Futurama: 10 Things It Did Better Than The Simpsons
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The Simpsons broke a lot of ground when the series first premiered back in 1989. Thanks to its incredible success, series creator Matt Groening was able to get another project of his off the ground a decade later. That project was Futurama, one of the best-written and most beloved science fiction series ever made.
Sadly, Futurama was cancelled... twice. Even with cancellations, however, the series was brought back and given a proper send-off with a series finale. Over the course of its seven seasons consisting of 140 episodes, Futurama managed to delve into sci-fi and animated comedy in ways The Simpsons could never dream of.
While The Simpsons has a lot going for it, there are some aspects of Futurama that make the series a bit better than its progenitor. This isn't to say The Simpsons isn't fantastic... it absolutely is, but it can't do everything perfectly, which leaves room for Futurama to shine.
10. Linear Storytelling
The Simpsons has been around for nearly 30 years, but with 29 seasons and more than 630 episodes, there hasn't been much linear storytelling. Sure, you have characters like Sideshow Bob coming up from time-to-time indicating he has been off doing something other than attempting to kill Bart, but that's about it.
Over at Futurama, linear storytelling is the name of the game. The series began with Fry getting frozen in the cryogenics laboratory and continued in "real time" from the year 2,999 until the series concluded in the year 3,013. Those dates mirror (somewhat) the actual dates the series ran (1999-2013), only 1,000 years in the future.
Through the course of the show, the characters grow and develop from beginning to end. Fry's involvement with Leela progressed, Zoidberg got a girl, and Bender learned some valuable lessons.
At the end of an episode, things aren't reset to the way they were before. There was a joke about that at the end of When Aliens Attack, which featured a great deal of destruction. The damage remained as Fry joked that "It was just a matter of knowing the secret of all television: at the end of the episode, everything is back to normal."