Well, Kinda.

The biggest thing that most of the fans have to keep in mind, at least for a little while, is that these episodes might not be perfect in every single way. Granted, the crew did release four movies since their cancellation, but they are still a little rusty. And, for the most part, that was the case last week when two brand new episodes premiered. We were willing to give the show a little bit of breathing room because we understood there was a possibility it wouldn’t be the Second Coming of Jesus that we were expecting.

That being said, the new episodes were really well-made and quite entertaining. The first of the two, “Rebirth”, was my favorite by far. It tied up the events that ended the film Into the Wild Green Yonder while setting up some great new jokes. The episode involved the Planet Express ship crashing after coming out of a wormhole while being chased by Zapp Brannigan. Fry and Leela had just declared their love for each other, before becoming piles of ash, bone, and skin. And Professor Farnsworth depserately tried to bring his dead comrades back to life through cloning, except for Fry, who seemingly somewhow survived the crash. The Professor’s plan worked as one by one, everyone came back to life, fully intact, except for Leela, who was in a vegetative state. Fry, so distraught that his love might not live, creates a robot version of her, a la Lucy Liu bot, so he doesn’t have to spend his life without her. Meanwhile, Bender is having to party for his life so after having a doomsday device shoved into him by Farnsworth. If he stops partying for even a second, the device will detonate, killing himself, and any poor soul who happens to be near him.

This episode had some fantastic jokes while nicely tying up any questions the fans had going into the premiere. Hands down, my favorite joke of the episode was after we find out Leela’s in a coma. Bender comes dancing along, singing, “Coma-coma-coma-coma-chameleon!” I honestly couldn’t stop laughing for a few minutes. Farnsworth’s joke about Comedy Central, followed by Amy’s reponse was quite clever and hilarious. With this episode, it felt like things were going to go smoothly from here on out and our good old show was back.

And then, the second episode premiered.

The premise for “In-a Gadda Da-Leela” was brilliant; an evil satellite was coming to Earth to destroy all things impure and vile, which translated into destroying the world. Zapp Brannigan is enlisted to help and ropes Leela into coming along with him. When the encounter with the satellite doesn’t go as planned, the two are stranded in a remote area with seemingly no other signs of life, and contemplate restarting civilization.

This is very much a Zapp episode. My favorite moments involved his 1950′s style, B-Movie sci-fi dreams where he always won and saved the day. It shows the kind of mand Zapp wants to be, but spends too much of his time non-deservingly thinking that really is who he is. His “fish in a barrel” bit was probably the funniest thing of the episode mostly cause it showed off classic Zapp.

I honestly thought it was a good episode for the most part. The parallels with Adam and Eve were humorous, Amy’s suggestion of an End Of The World Orgy, and the crew launching their own mission to save the world were all fun and entertaining. Everything was great…until the last five-sevin minutes. It went downhill very quickly.

Zapp’s achingly slow and increasingly predictable revelation made for a godawful ending. As it turns out, the entire stranded on a remote planet event was a massive elaborate plot by Zapp to get Leela to sleep with him again. The first two reveals were humorous,  but after that, it got really stale really quick. And then, when the satellite arrives, it believes that Zapp and Leela really are Adam and Eve, so it forces them to consummate their relationship in exchange for the sparing of the destruction of Earth, as a horrified Fry looks on. It was all quite unnecessary.

Overall, it was a good night. Longtime fans of the show will be happy with the way things have gone so far, and hopefully will continue watching. It honestly feels great to have this show back on the air. It’s almost like welcoming back a long-lost friend that you haven’t seen in years and picking up almost exactly where you left off. Here’s hoping Futurama can regain everything it’s known for and keeps its staying power. The future really is back, ladies and gentlemen. And it’s a good thing.