Futurama Is Back

Comedy Central bought the rights from Fox and is airing new episodes. This is the kind of news that shouldn’t matter but kind of does.

Fox cancelled it after four years. It had the wrong time slot or the wrong audience or just wasn’t a priority. It went into syndication, cycling through repeats. It was sadder that way than if it had simply vanished.

The show was smarter than people gave it credit for. It didn’t need you to care about everything. You could tune in for a stupid joke and leave with something that actually mattered, and the show didn’t announce the shift or apologize for it. That’s harder to do than it sounds.

The show was always about people refusing to move on. Someone frozen in the past trying to build a life in a future that wasn’t built for him. It understood longing in a way most comedies don’t even attempt. Bringing it back feels inevitable—the show doing the thing the show is about.

I’m going to watch it. I don’t have high expectations, but I’m curious what happens when you resurrect something that was already kind of dead. It might be great. It might be terrible. Either way it’s something to think about, which is more than most TV offers.