6. They Ended The Show Beautifully At The End Of Season 4
The finale of Season 4, The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings, is perhaps one of the greatest episodes of the original run. Not only does it have great jokes, one of which has created its own meme, it has the great emotional climax for Fry and Leela's story. Fry's adoration of Leela finally comes to a head in the final scene after everyone has left his, now poorly performed, opera written for Leela, but she waits to see "how it ends". Since season 1, the interplay between Fry and Leela has been the key emotional driving force for the show, just look at The Sting, Parasites Lost and Time Keeps On Slippin'. Fry has always been the dorky little underdog we root for, and we hope that he will always stay that way, despite all of his experiences. In the seasons made for Comedy Central (6 and 7), the dynamic of the relationship doesn't work for Fry as a character, he is no longer the underdog and so he now has very little substance to make the audience root for him, it's a betrayal of what made Fry the great focus of the show. The final shot of The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings is the perfect emotional climax and conclusion for both the characters and the series, we assume that the central character has finally succeeded, he's got the girl and they can live a happy life together. That is all we need to know. However, when they carried on we got 4 pretty good feature length episodes that basically reset their relationship as if this never happened. That is until; we reach the end of the last movie, Into the Wild Green Yonder.