Talking Futurama - Jurassic Bark
Added 2023-05-08 04:45:00 +0000 UTCThis week, we come out of an uptempo number with a dead dog dedication as we examine the fan-favorite episode, Jurassic Bark. When a blast from Fry's past arrives in the form of his fossilized former dog, his friendship with Bender is put to the test. It's up to Fry to choose whether he wants to live in the go-go '90s, or with the evil, metal man of the 31st century he calls his best friend. Whatever the case, there won't be a dry eye in the house when this Emmy-losing episode reaches its conclusion!
Comments
As someone whos been watching through Futurama for the first time since last year, there was a lot for this episode to live up to knowing how highly regarded it is among fans, but once I got to watching it last July I found myself thinking it mostly lived up to the hype. I do still think Luck of the Fryrish slightly edges it out just a bit, but I'd say both are pretty much on equal footing in my opinion as I have less problems with Benders portrayal here. Also, I hate to be the Genius at Work here, but Henry is sorely mistaken. Clams is actually the episode of SpongeBob that's the Jaws parody with the giant clam that eats Mr. Krabs's 1 millionth dollar. The episode he was thinking of was Rock-A-Bye Bivalve. Both great episodes of SpongeBob that would make for an equally great What a Cartoon episode.
Adam L. (The_acz)
2023-05-27 22:33:53 +0000 UTCThe reason why NY Pizza is so good is that we have our own Seymour floating in the suace
Matt Fish
2023-05-23 01:02:31 +0000 UTCProfessor! Lava! Hot!, still Very funny.
Matt Fish
2023-05-23 00:46:50 +0000 UTCClams is a Jaws paradoy. Rock-a-Bye Bivalve is where they care for a scallop.
Gene Owl
2023-05-16 12:24:16 +0000 UTCFisher Price still makes the See 'N Say...It's now called "Fisher Price Classic Farmer See 'N Say". I've seen them at Target. Also, in regards to whether plastic is still used for old toys- the great church of "profit motive and market efficiency" has seen fit to continue to extract oil from the ground to turn into plastic in order to re-release "Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots, Speak and Spells, Lite Brites, etc in their old 80s packaging so that elder millennials can experience 15 minutes of nostalgia... then later them toss into landfills where they can rest with the originals our parents threw away 25 years ago.
Jason Lew
2023-05-14 17:26:30 +0000 UTCIt's likely Seymour was inspired more by Greyfriars Bobby, not Hachiko. I immediately thought of Bobby when I saw this ep because Seymour looks like him -- a little scruffy mustached terrier. Bobby stayed by his owner's grave for 14 years (he would briefly leave once a day to eat), whereas Hachiko lived with his new owner and merely VISITED the train station daily at the hour his previous owner usually came home. Not to downplay Hachiko's heartwarming loyalty, but a lot of people assume he stayed at the station, which is not the case.
nina matsumoto
2023-05-13 17:03:34 +0000 UTCAIBO and VAIO are unrelated. The word "aibo" in JP means friend/partner, and they backronymed it to mean "Artificial Intelligence RoBOt." VAIO is made up and supposed to sound like "bio" but also invoke the colour violet.
nina matsumoto
2023-05-12 20:58:40 +0000 UTCThe real purpose of a pizza peel is holding it like a sawed-off Buster Sword and humming the FFVII battle theme
Shaxbert
2023-05-12 13:38:41 +0000 UTCSpeaking to infamous flubs such as the Casey Kasem dead dog speech, I have to give a shoutout to John DiMaggio's go-to impression of the Barry White Paul Quinn College ad (I still think about "...cordially invite your ass to come on down..." all the time) https://youtu.be/DN-2nQB6gY0
Sean Riley
2023-05-11 18:43:14 +0000 UTCThat scene in black panther makes you think. How powerful were the British empire in the mcu if they were killing and stealing stuff from Wakanda!
