Do you remember where you were at the turn of the millennium? You were probably awaiting the new music video that the Backstreet Boys dropped that night, weren't you, or was I the only cool one. Anyway, it's time for our chronological journey of TV comedies, explained in part 1, to cross over from the 90's to the 00's.
Anyway, what better way to celebrate the 2000's than a show that features a guy who is all set to celebrate Y2K, only to get cryogenically frozen and wake up just in time for Y3K?
7. Futurama (1999 - present)
But M, you say. does Futurama count as iconic? Well, in certain circles, yeah. Mainly nerdy guys about my age. When Futurama was pulled from streaming, the office where I worked had a collective mourning session. But, I don't know if too many people paid attention when the show came back after a long hiatus.
I watched the premier of Futurama with my family when it first came out, but I never really latched on to this show. You'll probably think I hate Futurama after reading this blog, and I don't. There are lots of good episodes of this show. Unfortunately, the two episodes that IMDB had me watch are NOT good.
Maybe part of the reason I never latched on to Futurama is that I felt like it was taking attention and resources away from my beloved Simpsons, but part of it also was its inability to write female characters. Our female protagonist is Leela, who is generally feisty, has an unachievably perfect body, and is the love interest of multiple male characters, including Fry, our male protagonist, and Zapp Brannigan, a character written for Phil Hartman that had to be recast after he passed away.
In an episode of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, the gang gets invited to watch a test screening of an action movie, and Dee does not like the female protagonist. She goes on to say that she wishes the woman had had less agency. "You see, I feel bad enough about myself, I don't want to watch this woman who's smoking hot, an astrophysicist, and delivering roundhouse kicks." That's kind of what Leela is. She's perfect, but, don't worry, she's attainable. If you hang around long enough and are a NICE GUY, she will ultimately be yours, as she rightfully was from the beginning. I hate "nice guy" storylines and that's the main thing that turns me off about Futurama. If you question how toxic the "nice guy" trope is, check out the "nice guys" subreddit. Fry is nice, sometimes creepy and stalkerish but he's stupid so it's okay, and he eventually gets Leela.
I guess adult animation is full of couples where the woman is vastly superior to the man but enjoys being with him because she knows she is superior. In an episode of Family Guy, Lois loves Peter more than ever after realizing that she is the alpha in the relationship and he is useless. We also have Hayley and Jeff in American Dad, Cleveland and Donna in The Cleveland Show, Lisa and Millhouse in some future episodes in The Simpsons ... this could be a future blog, couldn't it. But, back to Futurama.
IMDB's Top: Jurassic Bark (IMDB 9.5, M 3.9)
Fry discovers the pizza place where he worked 1000 years ago has been unearthed, and there's a fossilized version of his dog, Seymour. The professor has a way to bring Seymour back to life, but when it's discovered that Seymour died of natural causes at the age of 15, Fry decides not to bring him back to life, because he's probably lived a long and happy life without him. Also, for an extended period, Leela and Amy are practicing "combat" while wearing stripper outfits. WHY? I guess I am aware that there is live-action Simpsons, Family Guy, and American Dad porn (don't look at me like that, I learned this from an innocent YouTube video), so there's probably Futurama porn as well.
But, then, guess what, after Fry decides not to bring Seymour back to life, we get a flashback to the 2000's and see that Seymour faithfully waited outside the pizza place for over a decade before passing away.
The sappy episodes of Futurama are my least favorites, and this episode goes out of its way to be sappy. It will hit people's triggers like, "oh my God I love dogs," but, I love dogs, and this did nothing for me. Fry was a terrible dog owner, if he was even its owner, it seems more like Seymour was a stray that he fed that hung out at the pizza place (I have been to a pizza place where random stray cats walked in and out of the kitchen, so this is not outside the realm of possibility). But to refuse to bring a dog back to life just because you think you wouldn't be the center of its world anymore, and that's the only reason you wanted to have a pet anyway? That's despicable. He decides to let "his" dog (who we haven't heard of before and won't again) stay dead because he's afraid it might have gotten a new owner that it loves more than him. This is worse than what Ross did to the monkey, and the only reason I'm rating it higher than that Friends episode is it's slightly, only slightly, funnier. I mean, Bender is always great.
IMDB's Bottom: The Futurama Holiday Spectacular (IMDB 6.4, M 3.8)
Well, they did an episode worse than "Jurassic Bark." I don't even know what to say about this episode. It was supposed to be a musical, I guess, and it manages to insult Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa. It makes no sense, the songs are awful, none of the jokes land, and it doesn't even really have a storyline, it's just a random series of events. I don't think they even bother to explain how they got from the very robot Hanukkah to the very racist Kwanzaa, and you know what, I don't care.
