The jokes in this episode aren't as incisive as in many other episodes, which is perhaps to be expected since many derive from the scientific academy. Where "A Big Piece of Garbage" shines is in the sheer lunacy of the two major plot twists in the episode. The addition of newsmonster Morbo is a bonus. "A Big Piece of Garbage" isn't the funniest episode in the collection, but given its subject matter it's easy to imagine that it could have been a whole lot worse.

"Hell is Other Robots" is the most ambitious episode of the first season of Futurama, as it attempts to offer a futuristic take on drug addiction and religion. After a raucous Beastie Boys concert, one of the roadies takes Bender backstage, where he indulges in some electricity abuse. After Bender's addiction plunges him to rock bottom, Bender stumbles upon the Temple of Robotology, which is portrayed as more of a satire of fundamentalist Christianity and features Rev. Lionel Preacherbot, who speaks in the style of a black preacher. After Fry and Leela tire of the new milquetoast Bender, they drag him out for a night of debauchery in Atlantic City, after which Bender is abducted by the minions of the Robot Devil, forcing Fry and Leela to brave the depths of Robot Hell to save him.

"Hell is Other Robots" serves up an entertaining satire of drug addiction, as Bender experiences a psychedelic trip, John DiMaggio acts out Bender's agitated tremors and speech, and Fry unwittingly plays the role of enabler. The portrayal of the Temple of Robotology unfortunately isn't nearly as sharp, as it is too generic and bland to really offer any bite. Fortunately, Robot Hell is an absolute riot, with Dan Castellaneta performing a hilarious number enumerating the ironic punishments Bender must suffer during his descent through the circles of Hell, and the episode ends with Bender cheekily concluding that he won't ever again be "too good or too evil". Adam Horovitz and Mike Diamond make a real contribution to the episode, performing snippets of a couple of their tracks and chipping in on the Robot Hell number.

"A Flight to Remember" is a pretty straight rip-off of Titanic (which, in fairness, does deserve to be lampooned in every way possible). Not exactly groundbreaking stuff, but it delivers the jokes, and we do get some genuinely emotional scenes.

Prof. Farnsworth takes his company out on the maiden cruise of the Titanic, which just so happens to be piloted by Zapp Brannigan. In order to avoid any unpleasantness with Brannigan, Leela passes Fry off as her fiance. However, Leela's plan leads to a comedy of errors when Amy discovers that her parents are on board and also attempts to pretend that Fry is her lover in order to placate them. Meanwhile, Bender falls in love with the wealthy Countess de la Roca and tries to play the part of the classy suitor but is ashamed when the Countess discovers that he's a regular, working-class robot. When Brannigan pilots the ship into the vicinity of a black hole, our heroes scramble to escape the ship and Hermes displays some world-class limbo skills.

Critics of the Fry-Leela relationship (especially those who dislike Leela) have ample grist for the mill in this episode. Fry attempts to play his part with gusto, but Leela very coldly blows him off whenever Brannigan is out of sight, only to turn jealous when Amy enters the picture. But the truly emotional scenes don't take place when Fry and Leela gaze upon a beautiful nebula; they take place when the ship tears apart and Bender quietly admits to Fry that he's going to stay back to try to save the Countess, and later when the Countess sacrifices herself to allow the rest of our heroes to escape. This is a character-based episode, no doubt, and it develops the Planet Express gang in some unexpected ways.

"Mars University" is Futurama's attempt at doing an Animal House-style parody of college life in the future. It actually does college humor pretty well, but unfortunately is saddled by the inclusion of the actual plot in which Fry and Guenther, a monkey raised by Prof. Farnsworth who wears a hat that makes him intelligent, share a dorm room.

After Leela and Farnsworth belittle the quality of higher education in Fry's day, Fry decides to matriculate at Mars University so that he can successfully drop out. The writers pull out numerous jokes and gags regarding academic life, the founding of Mars University in 2636 (1000 years after Harvard University was founded) and the drawing of Witten's Dog (a sendup of Schrodinger's cat named after Fields medalist Edward Witten) being the most clever ones. The episode founders when the snooty and generally unpleasant Guenther is introduced, although we do get a moment of pathos when Guenther ponders whether he's happier as an intelligent but isolated monkey or as a beast living in the wild. "Mars University" is one of the weaker episodes in the Futurama oeuvre, but it still has a number of moments which make it worthwhile.

What happens when you cross "Ally McBeal" with "Independence Day"? You get a Futurama episode where aliens from a galaxy 1000 light-years away invade Earth because their favorite TV show has been interrupted. Perfectly natural material for Futurama.