YancySr
2023-05-11 10:53:47 +0000 UTCThe first time I saw this episode it didn't do much for me. I wasn't allowed to own a dog as a kid and I missed 2/3rd of the episode because I was out having dinner. Watching it now with two older dogs it hits much harder. One of our dogs, Corbin, will devotedly watch the garage door when I'm gone, similar to the way Seymour sits on the street. He becomes even more anxious if I don't come home from work at the usual time. As difficult as it will be to say goodbye to him, the idea that something would happen to me and he would be sitting there waiting for me to come home is far more upsetting.
PurpleComet
2023-05-11 06:18:41 +0000 UTCYou can have your opinions on the emotional manipulation, but to fault this tragedy for being… well, tragic… and not having a happy “everything worked out and feels great” ending… sort of misses the point of this unique episode, and that line of thinking is precisely WHY the Comedy Central years are so wish fulfillment fan fictiony.
Thad Komorowski
2023-05-10 21:27:49 +0000 UTCHave always felt like I was on an island in thinking that this episode is only okay, but Henry and Bob did a great job of explaining why the dots never quite connected for me even though the emotional manipulation was cranked all the way up. That said, no matter how many times I see it, the "Hello? Charlemagne?" line has been in my lexicon for years and it still makes me blurt-laugh like it did the very first time.
Krystal
2023-05-10 19:41:32 +0000 UTCLoving the podcast. You mentioned Fry had never previously expressed a love for Star Trek, but he DID compare the sliding doors to the ones on the show during the pilot episode, so... he sorta did kinda. Wow... Posting things like this really doesn't make me feel better about myself. I wonder why I did it.
To Boldy Joe... Moore
2023-05-10 19:05:09 +0000 UTCBOB! Fucking same! My roomate tried to show me the super long gameplay video of Tears of the Kingdom and I serioisly contemplated first degree murder.
Saya Clarke
2023-05-10 17:30:51 +0000 UTCI've been to the Hachiko statue in Shibuya, but the really cool thing I did was to find Hachiko's grave in Minato City, where he's buried next to his owner.
littleterr0r
2023-05-10 04:56:53 +0000 UTCAs Told By Ginger would be such a great WAC, though. Also, I’ve always agreed with and this appreciated your take. I enjoy this episode and I’m a big animal lover, but the feels just never “hit,” in this one. I even got teary with Hermes and Baby Bender for Christ sakes (The Fry and Leela and Fry or Leela and Family episodes hit the most for me, even the later seasons). Anyway, I really like the nuanced takes you always have on a show that’s so meaningful to me.
Kat Heagberg
2023-05-09 22:43:09 +0000 UTCI never listened to the commentary on this one or sought out much info on it from the creators so take my opinion with a grain of salt here, but I always felt like this one was conceived as a way to do "Luck of the Fryrish," but with a sad ending. The pacing is about the same and the format as well with the cuts back and forth between the present and the past (or should I say present and the future?) it's just the ending that's different with Fry not figuring out the past's secret. It's certainly manipulative, what media isn't, but it does serve the purpose of reminding the viewer of the inherent tragedy in essentially skipping forward a thousand years not only for Fry, but the "micro tragedies" it would cause for a character like Seymour. Fry's nephew's tombstone was basically a deus ex machina to add a happy ending to that episode, which I'm not criticizing because I think it's fine and the payoff worth it, while this one forces Fry to make an assumption and he makes the wrong one. The other main difference is the B plot involving Bender in this one where he has to have his realization that Fry can value someone else and not feel threatened. It feels like it's there for comedy and not to truly play a role in how Fry feels in the end. I personally love how offended Bender is when Fry tells him the situation has nothing to do with him as for an extreme sociopath like Bender, that's about the worst thing Fry could say to him. I do find it plausible that Hachiko didn't influence this story because there are so many loyal dog stories out there, famous and non. Warning: sad dog story incoming: In my own family, my grandfather had a yellow lab named Snifty. Snifty came into the family as a result of tradegy when my uncle died unexpectedly in the early seventies. He was into his adult years, but my youngest uncle was still a child (my grandparents were strict Catholics who ended up with 9 kids) and my grandpa got the dog for him. The dog lived an unusually long life and was still around in 92 though she was mostly deaf, blind, and her fur felt like petting an old broom. She would always wait for my grandpa at the top of their stairs in their house if he was out, and unfortunately, grandpa had a stroke one day that required a hospital stay followed by a lengthy stay in a rehab. Old Snifty wouldn't leave the top of those stairs except to eat and go outside to use the facilities on occasion. Unfortunately, the door was left open one day and Snifty went out, probably looking for my grandpa, and met her end when she was hit by a car. One of my aunts had to track her down at a local vet and basically ID her. Seymour always makes me think of her though, good old Snifty.