Again, I don't hate Futurama. I'm actually thinking, as a result of my work on this blog, I might someday do a watch-through of both Futurama and South Park, solidifying my position as the queen of adult animation. These were bad episodes, but I don't hate Futurama. You know what I do think I might hate, though? The next two shows I'm going to talk about. Change my mind, shows.
8. The Office (2005 - 2013)
I take back what I said about hate. Let's face it, I don't hate any of these ten shows. I like some of them more than others, but these are all sitcoms. They're the comfort food of TV. They give you a place to go every week where you know what to expect, where you have a funny bunch of characters that are bonded together because they are family, because they live in the same building, because they work together, or because they're aliens from the same planet, but regardless, they're always going to be there for each other. As the fictional sitcom Old Lady House tells us, you'll never be alone.
What is my background with The Office? Well, when I was working multiple retail/fast food jobs to finish up grad school, some people who I rung up at the cash register told me that I looked like Pam Beasley, and I went online and figured out who that was, and decided, ok, I guess that's a compliment. My boyfriend was a big Office fan and one Christmas bought me season 1 and we watched it with my entire family in one sitting. I didn't really like it, a) because I don't like cringe humor, and b)
Oh, I have to go back on the hate thing. Sorry.
I hate Pam. A lot.
I had an internship at a publishing house, which was my intended career, that did not lead to a job, so I interviewed for a secretary position at the publishing house. I didn't get it. My career aspirations quickly fell from book publisher to "anything where I don't have to work with food" and I interviewed for dozens of secretary/receptionist positions with no success. Either I didn't have the charisma, I didn't have the experience, or I was overqualified. That was the reason I was turned down by a law firm I interviewed with. I didn't tell them that I'd interviewed with Bed Bath and Beyond earlier and they'd told me the same thing.
So here I am, working three jobs and going to school, and Pam has the job of my DREAMS and gets to wear her own clothes and not go home smelling like onions, and we are supposed to feel SO SO SORRY FOR HER. Because she sits there and eats yogurt all day and maybe like three times a day her boss asks her to do something. And she, especially in the early seasons, has all the charisma of a limp, overcooked noodle that someone accidentally dropped into a toilet where it stewed for several years and then was thrown out onto the sidewalk and now has ants crawling all over it. But, oh my, her job is just SO HARD and she DESERVES BETTER and she wanted to DRAW PICTURES or something. Someone save this poor woman from her horrible fate, and also her fiance, which is another thing she has.
When the Oscars aired this year, I was texting with my aunt beforehand because she, like me, had watched most of the nominees. When giving me her reviews of the nominated movies, she said, "I liked Wicked, but I don't like Ariana Grande in real life. She just always has this put-on fretful look and it makes me want to slap her."
Right after my aunt sent that text, Ariana made her entrance on the red carpet and was making a face like she was being hunted by wolves and stabbed with red hot pokers and is very terrified but please feel sorry for her because she's being so brave right now but also could someone come rescue her. My aunt texted me, "slap."
(If my aunt had actually been at the Oscars, which she was not, this would have been the SECOND Oscar slap in history.)
Pam makes that same face ALL THE TIME. So, there might be a trope I hate more than the superwoman-who-is-attainable-if-you're-just-nice-enough trope. It's the wide-eyed, pretty-much-an-adult-infant damsel in distress who needs you to rescue her so she can be your adorkable beta partner. I don't want to slap Pam, though. I just want to remotely vaporize her so that she ceases to exist but I don't have to actually see it happen or feel any guilt. And, well, the show isn't on anymore, so I guess someone else took care of that for me.
IMDB's Top: The Finale (IMDB 9.9 (holy ****), M 4.2)
This is a complete game changer. The finale was the top rated episode of the show?
I watched this episode having watched the entire first season and then scattered episodes after that but nothing in the last few seasons, and, like the Seinfeld series finale, this was complete fan service. I have to put it above Jackovasaurs, but I'm docking it a lot because it makes no sense and has no entertainment value if you are not familiar with the show and the characters.
The premise is that all the past and present cast members are getting together for Dwight and Angela's wedding and the finale of the documentary that was being filmed about Dunder-Mifflin this whole time (a plot point we often forget about). And of course Dwight is just the worst and he doesn't want a lap dance at his bachelor party, he is just upset that he's hungry and no one has served him bread. And of course Jim, his best man, plays pranks on him as he is wont to do. And of course Steve Carell, I mean Michael, shows up randomly and says "That's what she said." And of course Pam still is a human-shaped thing that occasionally reacts to stimuli when someone delivers a shock to her electric collar and then gives her a treat afterwards and I can only assume that otherwise she is in sleep mode.