While making a delivery to a TV station in New York City in 1999, it is revealed that Fry accidentally knocked the season finale of "Single Female Lawyer", a very transparent sendup of "Ally McBeal", off the air. A thousand years later, aliens from Omicron Persei 8 invade Earth, and everyone's favorite war hero Zapp Brannigan drafts an army to fight the invaders. Fry, Leela and Bender join the resistance, and in an absolute visual spectacle of a battle they appear to score a dramatic victory, but the Omicronian mothership materializes and forces our heroes to retreat. We then learn that the Omicronians really just want to see the last episode of "Single Female Lawyer", and the Planet Express crew quickly rustle up a set and a script and act out an absolutely brutal parody of an episode to placate the Omicronians. There's a tense moment when Fry's script comes up short and Leela ad-libs an unexpected plot twist which is not well-received by the alien invaders, but Fry quickly works out an ending which satisfies the Omicronians. Naturally, Fry proclaims that the secret to successful television is making sure that "everything is back to normal" at the end -- while New New York burns from the Omicronian rampage, of course.

As one might expect, the jokes and gags come quickly and furiously throughout the episode. Where the episode truly shines, however, is in the plot transitions. The twists in the episode are clever and unexpected (contrary to Fry's dictum), but Ken Keeler's expert writing makes them feel completely natural and seamless. Maurice LaMarche does a fantastic job as Omicronian overlord Lrrr, and Billy West's Zapp Brannigan is spot-on as usual. "When Aliens Attack" is easily one of the top episodes of the first season.

"Fry and the Slurm Factory" starts off as an obvious parody of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", but turns sinister once Fry, Leela and Bender discover the horrific secret of Slurm -- specifically, that it's the waste product of a wormlike creature known as a Slurm Queen. It's not groundbreaking stuff, but it provides plenty of laughs; the funniest gags include the fact that the winning contest token is a bottle cap inside a *can* of Slurm, the Soylent Cola joke ('it varies from person to person'), and Fry taking several swigs of Slurm immediately *after* discovering the secret.

"I Second that Emotion" introduces the world of the sewer mutants to Futurama, a race of semi-humanoid creatures who have mutated due to the toxic effects of Earth waste and who play an important part in the Futurama saga in later seasons. The impetus for their introduction comes after Bender flushes Nibbler down the toilet, then is overcome with Leela's grief (thanks to an emotion chip installed in his head) and heads down to the sewers to find him. The episode serves up a lot of character-based humor and some funny twists on old urban legends about sewers in the present, but Leela's doting over Nibbler (at Bender's expense) and her subsequent grief over losing him become tedious and annoying at times.

Zapp Brannigan returns to Futurama in "Brannigan, Begin Again", this time as an employee of Planet Express after he and Kif are dismissed from the DOOP for Brannigan's incompetence. Fry and Bender quickly show a preference for his carefree style, as opposed to Leela's tight ship, and after a delivery goes awry they revolt against Leela and install Brannigan as the new captain. Naturally, Brannigan enlists Fry and Bender in a hare-brained and suicidal scheme to get himself reinstated at the DOOP, forcing Fry and Bender to reinstate Leela as captain. Though most of the other characters don't have much to offer, Zapp Brannigan is once again in peak comic form throughout the episode, and although Brannigan's scheme fails, the method by which Brannigan finally regains his post is hilariously ironic and underhanded, once again employing Futurama's classic technique of undercutting expected conclusions.

"A Head in the Polls" offers up Futurama's take on the political process and explains how Richard Nixon sidesteps the Constitution to serve a third term as President -- by planting his head on a robot body, of course. The episode starts off with Leela lecturing Fry on his civic responsibilities and Bender hawking his body for some quick cash. Bender soon suffers massive seller's remorse and learns that Nixon has purchased his body in a bid to run for President again. Fry and Leela break into Nixon's Watergate hotel room and play hardball with him in order to retrieve Bender's body.

As in many comedies, the political humor throughout the episode is very uneven. There are some amusing campaign signs and a scathingly vapid televised debate between two human candidates, but much of the rest of the humor (most notably a trip through the head museum's collection of 20th century Presidents) falls flat. Futurama certainly could have done worse with the theme, but the episode as a whole is very one-dimensinoal and isn't particularly compelling.

"Xmas Story" is Futurama's take on the Christmas holiday, which in the year 3000 has turned into a night of horror as a robotic Santa Claus hunts down the persons on his "Naughty" list (which typically includes all of Earth). It feels a little bit disjointed as it bounces between three or four different plotlines, but all comes together at the end when the Planet Express crew team together to defeat Robot Santa.

After a company ski trip, Fry begins to feel depressed during his first Xmas (pronounced exactly as it's spelled) away from his own time. The others try to cheer him up, but Fry later makes an insensitive remark to Leela (who also has no family with whom to celebrate) and brings her to tears. Fry leaves Planet Express and braves the dangers of Xmas Eve to search for a present for Leela. He purchases a parrot, which predictably flies away and leads Fry to the top of a skyscraper. Meanwhile, Bender heads out to a robot homeless shelter and goes caroling with Tinny Tim and some of the other refugees.

