Futurama's 25 Best Episodes

Jun 01, 2024

Futurama is one of the best comedies on TV. From "Jurassic Bark" to "The Luck of the Fryrish," there are many iconic episodes that never get old.

Futurama has plenty of great episodes exhibiting the show’s signature blend of heart, humor, and mind-bending science fiction. When the success of The Simpsons afforded him the chance to create a new animated show, Matt Groening decided to do something totally different from his iconic family sitcom. Together with David X. Cohen, Groening cooked up a sci-fi satire about a pizza delivery man who’s accidentally frozen in cryostasis in the 21st century and awakens in the 31st century. Despite struggling to match The Simpsons’ viewership figures, Futurama has been similarly acclaimed by critics.

In all its incarnations, Futurama has been one of the smartest animated shows on TV. After its initial run on Fox, the show was picked up for additional seasons by Comedy Central, and a decade after the Comedy Central run ended, it was revived by Hulu. No matter how many times it’s canceled, this fan-favorite cult classic refuses to die. From the devastating heartache of “Jurassic Bark” to the razor-sharp religious satire of “Godfellas,” there are many classic Futurama episodes that never get old.

The pilot episode of Futurama is one of the greatest ever made. It opens in 1999 as Fry delivers a pizza to a laboratory and ends up being cryogenically frozen for 1,000 years. In the future, he meets Leela, Bender, and all the other beloved characters when he’s assigned a job at Planet Express. The Futurama pilot sets up all the characters and their dynamics while also setting up this oddball satirical vision of New York in the 31st century. Futurama’s very first episode established that the show would be both a great sitcom and a great science fiction series.

When the Planet Express crew stumbles upon the matriarchal society of Amazonia in “Amazon Women in the Mood,” Fry, Kif, and Zapp are all sentenced to death by “snu-snu,” while Leela and Amy enjoy the advantages of a world without men. Like all the best Futurama episodes, “Amazon Women in the Mood” tackles a lofty theme (gender inequality) with plenty of crude humor.

After visiting the forbidden planet of Omega 3 in “Where No Fan Has Gone Before,” the Planet Express crew is court-martialed alongside the original cast of Star Trek. The episode reveals that, in the world of Futurama, Star Trek has been banned after it became a global religion in the 2200s, and its entire fan base was killed in the Star Trek Wars. With plenty of references and quotations from the classic TV series, “Where No Fan Has Gone Before” is a love letter to Star Trek fans.

“The Cyber House Rules” has both a great A-plot and a great B-plot: the A-plot sees Leela wooed by a shallow plastic surgeon from her orphanarium who gives her a second eye, while the B-plot sees Fry and Bender adopting 12 orphans in an attempt to make money. The episode carries a sweet message about the importance of looking past physical imperfections when Leela realizes her new boyfriend only likes her because she now has two eyes. Leela’s romantic arcs are always fun – especially when they reinforce her self-confidence like this one – and Bender’s role as an adoptive father showcases the character’s rarely-seen soft side.

During a delivery on a planet with the blistering heat of Arrakis in “My Three Suns,” Fry unwittingly drinks the emperor of a water-based lifeform and becomes the new ruler of their empire. The power immediately goes to his head and he refuses to listen to Leela’s warnings that every previous emperor was assassinated so he’ll probably meet the same fate. “My Three Suns” brings out the best in Fry by showcasing his worst qualities, and this was one of the first times that Leela showed she really cares about Fry.

Futurama set up its own version of The Simpsons’ “Treehouse of Horror” Halloween episodes with “Anthology of Interest I” (although they only ever did two “Anthology of Interest” installments). “Anthology of Interest I” presents three imaginary what-if scenarios involving the characters. Whereas most “Treehouse of Horror” episodes are hit-and-miss, “Anthology of Interest I” has three great stories: a monster movie spoof starring Bender and Zoidberg, a Leela-centric whodunit, and an alternate history in which Fry was never frozen.

It’s up to Fry to save the world when Earth is invaded by flying brains in “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid.” The Brainspawn debilitate humanity by attacking their intelligence – but since Fry’s intelligence is so limited, he’s immune to their mind control. A lot of Futurama episodes show Fry to be comically useless, but “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid” highlights his capacity for heroism and quick thinking.

After discovering an intergalactic delicacy, the Planet Express crew takes Earth by storm with the next big fast-food craze in “The Problem with Popplers.” However, their new business venture gets complicated when the popplers turn out to be sentient beings – the babies of the Omicron aliens – and the Omicronian leader Lrrr wants vengeance. “The Problem with Popplers” is an unexpectedly thoughtful meditation on the ethics of consuming animal products.

Futurama tackled Hollywood in “That’s Lobstertainment!,” in which Zoidberg helps his fading movie star uncle Harold Zoid launch his comeback movie: a political thriller called The Magnificent Three, starring All My Circuits’ Calculon. The episode brilliantly satirizes the unscrupulous nature of Hollywood filmmaking and the politics and disingenuousness of the movie industry. It ends on a sweet note as Zoidberg rushes the stage at the Academy Awards and gives his uncle an Oscar he didn’t earn to lift his spirits.

