Throwback Thursday - Futurama - Jurassic Bark

Whenever I have a chance to talk or write about Futurama I don’t miss it, I go ahead and go on length about how wonderful this show is. Nothing is absolutely perfect, and Futurama had its missteps along the way, but it was pretty darn close to perfection in my eyes. The great mix of funny absurd parodies, social commentary, hilarious gags, heart wrenching moments and heartwarming ones, with incredibly earnest moments have made this show not only my favorite animated show of all time, but one of my favorite shows ever all together, standing proud alongside Fringe and Pushing Daisies. And if we’re going to talk Futurama at its best, it has to be Jurassic Bark.

There are so many wonderful Futurama episodes that is very hard to settle on just one, especially if we talk season 4 (my favorite season): there’s “Leela’s Homeworld”, “The Sting”, “The Farnsworth Parabox”, “The Devil’s Hands Are Idle Playthings”, among so many other wonderful episodes spread around the show’s 7 glorious seasons that picking just one is incredibly hard, but I think most Futurama fans will agree that, if we get one chance to talk about the show, this is the episode to talk about.

This episode shows something that not many people really stops to think about: Futurama is a comedy, but it’s also a tragedy in many ways. Think about some of the most emotionally affecting moments of the show: Fry’s discovering the fate of his brother, Bender becoming god in space, Fry getting lost in time and communicating with Leela through decades and centuries of distance, Fry reconnecting with his mom, and even the series finale where Fry and Leela get to be together while the world stops only to start all over again. It’s all done in a comedic light alongside a feel good air, but the show again and again showcases that things don’t have to work out with a perfect happy ending, but rather that we make our happiness in midst of misery, and life can be pretty hard and sometimes outright unfair to us, taking away from us what we love. What we do with that tragic fate bestowed upon us is on us. And that’s a big message I got from Jurassic Bark.

This episode is about the strong bond of a person and a dog. More than any dog movie out there (like “A Dog’s Purpose” or some of the sort) Futurama already showed just how deep this connection can be, for both parts. Fry and Seymour developed a strong bond over the time they were together, so much so that Seymour even learnt “I’m walking on sunshine” (probably Futurama’s most important song). The episode spends just enough time to get us to understand that they love each other, but it spends even more time with Seymour’s quest to find Fry, a quest that is bound to fail as we know. For first time viewers, there is a shadowy cloud around this development as you already know Seymour won’t find him, but there is always the chance that he still led a happy life (more on that later) or that he could resume it if Fry is successful on bringing him back.

Fry’s devotion to Seymour through the episode is important to showcase that their love went both ways, and of course, to showcase just how much Bender does care about Fry. Bender is one of those characters who is so flexible in that he can be good or evil and it works perfectly regardless of the situation, but one thing is always consistent about his character and that is his love for Fry: at first he is petty and jealous as Bender would be expected to be, leading to a series of funny gags over the episode. When Futurama plays with Bender’s insecurities, it usually leads to hilarious consequences, but also to heartfelt moments, just like when he saw how much Fry was hurting and decided to fix his mistake by saving Seymour’s fossile.

Fry and Bender’s relationship is half the heart of Futurama (the other half is Fry and Leela). Their relationship flexes out the show’s funny muscles, and there is a lot of messiness there, but there is always this underlying affection that makes these moments feel earned. And so, every moment is perfect, as Bender’s jealousy brings out the funny, while Fry’s story with Seymour brings out the touchingly beautiful side of Futurama, and then it’s mirrored when Bende realizes what the dog meant to Fry.

The episode keeps stringing you along with anxiety due to us, as an audience, knowing what Fry and Seymour don’t: Seymour never stopped looking. We see him trying his best to get Fry back, but we know he won’t be able to, and when Fry realizes he has lived a full life without him, he takes a choice thinking that Seymour was able to get over here. And here comes the tragedy of it all: Seymour never did, and Fry would never know. They would never be together again, and yet Seymour would wait for him until the very day he died.

The fact that that kind of love and devotion goes unrewarded is not just sad, it’s heartbreaking, and it’s on this moment that there is a heavy realization about Futurama: as much as there is wacky, funny adventures, this show has a side to it that can only be described as a tragedy. But that’s also what makes it so wonderful: in spite of that, of how many tragic turns of events Futurama took over the course of its run, Fry always kept moving forward, he kept being happy and he made it be no matter how broken the world would get. It’s part of what makes the show special.

This moment will forever be heartbreaking because Seymour wasn’t able to move on and he met an ending that didn’t reward his loyalty and love to Fry. That’s what has made this episode so special: if it had ended with Seymour being cloned or showing us him being happily adopted or something, it would have been a great episode, but it’s the ending that makes it memorable: it’s the reminder that the Futurama writers know that life can be unfair, that it can unrewarding, that it can kick you and even take away everything you have just cuz. And that’s something the show carries with it through the entire run.

In the end, all we have are our choices and our memories: life has some tragic turns, but the show is not as somber as this review may be making it seem to be, however there is already so much written about Futurama’s great ability to make social commentary, make hilarious gags and develop heartwarming stories, that I thought it was not just good, but necessary, to bring forth this more obscure approach to the show.

The episode is hilarious through and through. From Seymour messing around Panuccis’ pizzeria, to the amazingly witty throwaway lines, the brief references to various materials like Frankenstein, the blissfully unaware nature of Fry’s family (which is also frustrating), it all adds up to the greatly written humor of Futurama, and that must be recognized and praised. But I think it’s always important to remember what made Futurama stand out among the rest of the animated show crow, and why it is one of the best shows ever made: alongside the lines of it’s funny and absurd gags, underlines an unforgiving world that sometimes takes this dark routes. And that’s why we have to value what we have and make the best we can with what we are given.

Rest in peace Seymour: may you now look out for Fry from above.