Horrified that Fry is walking the streets on Xmas Eve, Leela runs out and rescues Fry from the skyscraper, and they and the robots manage to escape Robot Santa's rampage. Santa eventually forces his way down the Planet Express chimney, but with a beautiful display of teamwork the robots and the Planet Express gang manage to blow Santa out of the sky.

Despite the morbid violence that accompanies the Xmas holiday, the sentimental (perhaps sappy) spirit of the holiday bleeds through -- as Leela says to Fry as they walk hand in hand down the street, "I'm lonely, and you're lonely, but together -- we're lonely together". Though Fry, Leela, Bender and others have no close family with whom to share the holiday, they can take comfort in knowing that they have each other, and the mood of "Xmas Story" certainly fits the Christmas season.

"Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love" is a bizarre episode that is quite unique to Futurama. After Dr. Zoidberg starts acting extremely frisky during a workout at the gym, we learn that it is mating season for his species and that he has a very strong biological urge to mate with a female.

The gang fly to Zoidberg's home world, Decapod 10, and quickly learn that mating is a purely biological act among Decapodians; no notion of courtship, romance or love exists among the species, only an evolutionary desire to seek a genetically top-class mate. Zoidberg performs his mating dance and fails to secure a mate, inspiring Fry to teach Zoidberg some rudimentary, phony and boorish human courtship rituals. Fry's attempt to help his friend soon gets him into trouble as Edna, a female Deacapodian with whom Zoidberg had wanted to mate with for years, falls in love with him, and Zoidberg challenges Fry to a duel to the death. What would have been a mindless romantic comedy of errors in any other sitcom setting turns into an absolute riot when it involves a sentient but animalistic species such as the Decapodians, and "Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love" exploits the clash of romantic cultures and the physical pecularities of Zoidberg's species to maximum effect.

"The Lesser of Two Evils" introduces Flexo, a bending unit who for all practical purposes is identical to Bender, save for a soul-patch beard and a penchant for making annoying sanguine compliments to people after brutally insulting them.

After an excursion to "Past-O-Rama", a brilliant satire of history museums, Fry accidentally runs over Flexo in a 20th-century car. The crew take him back to Planet Express for repairs, and although Flexo soon begins to run Fry the wrong way, Farnsworth hires him to accompany the crew on a trip to deliver a valuable tiara to the Miss Universe pageant. After the tiara goes missing, Fry suspects Flexo of stealing it, and the mystery plays out in typically twisted and amoral Futurama fashion. "The Lesser of Two Evils" packs plenty of zingers, but Bender is such a dominating personality that inserting an extra (and more annoying) copy of him takes a lot of the steam out of the episode.

As the first of the four Futurama movies commissioned by Twentieth Century Fox, "Bender's Big Score" had a lot to live up to. It had to please Futurama's well-established fanbase but also bring in enough new fans to get the attention of TV network executives regarding a possible series renewal. To top it off, it had to do so in the setting of a 90-minute film, which meant that the size, scope and pace of the story would be completely different from anything Futurama had ever done before.

As evidenced by Futurama's renewal on Comedy Central and the existence of this review (which is being typed by someone whose first substantial exposure to the show was through this film), "Bender's Big Score" lives up to all of its ambitions. It's accessible enough for newcomers (though the state of Fry and Leela's relationship is a point of contention among some longtime fans), but throws in plenty of callbacks to the original series which can safely be skipped by novices, giving the movie substantial replay value. As always, the humor is varied and operates on multiple levels. The extended runtime allows for some truly emotional scenes such as the shots of a heartbroken Fry sitting alone in his old apartment in the 2000s, and the musical score enhances the mood in all the right places. The graphics and animation are off in a couple spots and the voice acting is a little bit rusty, but those are relatively minor criticisms.

The plot starts off with Hermes being decapitated in a freak limbo accident and having his head placed in a jar, Leela falling in love with Lars Fillmore (a technician at the head museum) and nudist alien scammers taking over Planet Express. It quickly grows to epic proportions when the scammers detect a tattoo on Fry's buttocks which contains the secret to backwards time travel. The scammers send Bender (who has been infected with a virus) to go back in time and steal treasures from the Earth's past, and Leela and Lars develop an passionate relationship. A bitter Fry makes two trips back into time to escape his predicament and leaves one copy of himself back in the year 2000 while his other self returns to the present. The story reaches a global scale when our heroes fight to reclaim Earth from the scammers and an intensely personal scale when a tremendous secret about Lars is revealed.

"Bender's Big Score" showcases everything that is great about Futurama and is a monumental achievement in the series' history.

"The Beast with a Billion Backs" is the second of the four feature-length Futurama films, and it's actually one of the wittier and funnier offerings in the Futurama catalog. Unfortunately, the jokes and gags are extra layers of paint on a product whose engine -- the plot and characters -- is quite flawed.