A second version of the Titanic sets off on its maiden voyage through space in “A Flight to Remember.” Much like the original Titanic, this luxury cruise liner is doomed. Instead of hitting an iceberg, it gets sucked into a black hole. The episode is a hilarious spoof of James Cameron’s Titanic, with Bender playing the Leonardo DiCaprio role and his wealthy love interest, Countess de la Roca, playing the Kate Winslet role.

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Leela gets a touching origin story in “Leela’s Homeworld.” Leela learns that she’s the daughter of a pair of mutants living in an underground society. They left her at the orphanarium so she could have a better life on the surface world. Although she never knew her parents, this episode reveals that Leela’s mom and dad have always been watching over her and helping her out from afar. It’s one of the all-time most emotional installments of Futurama.

After eating a putrid egg salad sandwich from a vending machine in the men’s bathroom at a truck stop, Fry’s body becomes infested with malicious parasites in “Parasites Lost.” What follows is a hysterical parody of Fantastic Voyage as the Planet Express crew shrinks down so they can go inside Fry’s body and fight the parasites. This spoof gets its fair share of laughs, but the true beauty of the episode is the way it strengthens Fry and Leela’s relationship.

The Planet Express crew gets caught up in a battle with giant bees when they’re sent to collect some space honey in “The Sting.” “The Sting” has plenty of great sight gags, like Leela ripping a tissue in half to dry a tear from her one eye, but it also has more than a few moving dramatic moments. Once Fry has seemingly been killed, the writers subvert the audience’s expectations by committing to the possibility that Fry might have been permanently killed off.

“A Big Piece of Garbage” spoofs Michael Bay’s Armageddon with a giant ball of trash on its way to destroy Earth instead of an asteroid. The episode reveals that humanity dealt with its trash problem by launching a spherical landfill into space. When that ball of garbage starts heading back towards Earth, Professor Farnsworth comes up with the bright idea to knock it off-course with an even bigger ball of garbage. The episode is a spot-on satire of both humanity’s wastefulness and the Bay-helmed blockbuster.

When Bender fears he won’t be remembered after he’s gone in “A Pharaoh to Remember,” he spies a chance to leave behind a lasting legacy when he discovers a planet in need of a new pharaoh. The writers fully commit to the darkness of the episode’s premise of Bender’s reign of terror. Like “My Three Suns,” “A Pharaoh to Remember” sees a character gaining some power and instantly letting that power go to their head – and since that character is Bender, the power plays are even worse this time around.

“The Why of Fry” provided the bombshell revelation that Fry getting frozen in 1999 and being stuck in cryostasis until the 31st century was no accident. The whole thing was orchestrated by Nibbler in a bid to save the universe. “The Why of Fry” is a satisfying continuation of the storyline started in “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid,” again showcasing Fry’s heroic capabilities.

Bender unwittingly becomes a deity in “Godfellas.” After taking a nap in a torpedo tube, Bender finds himself endlessly drifting through space. When a civilization falls from an asteroid and settles on his chest-plate, Bender decides to pass the time by playing God. The writers used this premise as a catch-all satire of organized religion. “Godfellas” illustrates the difficulty of God’s job more effectively than Bruce Almighty. Bender finds that, as God, he can’t win. He’s so big and powerful that when he tries to help his followers, he accidentally besets them with Biblical plagues. When he saves a kid from drowning, everyone else starts praying for their own miracles.

Long before multiversal stories were all the rage, Futurama explored a parallel universe in the classic episode “The Farnsworth Parabox.” Two alternate versions of Professor Farnsworth accidentally create a box containing a parallel universe, so they have a portal in and out of each other’s worlds. There are plenty of hilarious conflicts between the two crews, who each think the other is evil, and the episode has a ton of fun contrasting the characters with their otherworldly selves.

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Fry gets waylaid on his way to an important dinner date with Leela when Professor Farnsworth ropes him into testing out his time machine in “The Late Philip J. Fry.” The time machine only goes forward in time, and the professor wants to test it by going one minute into the future. But they overshoot it and end up having to travel centuries and centuries into the future so they can wait for the entire lifecycle of the universe to repeat itself. The episode is a heartwarming milestone in Fry and Leela’s romance and its time-traveling plot makes this one of Futurama’s true sci-fi installments.

When Fry and Bender enlist in the Earth Army for a 5% discount on ham-flavored chewing gum, Earth declares war on Spheron I and they’re shipped off to fight under the command of Zapp Brannigan in an intergalactic war. “War is the H-Word” has fun nods to Star Wars and M*A*S*H, but it’s primarily an homage to Starship Troopers. The episode explores the same satirical anti-war themes as Robert A. Heinlein’s classic sci-fi allegory (and its film adaptation), tackling propagandist lies and the futility of warfare.