Futurama is hands down my favorite show; a group of people that comes from various backgrounds forced to come together and complete intergalactic missions. Not only does it have a beautiful display of multicultural representation, but it also includes a large variety of humor, Love, Pets, friendships and even touching family moments.
Little Background
Growing up I would consider my friend group to be a lot like Futurama group. In the sense that we all come from different backgrounds, but all of us come together and joke around. Even though we were so different we set those differences aside to come together. Of course, we are all the main characters of our own stories, when it came to my story, I see myself as Fry. From his love interest to his connections with his family to his sense of loneliness and even his intellect level at times. Fry was the guy, and in my opinion believe he does have a lot of relatable scenarios for many people.
For those who have not watched Futurama here is a taste (if you are familiar with the show feel free to skip this part). The show kicks off with a lonely pizza delivery guy named Fry. One day he had a delivery to a building and was taking a break during his pizza delivery within an empty building a couple minutes before new year's. While everybody outside was celebrating he was laying back alone in a chair until he slipped and fell into a chamber that froze him for 1,000 years. He is awakened from his chamber by a cyclops named Lela and he arrives in the year 3000 with everything he has known gone forever.
Friendships
When it came to Fry's friends, he had a wide diversity. When he was in the year 2000, he was an outcast but when he came to the year 3000 there were so many different people, robots, aliens and mutants that there was no such thing as an outcast, so his ability to find friendship was easy. Similar to Fry I too have felt like an outcast a large portion of my life. At a young age I never really fit into any set groups. Like Fry I had a lot of people surrounding me but always had this sense of loneliness for some reason. I never felt like I fit in. In 4th grade people would talk about Call of Duty 2 maps but I never really played games growing up, so I stayed out of the conversations. Really my only focus was getting good grades at the time and cartoons. Later on, through the years I actually had a best friend in 5th grade, we will call him John. I typically just tagged along with John, and he started putting me into his group of friends. I just jumped into his planet express group, and Johns group was cool. We had such a diverse group, there was American, Jamaican, Chinese, Hispanic and me, Bengali. We all came from such different backgrounds. That group of friends was cool. We would just joke about anything and everything. When we would sit at the lunch table, we would come up with secret languages to talk to each other, they even had a group name. My thoughts were that this was our group that would last forever but maybe it wasn't. Once everybody went their separate ways, I realized maybe I didn't have as much in common as I thought. Once my dad changed my school, I haven't heard from any of them in years. In a way Fry had a lot of people surrounding him, but he could never really relate to them. I loved that group, and I still do cherish the memories and looking back I realize that maybe I was too different from everybody. Maybe I was the kid from the year 2000.
Family
Season 6, Episode 24 "Cold Warriors"
When it came to Fry's family his father and mother was terrible to him growing up... is what he thought. This is a slight spoiler so warning if you have not yet watched the show. Within the show there were various episodes where Fry had been mistreated by his mother and father. One episode that always stands out to me is the fishing episode. Fry's dad was teaching him how to fish in extreme cold weather but was extremely hard with him and lowered his self-esteem a lot. Later on, in the show Fry had finally got a loving speech from his father and you can see the reason he was so hard on Fry was because his father was trying to prepare him for the worst... tough love is what we call it. Growing up my mother and father has never told me they loved me. When it came down to whose more affectionate it was definitely my dad. He would always give hugs before he left for work and kept in touch as much as he could. My mother was not much of a hugger for me. Through the years my father has been quite absent from my life I was upset with him for a very long time when I was younger. During my graduation he rushed the family all out and he only wants me to focus on schoolwork and religion. It felt like when I finally started making some friends I was taken away from the school and moved to another having to start fresh. He was extremely strict on my bedtime, and I never really felt like he was around to help me with dad things like they show on TV... playing catch or give some advice on a girl I like... but growing older I realize that he was absent because he was working extra jobs to help provide for the family... he was hard on me because he just wanted the best for me... similar to Fry's dad. I'm only now realizing a little more of his methods of parenting and learning to appreciate what I had...
Pets
Season 5, episode 2 "Jurassic Bark"
One thing about me is I am a sucker for dogs. The one dog I have ever truly felt like was mine was Bonvolio. It was a gift my friend's sister bought for her mom during a Christmas night, and I came over every time to see that puppy. I love him to the ends of the earth. When my friend's sister was away, I remember Bonvolio would sit on the bed sad waiting for her return. Episode Jurassic bark is the perfect representation of a dog's loyalty. Now Fry as we spoke about earlier did not have anyone but there was this stray dog that he would feed every day after work that would grow to be quite fond of him. A connection was created between the two so strong that the dog ended up waiting for him for 1000 years while he was frozen... of course a dog's life is very limited. In the year 3000 Fry find the dog fossilized in the exact spot he has seen him last. Towards the end of the episode, you can see the dog waiting for Fry to return until his life runs short, and death finally grabs hold of the dog's life. A very similar story to a book called Hatchi where the dog would wait for his owner at the train station until death. I truly believe dogs are the most loyal creatures in this world and Bonvolio would wait till death of his owner... I could be away for a couple hours, and he would miss me immediately.
Love
Season 3, episode 14 "Time keeps slipping".
Till this day that episode is hands down my favorite episode in the entire series. Fry was always looked at as a delinquent... being one of the biggest flaws that prevented him from ending up with Lela. In this episode alone he had found a way to rearrange the stars for her just to prove his love to her. The symbolism was beautiful in this expression of love. For me. When it came to the aspects of love.... I fall and I fall hard in all categories. When it comes to love I become the biggest fool, and I cannot physically rearrange stars, but I will damn well try my best to do acts of services that can resemble such an act. I am unable to play a flute that will show our entire future together, but I will learn every favorite song on the guitar to play at our wedding. To travel to the ends of the earths, alternate realities, and quantum fields just to express love I am here for all of it. To hear stories of true love I am a sucker for it. When it comes to love, with no doubt Fry is in love with Lela and no matter what direction he turns it is not the correct path until that path is towards her. When it comes to love I will do anything for the one.
Technology
Season 6 Episode 3 "Attack of the Killer App"
This show is set in the year 3000 as we talked about earlier. So, the show has spaceships and flying cars and all these advancements that is put in to make the show seem futuristic. I am a huge fan of technology and do believe that we can eventually advance even further so when the show shows some new invention that the professor makes, I am interested, even if the invention is a little weird like the smelling telescope. One invention in particular I found pretty funny is the "Eye Phone". In this particular episode a new chip called the eye phone would be implanted into your eye socket so you can see texts and surf the web just with a blink of an eye. The reason I find this funny is because now we actually have glasses available to the public that have the ability to read texts and identify objects. Hey, maybe the sniffing telescope might be invented next who knows.
Summary
This Show targets a lot of emotions that I am sure viewers can find some sort of connection too. I had a great watch looking into this show and I truly felt like this is something I wanted to start off with. Of course it is quite a funny show as well, so it is definitely worth a watch. The show helped open my eyes too things like my connection with my father and my friend group. Even my love life. The technology in this show is jokingly supposed to be 1000 years set into the future but as we talked about in the technology section you can see that there are some ways that we are having these things invented in this day and age. In this ever-expanding world who knows what world or even universe is out there, we never know what's to come there are so many endless possibilities. So, take each experience and learn from it to move onwards to the future.
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