The movie picks up where "Bender's Big Score" left off -- a huge rift in the universe has opened up over Earth, and Farnsworth sends his crew to investigate the mysteries that lie within. Meanwhile, Fry has found and decided to move in with Colleen, his new girlfriend, but is shocked to learn that Colleen is a polygamist. After the Planet Express crew fail in their mission, Zapp Brannigan and his army are sent to launch an invasion of the universe beyond in which Kif is killed. Unbeknownst to everyone, a heartbroken Fry has stowed away aboard Brannigan's ship and has decided to take refuge in the new universe, while Bender slips off and joins the secretive League of Robots. The plot then takes a sharp left term when we discover that the new universe is home to a lonely, tentacled monster called Yivo who wants to love every living being, and that Fry is Yivo's emissary.

Futurama certainly can't be faulted for trying something bizarre, but the central problem with "Beast with a Billion Backs" is that it can't decide what it's supposed to be. At various points in the film Fry, Amy and Bender all have their hearts broken, but it's never clear whether their experiences are supposed to be tragic or black comedy, and they end up being neither. Furthermore, the plot forces our characters to do some very strange things, Fry's desperate escape to the new universe being the most bizarre thing.

"Beast with a Billion Backs" routinely gets panned as one of the worst offerings ever by Futurama fans. The movie isn't nearly that bad, as it's actually quite funny and witty in spots, but unfortunately clever lines can't hold together the unfocused plot.

"Bender's Game" is the third in the series of four direct-to-DVD Futurama movies and divides into two halves which unfortunately don't fit together very naturally.

In the first (and far more entertaining) half of "Bender's Game", Leela gets in trouble when an argument with a trucker drives her to steal the ship and enter a demolition derby, thus wasting precious dark matter fuel (and wrecking the ship). As discipline, Prof. Farnsworth forces her to wear a shock collar to control her anger. We later learn that Farnsworth accidentally synthesized dark matter while working in Mom's lab and created a pair of crystals which hold together the structure of all dark matter in the universe. In an ironic twist, Farnsworth decides to exact revenge upon his former boss and lover by breaking into Mom's dark matter mine and destroying the crystals in order to render dark matter inert, where a shocking secret about the origins of dark matter is revealed.

Meanwhile, Bender starts playing Dungeons & Dragons with Cubert, Dwight and their friends, quickly becomes addicted to the game, loses touch with reality and has to be committed to a robot insane asylum. Somehow, Bender's mental affliction and a supply of dark matter he scooped into his chest cavity lead to all of our heroes being transported into an alternate medieval world in which they are transformed into parodies of the Lord of the Rings characters. Ironically, the medieval half of "Bender's Game" is the weaker half and has trouble standing up on its own, as evidenced by an incredibly tedious segment where the medieval Fry ("Frydo") acts out a medieval-style informercial about staghorn-handled knives. Leela's anger issues and a very-poorly kept secret about Farnsworth and Mom's previous love life attempt to bind the two halves of the movie together, but neither story is particularly compelling at all. Much like its predecessor "Beast with a Billion Backs", "Bender's Game" piles a bunch of jokes upon a core plot which is not very well-motivated at all, and the end product becomes rather tedious towards the end.

"Into the Wild Green Yonder" is the last of the series of four direct-to-DVD Futurama movies, and since the series had not yet been extended when it was being made, served as the de facto series finale. It had a lot to live up to and didn't quite accomplish all of its goals, but it's a visual spectacle that packs a galactic-scale plot into 90 minutes and provides plenty of fan-service moments while still remaining faithful to the characters in whom millions of Futurama fans are so heavily invested.

The movie starts off with Seth MacFarlane perfoming an entertaining Rat-Pack-inspired number as the ship flies past the futuristic versions of the high-class Las Vegas properties which make up "Mars Vegas". It then cuts to our heroes visiting the Wongs as they blow it all up and construct a new Mars Vegas. While Leela expresses concern about the environmental impact of the new resort town, Fry has an accident in which a piece of jewelry embeds into his brain, giving him mind-reading powers. After our heroes spend an entertaining but ultimately dispensable chapter in Vegas, Leo Wong reveals his plan to build the universe's largest (and undoubtedly most ironic) miniature golf course. Horrified at the destruction of life that Wong's project entails, Leela joins a band of eco-feminists (who unfortunately are a shrill parody of a parody) to stop Wong and are later declared outlaws.

After Fry and Leela bid a tearful farewell, Fry is indoctrinated into the "Legion of Mad Fellows", a secret society of telepaths, and learns that a violet dwarf star which lies in the way of Wong's projected golf course holds the key to all biological life in the universe and that a malevolent species of psionic beings known as the "Dark Ones" seek to destroy the violet dwarf star. As Fry's delta-wave-free brain confers immunity from the Dark Ones, he alone must must save the star without revealing his intentions to anyone, forcing him to work undercover for Leo Wong and bringing him in direct conflict with Leela. Meanwhile, Zapp Brannigan is sent to capture Leela and the eco-feminists; Bender joins Brannigan and initiates a crucial plot twist.

