Laughing Man said:
So what? In case you forgot the show isn't meant to be seen purely from Fry's point of view and the whilst the references where from a period of time set after Fry was frozen it's not like he was all knowing about what they were all talking about, he was doing what he was doing since he was first unfrozen learning about something new that he had never seen before.
Past references to the, uh, past were more organic. It feels really forced now, and that's sad. The show had stood on its well written characters and tremendously heady humor (much of it grounded in real mathematics and physics), and now it's playing like any common South Park or Family Guy - incessantly "topical" or unnecessarily crass.
Okay maybe the episode long dig at the Iphone was a bit more than the one or two liner digs at popular culture in the past episodes but the fact is it hit the mark on a lot of things it was observing and the push me pull me goat was no more gross out than the episode set on the Slurm planet.
The two headed goat wasn't remotely necessary. It had no bearing on the plot whatsoever. That's the type of random and frankly idiotic humor that characterizes Family Guy. The slurm episode had maybe one scene that compares, and it arose naturally from the story.
Will we see gags as clever as Farnsworth complaining about them changing the result by measuring it when his horse Heisenberg loses? I dunno but the show has been away for long enough and I am willing to cut them some slack until they refind their feet.
I'm definitely still watching, but as someone who puts that particular joke in my own Futurama top ten, I'm amazed that you're not having the same reaction to these new episodes. The show isn't nearly as intelligent as it was. Maybe it never will be.
