By Josh Oakley
If I could have had a moment last forever, it would be a
Christmas party held my junior year of high school. It was the moment I first
fell in love, as I laughed at a joke only funny in context, surrounded by
cheesy sweaters, good friends, and food somebody’s mom had made. It was a
perfect moment, one I would love to walk through every specificity of. To travel
the world created and destroyed within an instant, the whole of the moment
collapsed into the varying and tumultuous memories of everyone who lived through
it. That moment is gone, that second passed, the clock’s hands continued their
perpetual journeys and I can only think of it, fondly, on the coldest nights.
The series finale of Futurama
allowed that dream to flourish. It was an unabashedly romantic half-hour, an
episode more interested in pathos than humor. And, more than that, it explored
the entirety of the world through the lens of a fraction of a second. Leela’s
checklist of “sites to see” is a cute joke, but it also cuts to the center of the
episode’s thesis: if you had all of the time, and none of the inhibitors
inherent in this world, what would you do? If you could spend decades walking
atop oceans with the one you love, or simply have your television show
resurrected and allowed to live through three decades, how would you fill the
time?
It’s a romantic and sweet way for the show to go out,
utilizing all of the sitcom’s component parts: crude humor, odd characters, a
high-concept sci-fi trapping, and a gooey heart that Futurama only pulled out on occasion, but effectively.
Because when you boil it down, this was a show about a man
sent a millennium away from all that he knew. Yes, some things were better left
behind, like a cheating girlfriend and a crappy job. But as the show painfully
let us know, he also lost his beloved dog, a family that truly loved him and a
sense of security. Now, the adventure and friendship he found was possibly for
the better, but Futurama always
reminded us that there is always a cost. Energy can neither be created nor
destroyed; it can only change form. The loss of a pet turns into a new best
friend who belches fire and steals from you. Most people give up the secure
life spent with their family for love, no matter how many eyes your partner
has. This is how the scientific nature of the show fed into its emotional core:
science is a way to explain the whole of the universe, a seemingly unknowable
thing. And to a degree it is incomprehensible, as is life. But there are truths
we hold, from the people we care for to the cities we call home.
In “Meanwhile”, Fry and Leela spent decades traversing the
Earth, and decided to do it once again, with their close friends by their side
and with new mornings and new days. With its possible final breath, Futurama decided not to go out on a
laugh, but a heartfelt sensation. A promise, even. Futurama began its journey with an unlucky guy playing video games
in 1999, and ended with that man choosing to relive his life in the year 3013
with the one-eyed woman he loved. Even among the head of Nixon as president, a
corporation running the world led by a cruel mother and three idiotic sons, an
addictive drink made from a worm’s anus. Amidst all of the cities on all of the
planets, Fry fell into that cryogenic tube, lived through the silly,
wonderful, meaningful, confident show that could, and ended up with Leela,
almost as if it were fate.
Good news everyone. We may not be able to live inside of an instant forever, but think of how many beautiful, stupid, miraculous moments we get to experience instead.
Good news everyone. We may not be able to live inside of an instant forever, but think of how many beautiful, stupid, miraculous moments we get to experience instead.
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