The Futurama Season 6 Line That Means More Than You Think
Futurama may have ended a legendary run, but it's still fondly remembered by fans of wacky sci-fi comedy. While the show may have kept getting canceled, it proved to be just like the Chanukah Zombie, always coming back from the dead even when it looked like it was good and buried. Fans demanded more stories with Fry, Bender, Leela, and the rest of the Planet Express crew, and it's easy to see why. The creative forces behind-the-scenes were immensely dedicated to ensuring the show was as pristine as possible, in one instance even taking two full days to write a single joke.
Futurama changed animation forever, and it managed to do so while remaining pretty consistent, in terms of quality, across its run. However, as any show with seven seasons can attest to, it's natural for certain characters to undergo changes or even for major plot points to get retconned.
In Futurama's case, fans may have noticed a pretty big change the show underwent when you compare episodes in the first season to those in the sixth and seventh seasons.
Planet Express pretty much stops being a delivery company in later seasons of Futurama
Hermes has a one-off joke in the season 6 episode of Futurama, "The Duh-Vinci Code." The episode sees most of the main cast embark on an adventure to learn the truth of Da Vinci's genius when Hermes says, "Hey, didn't we used to be a delivery company?" Of course, everyone ignores him as they venture off into another far-fetched plot line.
This line from Hermes is a self-referential joke about how the structure of Futurama changed over the years. In the first season, Fry, Leela, and Bender join the Planet Express delivery crew. They go off to deliver packages to characters on various planets, and it's typically on one of these other worlds where the plot gets kicked into motion.
However, this formula gradually began to change as the series went on. They'd still travel to other planets, but they didn't necessarily have something to deliver. They just started embarking on interstellar travel for the heck of it.
That isn't to say the show was any better or worse from the change — just different. After all, with Professor Farnsworth's cavalcade of sci-fi gadgets, there was plenty of room to introduce new ideas into the show well into its run. Maybe if the show is ever picked up for one more season, we'll get to see the Planet Express crew deliver just one last package.