Futurama: "Rebirth"

Whenever Futurama was presented with finales in its past, it dealt with them exceedingly well: the first run of the series ended on a touching note with 2003's "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings", and the straight-to-DVD Futurama: Into The Wild Green Yonder in wrapped things up on with a suitably epic bang in 2009. It took another year of contract negotiations, walkouts, uproars and salary increases, before Comedy Central landed 26 new episodes. A brief commentary of the bigger picture, as well as reviews of the first two episodes, can be found here, but I wanted to take a slightly more detailed look at the first regular episode of Futurama in seven years, the appropriately entitled "Rebirth".

After taking the obligatory shots at the Fox Broadcasting Company ("idiots"), and Futurama's new home on Comedy Central ("bigger idiots"), the action picks up an unspecified time after the events of Into The Wild Green Yonder. As Professor Farnsworth (Billy West) idly catches a fly in midair and drops it into a bubbling test-tube, Fry (West) wanders in and wonders why he's covered in burns - and more importantly, why his hair is frizzy. Farnsworth reveals what happened when the Planet Express entered the wormhole at the end of Into The Wild Green Yonder, and why the decapitated heads of the Planet Express crew (including Capt. Zapp Brannigan (West)) are suspended above a cauldron of stem cells. All the crew are successfully "reborn", except for Leela (Katey Segal), who exits the stem cell vat in a coma. Heartbroken, Fry creates a robot version of Leela, who feels attracted to him, but is horrified at what happened to her (that she's a robot, and the real version of her is dead). Meanwhile, in an attempt to save him, Farnsworth placed one of his doomsday devices in Bender (John DiMaggio), who must keep partying to prevent the device from overloading and destroying everyone and everything.

You would expect some rustiness after over half a decade of being off the air, but "Rebirth" gives us what we loved about Futurama, and what easily made it the best animated show on television: the humor is sharp ("Fetal stem cells? Aren't those controversial?" "In your time, yes. But nowadays…shut up!"); the plot is interesting (what with humans and robots galore); and the show knows how not to take itself too seriously (every scene with Bender, increasingly reluctantly, shaking his shiny metal ass).

The best part of "Rebirth", however, is the continuation of the Fry/Leela story. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to have reset their relationship and mined a repository of tried & true, but old, jokes. But in choosing to develop the story and take it further, writers David X. Cohen and Matt Groening show us why Futurama was always one step of its peers. Yes, it's a comedy, it knows it's a comedy and acts like a comedy, but it treats its personal issues seriously and with gravitas, surpassing its animated peers by giving us characters we actually, really care about.

So is Futurama back? The answer is a very solid "yes". Somewhat forgivably, "Rebirth" was a little shaky around the edges, and the drawn-out reintroduction scene and self-referential jokes almost had me wishing the show would get on with the story. But against the brilliant scene of Bender helplessly tearing up the dance floor in his John Travolta suit ("If only I didn't have so much crunk in my ba-dun-ka-dunk!", he says later), the only logical response is to get out there and shake it yourself. At 4.5/5, Futurama is not only reborn, it's alive and well.