The galactic-scale plot gets messy and tangled in a few spots but is helped along by visual effects and world-class animation, the likes of which had never been seen on Futurama before; the shots of the outer space and the violet dwarf star system are nothing short of stunning. The humor also slows to a trickle during the second half of the movie, making portions of the film feel very tense. Yet the film remains true to its characters, including Bender, the self-centered wildcard, and Leela, the passionate (and angry) crusader. The character who truly stands out is Fry, the lifeblood of the series, an unsophisticated, dimwitted buffoon who nevertheless strives to find meaning and do the right thing in a universe which doesn't reward him for it.

The specific way in which the ending was to be written -- specifically, how Fry and Leela resolve their feelings for each other -- was a point of great debate among the Futurama writers. Somewhat surprisingly, it was Matt Groening who insisted that they write such a definitive conclusion. If "Into the Wild Green Yonder" had been the finale, it would have been a worthy end to the series. As it stands now, the movie's ending has paved the way for even greater things.

"Rebirth" is the first episode of Futurama's TV relaunch on Comedy Central, and it picks up immediately where "Into the Wild Green Yonder" left off -- with our heroes plunging into a wormhole which miraculously takes them back to Earth, with Zapp Brannigan in hot pursuit. Almost all of the characters are killed in a crash, with only their heads preserved, and Farnsworth embarks upon a massive experiment to resurrect them. Unfortunately, the experiment fails to resurrect Leela, and Fry is so crushed that he builds a robot copy of Leela to replace her. Robo-Leela is horrified to learn that she is merely a copy of the real Leela, causing tension between herself and Fry. Of course, just as Robo-Leela appears ready to accept her condition and reunite with Fry, the real Leela revives. Meanwhile, Bender is revived in a weakened condition and survives only with the help of one of Farnsworth's doomsday devices, forcing him to party continuously in order to burn off the excess energy and not cause a massive explosion.

Even though it's a re-premiere episode, "Rebirth" doesn't spend a whole lot of time trying to spell things out for a new audience -- it briefly re-introduces the characters and goes over the conclusion of "Into the Wild Green Yonder" quickly, but that's about it. The rest of the episode is devoted to Fry and Leela (with Bender constantly dancing in the background). "Rebirth" is funny in spots (Farnsworth especially is brillant throught the episode, and the scenes where the two Leelas fight are also quite hilarious) and melancholy in others (aided by Christopher Tyng's excellent score), but it's disappointing that the writers recycle ideas from earlier in the series (specifically, uploading a human's essence into a robot was considered perverse in "I Dated a Robot" but is considered acceptable here).

Zapp Brannigan makes his perverse, addle-brained and triumphant return to Futurama in "In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela". A mysterious satellite which destroys planets is spotted heading towards earth, and Zapp and Leela are sent in a tiny spacecraft to infiltrate and destroy it. Unable to do so, they retreat and eventually crash on an uninhabited island in an unknown location. Completely isolated from human civilization, Zapp and Leela begin to re-enact the story of Adam and Eve. Meanwhile, Prof. Farnsworth discovers that the satellite is actually a horrific amalagam of a military craft and a "V-chip" which "censors" indecent planets by destroying them, and he and the rest of the Planet Express crew attempt to spare Earth from destruction by attempting to convince the satellite that Earth has cleaned up its act.

While the sideplot is pretty uninspired and is useful only insofar as it reconnects with the main plot, and while the V-Chip parody is horribly dated, the main plot carries the episode. Zapp Brannigan is at his pompous, perverted, idiotic and pathetic best as he attempts to seduce Leela, then watches his plan collapse like a house of cards. "In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela" is a very one-dimensional story, but that's not a problem when the dimension is so hilarious.

"Attack of the Killer App" is a straight satire of the culture of smartphones and Twitter. Unfortunately, this particular episode falls flat because it neither strikes when the iron is hot (Twitter was launched in 2006 and the iPhone in 2007), nor does it exploit any of the peculiarities of the Futurama universe.

After a brief excursion where the Planet Express crew drop off a load of electronic waste, the gang all line up to purchase new eyePhones (a smartphone which is embedded in the user's eye) at the Mom store. Bender and Fry then engage in a bet whereby the first to gain a million followers on "Twitcher" is spared the fate of having to swim in a pool of waste generated by a two-headed goat (cleverly referred to as the "Pukeme Poopyu"). Fry later learns that Leela has a boil on her buttocks which sings show tunes, and against Leela's wishes records a video of the boil and uploads it to his Twitcher account. Unbeknownst to Fry and Bender, Mom plans to use the one-million follower threshold to use Twitcher to launch a virus, which we later learn is a harmless (relatively speaking) marketing attack.

