NFTs
Futurama’s new season struggles to make NFTs and AI funny
It only takes a few minutes for the new season of Futurama to begin explaining non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, a concept most people probably haven’t thought about in over a year.
Despite being set in the distant future, Futurama has always felt comfortable commenting on modern life. There have been episodes about smartphones and 3D printers that use sci-fi nonsense to complicate concepts in a way that makes them funny. This has remained true over many years (and cancellations). But in its revival on Hulu last year, the show really started to mess up the balance, and its topical jokes began to overshadow the sci-fi jokes. The next 12th season struggles even more to find a Futurama-style twist on absurd, ripped-from-the-headlines storylines about NFTs and AI. This results in an uneven season that often feels like it’s missing what originally made the show so special.
NFTs are the most glaring example, and they also feature heavily in the premiere episode, which makes for a poor first impression. The convoluted plot involves Bender selling a CryptoPunks Style collection to make a quick buck, which somehow leads him on a journey to discover his origins in Mexico. Meanwhile, the rest of the Planet Express crew attempts a heist to free Bender’s NFT collection from an art museum, only to be thwarted by the complexities of blockchain and digital ledgers.
The problem is that these aren’t some kind of quirky Futurama take on NFTs—they’re just regular NFTs as we know them now, terrible art connected to a digital receipt. The episode spends an annoyingly large chunk of its runtime explaining the concept—which, to be fair, it is difficult to do succinctly — without offering much in the way of jokes or commentary. He just assumes that NFTs alone are enough to make people laugh.
Over a decade ago, when we all thought Futurama was truly over for good, executive producer and head writer David X. Cohen explained to me how the show has managed to successfully translate modern issues into its retrofuturistic world. “We always like it when the real world gives us ideas for episodes,” he said. “Setting the show 1,000 years in the future doesn’t mean you’re not commenting on today’s society, it just makes it one step removed.” As the NFT episode proves, it’s that “one step removed” part that’s so important. Without it, the episode is a bunch of unfunny jokes that are also painfully dated.
I’ve seen the first six episodes of the season (there will be 10 in total), and things get a little better after that. There’s a Squid Game parody that explores Fry’s childhood through some kind of bizarre time travel, and a fast-fashion episode that turns Cara Delevingne into Frankenstein’s monster and the professor into a style icon. I wouldn’t say these are examples of Futurama at its best — the jokes are hit-or-miss, and most of them lack the heart that keeps the show going. But they at least get Futurama’s original premise right: using this weird future as a lens through which to exaggerate modern issues.
This is less true in the least original episode of the bunch, when the show turns an AI chatbot into Leela’s jealous friend. It’s almost every AI movie trope crammed into 20 minutes of animation. It’s also kind of weird to approach AI as something new, given that Futurama is teeming with sentient robots.
Perhaps there will be more heart and wit in later episodes, as Hulu promises that the season will explore “the next chapter in Fry and Leela’s fateful and twisted romance.” But from what I’ve seen, the balance is way off. There’s too much focus on being topical and not enough on the offbeat humor, long-running characters, and warmth that made it all work so well before. Like the rest of the world, Futurama should have left NFTs in the past.
Futurama season 12 begins streaming on Hulu on July 29.