Futurama Characters

After the big success that The Simpsons symbolized (and still do), another animated cartoon show was released under the name of Matt Groening: Futurama. With a sense of humor quite like the first show, Futurama fulfilled the role of alternative in the Groening world and did it quite well. Futurama was first aired in March of 1999 and has lasted until 2003 when the Fox Company decided not to buy the following season. Even though the series has not been officially cancelled, it is presumably over and there are no current projects of further seasons.

Futurama told the audience the story of a human, Fry, a pizza delivery guy, who has been frozen in 1999 and that awakens in the same city, New York, but a thousand years later. In this way, he has to cope with all the changes that means, among which we find that robots and other creatures (of all kind) coexist with humans in a society dominated by technology advances. This situation is highly familiar and common in any futuristic story, but what happens in Futurama is quite different. You may wonder why and here is the answer: just as it happened in The Simpsons, Futurama takes all the typical clichés of a science fiction story and satirize them in a very peculiar way, with a sense of humor that reminds us quite clearly to the one we are used to see in The Simpsons, but with some particular brushstrokes that make it completely different. The richness in characters is quite amazing if you take in consideration that each one of them is completely different from each other in terms of forms, colors and abilities. Here, the most interesting role is fulfilled by Bender, a robot who is alcoholic and has an extraordinary bad temper.

Summing up, Bender the robot has all the vices that are typical of humans and here is where one of those ironies is most clearly seen. Another rich irony is the one that tells the public that the world is being governed completely by only one person: Richard Nixon’s head (many famous people has been portrayed in those popular jars where only their heads are kept alive) and in this futuristic world there is also place for an interplanetary association that reminisces of the United Nations: The Democratic Order Of Planets.

Even though Futurama did not have the success that the producers expected it to have, and even though it could never get away from the shadow of The Simpsons, the show proved to be integrally interesting and well developed all in all. It gained many fans that praised it and that miss it on TV.