There are a few uniquely funny jokes interspersed throughout the episode, but the core of the episode is just a straight attack on the cult of iPhones and self-indulgence on the Internet and offers no real bite, no twists, and nothing for the viewer to think about. Had the episode aired in 2006 or 2007, it might have anticipated the explosion in uploading embarrassing content to the Internet, but in the year 2010 that phenomenon is far too passe for commentary about it to be funny.

"Proposition Infinity" attempts to address a contemporary issue (gay marriage) by reframing it in a Futurama-specific context, but it runs into two problems. The smaller problem is that robot-human relations were already considered taboo in "I Dated A Robot" (due to the absence of a procreation act), and it's not explained why so many of our characters have suddenly changed their mind on the subject. The bigger problem is that the opposition (principally represented by Prof. Farnsworth) is portrayed as a completely unconvincing and ineffectual strawman, weakening any true sense of tension in the episode.

The episode begins with Bender vandalizing the streets of New New York, Aqua Teen Hunger Force-style. He quickly lands in jail and asks Amy to bail him out while Amy is having an argument with Kif. Amy and Kif post Bender's bail, and Kif decides to break up with Amy after she flirts with one too many criminals at the jail. Amy and Bender later get into an argument while going out for drinks, which naturally leads to them hopping into bed together. While Fry and Leela support Bender and Amy's new relationship, Amy's parents, Preacherbot and Farnsworth condemn the new arrangement. We end up with a hilarious scene from Preacherbot's "re-education" camp, a bland scene where Amy's parents express their disappointment, and a completely ineffectual and uninspired campaign by Farnsworth to vote down Amy and Bender's "Proposition Infinity" to legalize robosexual marriage. Indeed, the entire third act completely pales in comparison to the Space Pope's propaganda video from "I Dated A Robot", and there's not much else in "Proposition Infinity" that makes the episode worth coming back to.

"The Duh-Vinci Code" is partially a madcap caper episode and partially a development of Farnsworth and Fry's characters, and while the structure of the episode is a little unbalanced, it's entertaining enough to be one of the stronger episodes of the new season.

After Fry busts out in the first round of "Who Dares to Be a Millionaire", Farnsworth begins to berate Fry for his stupidity, but takes pity upon him long enough to show him his secret shrine to his idol Leonardo da Vinci. Fry and Farnsworth accidentally discover a piece of parchment containing plans for the "Machina Magnifica", and the gang quickly mount an expedition to locate da Vinci's lost invention. They outwit da Vinci's robotic sentry Animatronio and discover da Vinci's lost workshop, which includes a mysterious spacecraft. After Bender and Leela overcome Animatronio, the spacecraft launches Fry and Farnsworth into space and lands on the planet Vinci, where Fry and Farnsworth learn that Leonardo is an alien who traveled to Earth to take refuge because he felt like an outcast among his intellectual superiors on his home planet. Farnsworth too begins to feel ashamed of his inferiority to the Vincianis, and he and Leonardo attempt to exact revenge upon their tormentors before Fry intervenes in comic fashion.

The pacing of "The Duh-Vinci Code" is a little uneven, as the adventure part of the episode spills out of the second act into the first and third acts, leaving only a few minutes on either end for Fry and Farnsworth to work out their issues, but Fry and Farnsworth are both so consistently funny throughout that they manage to hold the episode together. As might be expected from the nature of the episode, the animation is top-notch, and the musical score captures both the thrill of the quest for Leonardo's lost invention and the artistic and technological splendor of the planet Vinci -- the attention paid to the artistic aspects of the episode really help bring it to life.

Taking its inspiration from episodes such as "Luck of the Fryrish" and "Jurassic Bark", "Lethal Inspection" takes the characters (in this case the unlikely pairing of Bender and Hermes) and the viewer on a long, winding journey that doesn't reach the expected conclusion because it hits the viewer with a complete sucker punch at the end. While "Lethal Inspection" doesn't quite reach the emotional depths as the episodes that inspired it, we do get some unexpected and heartwarming bonding between two characters who heretofore had not shared much of a connection at all.

After a reenactment of the "Sith-il War" during which Bender boasts of the wireless backup device that grants him immortality, the Planet Express gang lick their wounds back at the office. Bender suddenly starts leaking oil, and somewhat awkwardly we abruptly learn that, in fact, Bender doesn't have a backup device and is doomed to die when his robot body gives out. An angry Bender vows to hunt down the mysterious "Inspector 5" who approved his construction and brings Hermes with him, leading to a journey through the Central Bureaucracy, a long escape from a group of murderous killbots, twelve hours of continuous limboing inside a railroad tunnel, and finally a landing at the factory in Tijuana where Bender was manufactured. All the while Hermes attempts to convince Bender to accept his fate and embrace the life that he currently has, which Bender finally does after the hunt for Inspector 5 leads to a dead end inside an abandoned house in Tijuana. The proper ending of the episode is the sucker punch of a montage mentioned at the beginning of this review; a reasonably alert viewer will have figured it out halfway through the episode, but only the coldest of hearts will remain unmoved.

