Don’t get me wrong; this has been a good season of Futurama. In its second season since coming back from the dead, the show has had some down right fantastic episodes, including the season opener with Bender’s son and the Oktoberfest episode that transitioned into an Eternal Sunshine-eque love story between Leela and Fry. But as the season has progressed I’ve noticed more and more they’re using places and stories from old episodes. I started making a list of blatantly already-used concepts and locations.
Call backs to earlier seasons is part of Futurama‘s charm, but isn’t this a little bit of overkill? It’s one thing for them to have Richard Nixon’s head running for president again since it is an election year, but the list above just seems just too close to specific episodes from previous seasons. There have only been 11 episodes and yet there are so many distinctly reused ideas. Some of the locations are less off-putting (they go to see the mutants fairly normally, for instance), but pulling Fry’s make-shift grandparents out of the matrix of the Near Death Star only to make a daring escape is exactly what happened when they went to the Near Death Star the first time, expect they took Farnsworth instead. There’s a difference between a running gag and just using old story lines.
A few of these nods to/reusing of old episode stories wouldn’t be so bad, but as I was making that list I realized the episodes I loved the most this season were the ones who used original ideas and more unique locations. We’re getting a break after these week’s episodes, so I’m hoping we’ll get to see more original concepts and locations going into next year.
Clacked by Katie Schenkel 
on Aug 27, 2012 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
As much as I love Futurama, none of these new episodes (and specially last year’s season) have come close to the original series (imho of course!). I think the producers realize this and that’s why they trying to come up with storylines closer to those first years.
But really, enough with Nixon already… ><