This year marked the end of “Futurama” at Comedy Central, as the show was essentially cancelled for a second time after a run of 140 episodes.
Originally created by Matt Groening and David X. Cohen for Fox, “Futurama” ran for four seasons on that network before launching into a series of Direct-to-DVD movies and an additional two seasons on Comedy Central.
To celebrate the recent release of “Futurama: The Complete Series” on DVD, Cohen graciously spoke to us over the phone about the final episode of the series, his favorite DVD extras, the funniest episodes and he even teased the upcoming episode of “The Simpsons” that will bring back “Futurama” for at least one final bow.
CraveOnline: Now that we’ve seen the final episode of “Futurama” (for now), can you tell us why “Meanwhile” was chosen to be the end of the series?
David X. Cohen: Yeah! As I like to say, we’re the only show that has a lot of experience writing our last episode ever. There’s been four different occasions where at the time that we wrote an episode we thought it was going to be our last episode ever. And sort of as a running joke or a tradition, we’ve always used the same writer to write those episodes. A guy named Ken Keeler, who’s been there since the very beginning. He’s actually, genuinely gotten very good at wrapping up the series at this point! [Laughs]
What we learned over those numerous cancellations and returns to life was that our favorite style of last episode is one that has a big epic science fiction story, but also a touching Fry and Leela story on top of that so that there’s a little closure to that. This time, since we were sort of the most confident that this was going to be our last episode, we pushed it a little further with the personal story as you saw, or you will see if you haven’t seen it yet. The wedding of Fry and Leela… for real! And if you think I’ve given away too much, rest assured that’s just the beginning of their troubles. It’s a very good episode and ultimately, I still feel very happy with the tone that the show ended on.
You’ve got the new “Futurama: The Complete Series” out on DVD now. Have you had a chance to look at that yet?
I’ve been sent over the last few months, all of the materials and designs. And there’s a lot of back and forth. They’re always in touch with Matt Groening and me about the design of these things. I don’t actually have my physical copy yet (hint, hint for anyone listening in on this line). But yes, I am pretty familiar with the whole set and it is beautiful.
Is there anything on this DVD set that we haven’t seen before?
The basic content is all of the eight volumes of DVDs plus all four of the movies. They have redesigned the packaging over the years for those original four volumes and now they’re in a beautiful matched set of all eight volumes.
The DVD extras are too numerous to mention since it’s all the DVD extras we’ve ever done. But there’s probably about 50 DVD features on here which I can name a few of my favorites. Many of my favorites are on actually on the DVD movies section of the package, including the “Futurama: Lost Episode,” for anyone who has never seen that; which is all of the scenes from the “Futurama” video game that was out years ago, edited together into single episode that’s about a half hour long. So it’s really a full length extra episode that few people have ever seen. So I recommend that.
Also, another of my favorites is on the DVD movie Bender’s Big Score. The 22 minute episode of “Everyone Loves Hypnotoad,” for any of our Hypnotoad fans. For anyone who doesn’t know, Hypnotoad is a toad who sits motionless and hypnotizes you with his googly eyes and that’s all that he does. We have a 22 minute episode of Hypnotoad, however it actually has several commercial breaks with very funny commercial interruptions. So my description of this episode is “four minutes of entertainment packed into a 22 minute program.” I also highly recommend it.
So it’s like most network TV shows, really.
[Laughs] Four minutes [of entertainment] is doing pretty good by network TV standards.
Now that ‘Futurama” is complete (for now), do you have any particular favorite episodes when you look back?
Yeah, there are a few milestones along the way. The one that is usually my favorite in any given moment (I would say deep in my heart) is an episode called “The Luck of the Fryish” from season 3. The reason that this one has always been near and dear to me is that it’s the first time we really tried to do a deeply emotional episode of the show; which is something we didn’t expect to be doing when we first started production. We thought that this was a kooky sci-fi show. And the idea that we could do something that was genuinely touching and emotional was not high on our list of priorities at the beginning.
Later we started thinking “Why can’t we do that? Just because we’re a sci-fi show, let’s see what happens.” So we tried this episode where we learn more about Fry’s brother, whom he had left behind in the year 2000 and kind of unraveled the mystery of his life and it ended with a very sweet moment of realization… I’m trying not to give away an episode that’s ten or twelve years old at this point! [Laughs] I don’t know if there’s any reason to avoid spoilers, but I will still in case anyone hasn’t seen it.
It was very difficult to write because there was a lot of back and forth in time and we were trying to get people to buy into the emotions of cartoon characters, including robots and lobsters and everything. It’s not that easy! And we didn’t know how people would react. It ended up being one of the favorite episodes of that year, so that emboldened us to try more of these, including the infamous “Jurassic Bark” where Fry’s dog dies. [Laughs] All “Futurama” fans everywhere burst out in explosive sobs; which was somewhat cruel on our part.
More recently we tried some touching ones, even in this last season with the series finale “Meanwhile” and another one called “Game of Tones;” about Fry’s mom. [“The Luck of the Fryish”] opened up a whole new area of material for us. The ones that bring a tear to your eye. I always feel proud of those because it’s so difficult with a cartoon, let alone a crazy sci-fi cartoon to pull that off.
Which episode did you think was the funniest “Futurama?”
That is tough… I’m gonna name one of the old ones and one of the new ones. Of the original run on Fox, I think my favorite for pure laughs is probably “Amazon Women In The Mood;” which is the one where the crew goes to the planet of giant Amazon women along Zap Brannigan and Kiff and features a guest appearance (believe it or not!) of Bea Arthur as the voice of the Fem-puter who runs this all female planet. It’s just so crazy and sort of on the line of being offensive. You have to make that decision on your own! [Laughs] There were a lot censorship issues with the scanty outfits of the giant Amazon women too, needless to say.
That’s my favorite for just laughs in the first round. Just in this last round, there’s one right near the end… not one of the most touching episodes of the end of the run, but it was an episode called “Murder on The Planet Express.” This episode is out on our new set, volume 8, where a horrible, Alien-like creature is on the loose in the Planet Express ship and they’re just trapped in there for a long time. Every horrible thing that could happen, happens. That episode is actually nominated for a Writer’s Guild award.
Getting back to “Amazon Women In The Mood,” the “Death by Snu-Snu” joke actually came up again recently.
Oh yeah? In what context?
Comic book artist, Stjepan Sejic used “Death by Snu-Snu” in a Wonder Woman fan art pinup.
[Laughs] She would have gone perfectly well in the Amazon planet, obviously.
Are you involved with the “Futurama” episode coming up on “The Simpsons?”
Yes! A little bit. That is very exciting. For anyone who doesn’t know, there’s going to be a “Simpsons/Futurama” crossover that may well be the season premiere of “The Simpsons” next fall, next September or October, whenever they premiere. It’s in production now, so there’s no official date yet. But this was out of the blue. The head writer over at “The Simpsons,” Al Jean approached Matt Groening and me and said “What do [you] think of this idea?” They were looking for some kind of catchy idea for a season finale or season opener episode and we both said “Sure!” [Laughs] What else is “Futurama” going to do now?
So it’s very exciting to me. Stewart Burns, a former “Futurama” writer (who has now been writing for “The Simpsons” for several years) is writing the script. So someone who is very familiar with both shows will be writing it. And I talked with him quite a bit about the story and the way of integrating “Futurama” into it that was least upsetting to the fans of either show. [Laughs] Many of your favorite “Futurama” characters will be appearing in that.
