dantheman40k
Okay, well, that's your opinion... personally, I never liked Futurama, though I can't really say why, either. I'll always like The Simpsons the most (for obvious reasons ) even if maybe the show isn't as funny as it used to be.

Try to look at it this way: The Simpsons are like The Beatles. When they first became a hit, people loved them. They loved the show/band, and it kept going. After awhile, their material became less funny/psychedelic. They changed, to say the least. But people still watched their show/listened to their music. Why? Because they were The Simpsons/The Beatles. They were a huge icon, despite their material.

Anyway, that's just my two cents about the "decline" the "actors who don't care" and the "writers who only care about breaking records".

Dan, maybe you should give some arguments to support your claims.

I must say futurama never 'clicked' with me the way the simpsons did. There were lots of jokes that I could see were 'clever', and lots of attempts to inject a bit of emotion - however, very few of those jokes ever actually made me laugh, and very few emotional moments actually made me emote.

I would also say though that in the final season it really started to pick up for me. And of my old Simpson DVds, I tend to watch from season 4 onwards most of the time... so a fair comparison is hard to do. I would have loved to have seen what they might have done with one more season. Let's see if the new movie(s) manage to start where they left off.

Well, I like 'em both!   If you really pushed me, I'd say that The Simpsons at it's peak was better than Futurama but it's a close run thing for me.   
I'd dispute point 1, I think it's very unfair on the Simpsons actors, they still do a decent job, often with inferior material.   Points 2, 6 and 9 are an unfair comparison given that effectively Futurama only ran to 4 seasons.   It was never going to suffer a decline in quality over 4 seasons, it simply wasn't around long enough, now whether it would have had it continued remains to be seen if it takes off as a long running series again - I hope it won't suffer but then that's what usually happens if a show continues for long enough.   Likewise comparing the consistency of a 4 season run with an 18 season run or whatever OFF is up to now isn't really fair.   Run length also has a bearing on the enthusiasm of the writers (and indeed the actors to return to point 1), with the show still being very fresh they must have been fired up with that early excitement you get at the start of a project.   I wouldn't say that point 3 makes Futurama better, just different.   As for the potential of the show, to some extent, a sci-fi setting does allow pretty much anything but if you consider how much ground OFF has covered over the years, it had enormous potential.   If you're comparing OFF as it is vs. Futurama as it is now, then again it's an unfair comparison due to the run length - OFF has already fulfilled much of it's potential, Futurama never had the chance.   I don't accept the story arc point, again partly due to the run length difference but also because there have been plenty of ongoing themes and callbacks within OFF and it's a lot harder to keep continuity over such a long period of time.
Points 4, 5 and 10...I can't argue with those!   

I'm with janglewolf here, I really like both shows, but when it comes to decide, I probably would pick The Simpsons after all. It's too sad that Futurama got only four seasons, whereas The Simpsons were in their all-time high in about season six or seven. Sure, there were lots of great episodes in the first four seasons, but looking at Futurama's fourth season in particular, the stories really took off, both emotionally and in the fun aspects.

It wasn't before the middle of season three of The Simpsons that made me finally a true Lisa fan ("Separate Vocations, as I mentioned elsewhere already), so I barely had enough time for selecting a favorite Futurama character, so to speak. I'm not that attached to a special character of that show, but if I had to pick one, I'd take Leela, since she's probably the smartest one, like Lisa.  

Futurama was different right from the beginning; whereas The Simpsons were always some kind of "sitcom", Futurama definitely chose the path of a science-fiction series, and therefore was more technical-centered rather than showing the family aspect, and of course "faster" and "cooler". But I guess that's also a tribute to the Zeitgeist (yay, finally I can use a German word here ) of the respective decades. Futurama was developed more than ten years later, thus being a lot more racy than The Simpsons. But if you want a really fast show, you should watch The Fairly Oddparents or something like this.  

It is no secret that many of us think The Simpsons should have ended a couple of years ago. Maybe it would have been better, and I'd say that Futurama should have run a lot longer than four seasons, but I must say that some of the recent Simpsons episodes were quite decent. There are maybe two or three each season that really peaked up my interest, and which I would recommend anyone. The rest ist rather mediocre at best, but that's what you get after 18 years (heck, that's longer than some of you live on this planet!).

Like with Star Trek, I will continue watching both shows now and then, enjoying the audio commentaries on the DVDs etc. Maybe we'll see some DVD releases of Futurama sometimes, or maybe they even manage to get into TV again - who knows? Family Guy did it, and season four had some great episodes - but I feel that recently, the quality degraded quite a bit. Looking at this, I think it might be better to stop when the show is at its best after all. In all shows I watch, there are better episodes and the ones that aren't that great. For Star Trek, I could pick my favorite "DS9" quite easily (although I liked TNG a lot as well), but for The Simpsons and Futurama it's more or less a tie...