Anyway, I can see how if you have followed this show for years, this would be a big cathartic moment. All the characters who have been mad at each other make amends, Jim and Pam leave the company on good terms, and Dwight, who seems to exist to be miserable, is happily married. But, this is a friggin' 9.9 on IMDB, meaning it's a durn near perfect episode. And, in my opinion, a perfect episode would be one that you could watch free of any context and still enjoy, and this IS NOT THAT.
I'm going to bring up the Simpsons masterpiece "Cape Feare," which rates a 9.2 on IMDB. I saw this episode as a child and I LOVED it for 20 years before realizing it was a parody of anything. It's an exact parody of a movie, but it doesn't need any context because it's just so good it can stand alone even if you've never heard of the movie. This episode of The Office cannot stand alone. It is the Return of the King of sitcoms. It is just, 51 minutes (!) of shoving these characters in your face and giving you 10 million endings and reminding you how much you love The Office, and, I don't love The Office, but by the end of the episode even I was a little bit touched. As (ugh) Pam says, life is short, so we might as well try to enjoy the times that we have, even if they aren't ideal.
I remember one really slow summer afternoon in college when I was working at the movie theater with my best friend, Naomi. She randomly said, "You know what I'm most afraid of? I'm afraid I'll look back on my days working at the movie theater someday, and think, 'those were the good times.'"
That's kind of what this episode is. These people all thought their job was just THE WORST, but when they get together for a reunion of sorts, they realize that they really had it good and should have appreciated it more.
And guess who gets the last line in the series?
Friggin
Pam
Ends the series by saying that it made sense for a documentary to be made about a run-of-the-mill paper company, because sometimes we can find beauty in the ordinary. Or something like that. I'm never watching this episode again, so don't drill me for an exact quote.
IMDB's Bottom: Get the Girl (IMDB 6.3, M 3.7)
I have to rate this one pretty low for a few reasons. It's not as bad as "The One with the Fake Monica," but was it worse than "Futurama Holiday Spectacular?" Ultimately, I decided, maybe, yeah. Mostly because this is an episode where you really need context. Should I not have included The Office in this blog adventure for the same reason I did not include Arrested Development? Maybe. But it's too late now.
The premise is that Andy goes to Florida to try to get Erin back. If you're not an avid watcher of the show, you don't understand the history of their relationship, and they do very little to try to explain that, you're just tossed right in. And meanwhile, back in Scranton, Nellie showed up! Who's Nellie? Well, apparently she is the new boss at Dunder-Mifflin, and we don't know why, and we don't know who she is except apparently she showed up at some point in the previous season. There are a couple throwaway lines like "Nellie, how did you end up being our boss, you should be in jail after what you did in Florida" but no actual flashbacks or explanations.
There are episodes that are just for the fans, and episodes for everyone. Both of the episodes I've covered of The Office are just for the fans. Like any Always Sunny episode where they bring back all of the minor characters (see: "Dee Gives Birth," "The Gang Wins the Big Game"). I know pretty much every line in that show so I like those episodes, but I would not recommend them to newcomers.
It's also quite painful seeing a character that the writers didn't really know what to do with, other than just having them be generally awful, or latching on to a shtick that didn't really work. From my limited experience with later-season The Office, that is what Nellie seems like. Michael Scott left the show, and they tried to come up with a new incompetent, outrageous boss, and they failed.
Not the only time this has happened. When Carrie Fisher passed away, Family Guy seemed to really struggle with determining who Peter's new boss was going to be, and what was going to be their "thing." At first, it was Burt and Sheila, voiced by the incredibly talented Bryan Cranston and Niecy Nash. But, the writers couldn't really figure out a "thing" for those characters, so they were just kind of, there, for two seasons saying things like "Griffin, you're fired" or "Griffin, you're hired again" before disappearing. And now Peter's boss is Preston, who was also painfully unfunny at first but they've kind of leaned into the OCD thing with him and that occasionally makes for a good joke.
Wait, this isn't what we were talking about. We're talking about Nellie in The Office. She basically seems like she's trying to do the same schtick as Steve Carell, where the joke is just supposed to be that she's uncomfortably incompetent with an over-inflated ego, but it just seems, really uncomfortable. If they were going to make her a recurring character, which I don't know if they did, and I don't care enough to look that up, she should have had her own thing, not just been female Michael.
There is one funny line in this episode. The grandma that Erin was working as a housekeeper for informs her that her grandson is suing Home Depot after getting his foreskin tangled in some lawn furniture and I was like LOL WUT.
Anyway, that is my very cerebral and not rage-fueled review of The Office. In the final installment of this blog series, we will visit two shows parodied in the Family Guy episode "Emmy-Winning Episode" so you know these will be very prestigious shows, and I will release the ultimate rankings I know you've been drooling for of IMDB vs. M.
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