The new seasons have been lackluster. I think one of the main issues is that the show did a lot to wrap up the majority of the main character arcs prior to the cancellations. Fry and Leela are the central characters, often trading off the position as the audience stand-in. And there is basically zero room left for character growth. We know how the Fry/Leela love story arc ends, we’ve seen it. Kif and Amy have also hit the end of their main character arcs. They are married, have kids, and mostly are settled into domestic life. Bender is Bender. A core part of his character is his resistance to growth. So, even when they drop a backstory on him and try to give him growth, it just feels out of place. That only leaves background characters to work with. But, since it takes the focus off the main characters, it makes things feel like a money-grab spin-off.

All that’s left is the sort of 90’s sit-com style, “story of the week” where nothing really changes and we all learn whatever moral lesson the writers wanted to foist on us this week in 22-minutes, plus commercial breaks. We all want “more Futurama”; but, I think the problem may be that there isn’t “more Futurama”. The stories are done, we just keep hanging on because of nostalgia, and the producers keep making it because of money. There are going to be good bits here and there. But, what we are seeing is what we are going to keep getting.