Yeah you better explain your opinion although as you seem to love any garbage the Simpsons writers shove under your nose, I find it beggars beleif that you would hate Futurama. Is it because it shattered your cosey little world? Did it not comform to Serge's oh so high expectations. As you seem to love characters being degraded and being raped by pandas Futurama's risque humour should be right up your ally. Lets face it, you wouldnt know decent comedy if it bit you in the ass and you just prooved it with your idiotic 'I couldnt relate to the characters' reasoning. How anyone can fail to relate to Leela or indeed Fry is beyond me. Perhaps you have some predjudice against SciFi shows, you just see the crazy rocket ships and think 'Scifi = teh suck' Or maybe you just think that Futurama is responsible for the decline of the Simpsons like so many reames of uninformed n00bs or you just hate anythink that remoteley differes from the status quo.

Either back up your opinions or shut the f**k up.

Ways?

o_O

Dan, I will explain my opinion in details, but not before you apologize for your behavior. I had to censor your post from the swearwords this is ridiculous; if most of Futurama fans are like you and use the same arguments to prove their point, then no wonder the show was closed.

dantheman40k
OK, let me quote myself then:

The fact that you claim Futurama a sci-fi show, proves that you don't understand where the show was directed to. Futurama is not sci-fi, and never was. It's just not scientific enough to be called so. Futurama is the comedy show about future - that's all. What I mean about the show's niche absence, is that its destination viewers' category is too narrow. It's not serious enough, therefore not interesting to mature viewers, and has too much "adult" jokes and humor to be interesting to the young auditorium. Only people about your age (14-18 year old) can find something really interesting in Futurama and to become really addicted to it - because of the ships, robots, etc. To make the show too "childish" was the main authors' mistake imho; if they made it more "heeled" from the technical aspect, it would be much more popular than now. Remember "Babylon 5" series and how the future and the relationships between different races were shown there. Remember "I, Robot" movie and how the behavior of the artificial intelligence was shown there. You'll see nothing like that in Futurama, and that makes the show worse than it could be. Besides, being a "mainstream" show subject-wise, it was still very expensive, and that also pulled Futurama out of its possible niche. It had too low quality/cost ratio to keep going on.

And that's true; Futurama has only three (three!) main characters - Fry, Leela and Bender, and a big number of secondary ones. But the secondary characters weren't developed enough, while main characters didn't impress me too much. Fry and Bender are almost exact copies of Bart and Homer from the Simpsons, while Leela's character was seriously spoiled in the show with her endless attempts to find her prince. And I can't adore Leela only for her unusual eye, Fry for his haircut and Bender for being a robot. I need something more complex to attract my attention.

Well, it has five broadcast seasons, but only four production seasons. There are also only four DVD boxes, since they are reflecting the production seasons.

BTW, /me thinks that someone needs some time to cool off...

dantheman40k
Normally I try to be as respectful as I can, especially to the wonderful LTS community, but a lot of your postings have me extremely pissed. Now, this is a place where we all should respect each other's opinions, and I'm ready to accept yours if you'll accept mine. Your arguments of not as "cutesy wootsey as your beloved Lisa" - Never forget that when you say that, you're addressing me as well. I love her very much, and I would like to ask you to not make fun of her like this. Don't try to make amends for your actions, or deny them. Just apologize, please. You've crossed a line with me.

Edit: Also, I do not "drool" over Lisa. I love her. I would ask you to not be such a fool as to think that she is just eye candy for the likes of me.

janglewolf
Amy is my favorite character in Futurama I can't say I'm in love with her or something like that, but she has her merits - she's calm, usually optimistic, she is free from many complexes Leela has, but she doesn't jump into anyone's bed either. The fact that she dates with Kif has confused me a bit but overall, she seems to be a nice girl.

I have no beef with you, I am a huge fan of your music and am glad you appeared on The Simpsons before your untimely death. I am getting pissed at Dagdamor because he is spouting out uninformed opinions about one of my fave shows.

And now, back on topic *jingle* ! 


I'm serious. Let's drop the personal arguments starting NOW.

Well, the topic itself didn't leave much to be discussed or maybe it did...
We all know that Futurama can be revived soon, i.e. new episodes might be aired in the near future (I don't know much about that story though; all I know is that FOX refused to continue dealing with Futurama, but agreed to sell the production rights to another channel after several years). So we just have to wait and to see how good the show will be after its hiatus.

I just hope that the show maintains the level of quality that it had.