Heartbreaking. Irreverent. Awe-inspiring. Affirming. Philosophical. Metaphysical. "The Late Philip J. Fry" is all of these things and much more, and it'll be a horrific shame if it's not remembered as one of the greatest episodes in the recent history of televised animation.

After a particularly sleepless night, Fry arrives late for work and late for Leela's birthday lunch. Fry apologizes profusely and offers to take Leela out for dinner at the swanky Cavern on the Green, passing up an opportunity to attend Hedonismbot's lavish bachelor party. As Fry is about to leave work for the day and get ready for dinner, the Professor detains him and forces him and Bender to test out a time machine by traveling one minute into the future. Fry begins recording a message on a video greeting card for Leela, but loses it when the Professor accidentally sends the machine forward to the year 10,000. As a hilarious sendup of Zager and Evans' "In the Year 2525" plays, the lads make a series of unsuccessful pit stops as they search for a time in which backwards time machines exist to take them home. After Leela gives up on waiting for Fry, she searches for him and is led to believe that he, Farnsworth and Bender perished in a fatal accident at Hedonismbot's party, leaving her simultaneously angry and crushed. Later glimpses of Leela's life in the 31st century without Fry show her growing Planet Express into an industrial behemoth, yet unable to let go of her memories of Fry and settling into an unhappy marriage with and subsequent divorce from Cubert Farnsworth.

Eventually Fry, Bender and Farnsworth end up one billion years in the future and discover that all life is extinct. Fry discovers that the Cavern on the Green still exists and walks inside to deliver a belated apology to Leela, where he finds a shocking message addressed to him. With no hope of ever finding a backwards time machine, Fry, Bender and Farnsworth content themselves with watching the end of the universe, an absolute tour de force of animation. To everyone's surprise, the utter nothingness of the end of the universe leads to another Big Bang and the creation of another universe almost exactly like the previous one. After a trip through primordial history, some scenes from human history and a couple hilarious accidents, the guys end up back home, and Fry rushes off to meet Leela, about 10^40 years late and yet just in time.

The humor throughout the episode ranges from wacky (the various futures of Earth) to irreverent (the jokes about the philosophical questions raised by watching the end of the universe) to black (Bender wanting to decamp in the year 10,000,000 where robots wage war on mankind, then pulling the plug on the paradise of the year 50,000,000, as well as his attempt to exterminate land-based life), as many of the great Futurama episodes do, and the dual plotlines intersect very precisely. As funny as the episode is, the humor is firmly grounded in the tale of Fry and Leela. Instead of portraying their relationship as a one-sided quest by the buffoonish but good-natured Fry to live up to the standards of the superior Leela, we see scenes where Leela is finally able to express her feelings to Fry in earnest, and we see Fry come to understand his solemn responsibility to protect Leela's precious heart and the special connection that they share. That "The Late Philip J. Fry" is able to do this by simply considering the natural tragedy of two lost lovers without resorting to flowery prose and without sacrificing Fry's quirky goofishness or Leela's tough-yet-vulnerable personality is a major triumph.

Continuing a Season 6 trend of exploring unusual character combinations, "That Darn Katz!" pits Amy and Nibbler against an army of intelligent cats from outer space who plot to siphon off the rotational energy of the Earth. In this episode the link between Amy and Nibbler is their shared antipathy towards cats and their intellectual superiority to the rest of the crew; though Amy has often been portrayed in the past as slutty and sometimes vapid, having her finish her university studies after 10 years of the show does add an interesting dimension to her character. The cat-related humor is hardly the most incisive material Futurama has written, but the satire of academic science departments is brutally hilarious.

"A Clockwork Origin" attempts to address the question of whether or not evolution is responsible for the existence of all biological life. It comes to the conclusion that the possibility of a scientifically unexplainable creation event in the past need not diminish the substantial insights and achievements of the theory. Unlike "Proposition Infinity", however, the focus is clearly on entertainment and not on proselytizing, making it a much more enjoyable episode.

The episode starts with Professor Farnsworth addressing an anti-evolution crowd at Cubert's school, with the Flying Spaghetti Monster making a cameo appearance. Farnsworth and the crew then head off to an archeological dig and discover a fossil of a primitive human which turns out to have existed during the time of the dinosaurs; a defeated and despondent Farnsworth decides to leave Earth and take up residence on an uninhabited asteroid. While attempting to get settled, Farnsworth deploys an army of nanobots to purify some water, and overnight he and the crew discover that the bots have developed into more complicated forms, and a bizarre robotic version of the origin of species plays out. The sideplot of Zoidberg babysiting Cubert is unnecessary and detracts from the episode, but otherwise "A Clockwork Origin" offers a funny, satirical twist on the science of evolution.

By stretching the age-old science fiction trope of characters switching bodies as far as it can be stretched, "The Prisoner of Benda" proves itself to be one of the most creative episodes in the history of the series, and certainly one of the funniest.

Professor Farnsworth and Amy invent a mind-switching machine and decide to test it out, but discover that once a pair of bodies uses the machine, that particular pair can never use it again. After an unsuccessful attempt to undo the swap by using a third party (Bender), Farnsworth gives up and the episode turns into a "22 Short Films About Springfield"-style cavalcade of craziness. Amy indulges her gluttony and ruins Leela's body; Bender inhabits Amy's body and attempts to rob the visiting emperor of Robo-Hungary, then later convinces the emperor to switch bodies with him; Leela and Fry get into a petty squabble about physical appearances, switch into Farnsworth and Zoidberg's bodies, and settle their argument in the most appalling manner possible; Farnsworth takes over Bender's body and joins a robot circus. The obvious moral to the story is delivered eloquently and passionately by Bertha, an old and worn robotic circus cannon who perishes after shooting Farnsworth (in Bender's body) so that he can save Bender (in the emperor's body) from an assassination attempt. Globetrotters Ethan Tate and Clyde Dixon write the denouement of the episode by proving any sequence of swaps can be undone by using two auxiliary bodies.

"The Prisoner of Benda" crams a ton of gags, jokes and character quirks into its 21-minute running time and does so seamlessly; never do any of the hijinks feel labored or arbitrary, and it's truly amazing how Ken Keeler makes such an endeavor (writing the story and proving the proposition about transpositions on the symmetric group) seem so natural.

Futurama celebrates its 100th episode with this episode about the mutants who are forced to live in the sewers beneath New New York City, and like the sewers, it's a mess. The episode delivers a sharp allegorical critique of upper-class attitudes towards the poor and some nice character-building moments for Fry and Leela, but the backstory and the resolution of the episode are very poorly constructed.

The episode begins with the crew making their 100th delivery to one Mrs. Aster, a wealthy woman whose husband was aboard the "Land Titanic" when it sank into the sewers. Aster turns out to be a patronizing benefactor for a college fund that is designed to keep the sewer mutants in docile servitude to and segregated from the surface people. After Leela gets into an argument with Mrs. Aster, Fry accidently blows Leela's cover, and Leela is deported to the sewers. After the crew inadvertently reveal that they have been sheltering Leela for the last ten years, they are sentenced to dwell in the sewers for two weeks, and Leela delivers Fry a harsh rebuke after Fry foolishly tries to comfort Leela by claiming that two weeks in the sewers will help him sympathize with her.

Overcome with guilt, Fry jumps into the mutagenic sewage lake and emerges as a horrible-looking creature. Inspired by Fry's actions and a concert by the mutated members of Devo, Leela leads the sewer mutants in a revolt against the surface people. They begin redirecting sewage back up to the city and emerge in front of City Hall to demand the same rights as the surface dwellers. Aster and Mayor Poopenmeyer attempt to force the mutants back into the sewers, but when Fry produces evidence that Aster's husband saved the life of a mutant child aboard the Land Titanic -- who subsequently reveals herself to be Leela's grandmother -- Aster and Poopenmeyer relent. The original Fry then reemerges from his mutated form, which reveals itself to be the mutated Mr. Aster; it turns out that Aster fell into the lake when the Titanic capsized and only reemerged after Fry fell into his mouth.

The first 10 minutes or so of the episode are a critique of the patronizing attitude that well-to-do people often display towards poor people and nations, and Fry's comment about having to live in the sewers is a devastating swipe at celebrities, wealthy students and other voyeurs who think that slumming it for a couple weeks will make them better people. But unlike these people, Fry goes way beyond the call of duty or sanity by attempting to turn himself into a mutant. Once again he demonstrates that his imprudence is his greatest weakness and his greatest strength; he does whatever his heart tells him without considering the consequences because he simply doesn't fear them. Where the episode has real problems is in the actual conflict between the mutants and normals. The sewer mutants have been a part of the Futurama universe since the second season of the show, and it is extremely dissatisfying that so much of the conflict hinges upon a secret about a one-time character. It may not be a complete deus ex machina ending, but it is just as unnatural and uninspired. Fry emerging from the mutant Mr. Aster's mouth is also less than credible, even by Futurama's fantastical standards -- it's a little hard to believe that he didn't realize that he was still in his original body all the time. Producers David X. Cohen and Matt Groening wanted Futurama's 100th episode to be something special and thought that an episode resolving the tension between the mutants and surface dwellers would commemorate the milestone, but an episode and subject of this much importance deserves a plot that is more natural.