Joe Hodgson
2023-05-09 12:37:17 +0000 UTCOver here in the United Kingdom Greyfriars Bobby is the equivalent of Hachikō https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyfriars_Bobby
Richard Copping
2023-05-09 00:33:32 +0000 UTCI was going to say, that first sentence is to die for.
littleterr0r
2023-05-08 22:55:59 +0000 UTC"come out of an uptempo number with a dead dog dedication" I spent most of the 90s & 00s listening to Howard Stern so I understood this reference
Diamond Feit
2023-05-08 22:30:16 +0000 UTCI never owned a dog so I never quite connected with this episode compared to so many other people did, it always felt like something was really off. It's definitely cast a major shadow on the series appearing in Bender's Big Score, but I think there's an episode in the Comedy Central run where they also undercut it with a joke where Hermes throws "another one of Fry's dogs" into a vat of chili. As I've been listening to the podcast and this episode, I think it finally clicked with me. Fry is loveable character, but kind of dumb and selfish in his own ways. It feels so weird for him to have this sudden burst of emotional maturity at the last minute (after he was nearly going to kill himself to save the fossil) that he thinks Seymour lived a happy life because he got old, even saying that he had Seymour for his best years. Tacked onto that, you also have the emotional manipulation where Fry's family doesn't see him in the cryotube so Seymour suffers even more due to cruel fate and negligence. "Luck of the Fryish" works so great because it's a fantastic payoff where you learn Yancy did love his brother or "Game of Tones" lets Fry get some closure with his mom thanks to Nibbler. In this episode, the payoff is just the knife twisting more in your heart. I think the episode would have been better if Seymour were to be brought back to the Future where he got to have one last adventure or walk with Fry before dying where we learn after the fact that Seymour grew old as he waited for him. I imagine showing that would put viewers through the emotional ringer, but is that anymore sadder than showing a montage of a dog dying over a song called "I'll wait for you?"
SilkiePJ
2023-05-08 21:29:03 +0000 UTCI'm genuinely surprised Henry liked the gross out dirty diaper spongebob episode so much
Sean Riley
2023-05-08 19:48:52 +0000 UTCSmall correction for the bit about Fry going back to the past in “Bender’s Big Score”. The Fry that goes back to the past does reunite with Seymour, but he ends up spending about ten years at sea following a narwhal that reminds him of Leela. Then Fry comes back and has a moment with Seymour before bender shows up and blows up the pizzeria.
Seth
2023-05-08 17:00:08 +0000 UTCBob mentioning Evergreen made me think of this: I went to Evergreen State College from 2011-13 and I actually got to see Matt Groening do a panel with people in the animation/cartooning world who were alums, including Craig Bartlett (Hey Arnold). MG signed a bunch of Simpsons comics, and was very nice! I was able to find a full video of the panel if anyone is interested: "Animation, Comics and Graphic Novels: A Great Evergreen Tradition" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eT7xCOh_5L8
Alex Atchley
2023-05-08 16:53:47 +0000 UTCThe SpongeBob episode “Clams” talked about in the beginning is the Jaws parody episode. The Episode Henry described is titled “Rock-a-bye bivalve” boy, I hope somebody got fired for that blunder
Brett goldstein
2023-05-08 13:21:51 +0000 UTCAlways brings a tear to the eye - even for this hard nosed cynic 😢
Alistair Shand
2023-05-08 08:49:41 +0000 UTCI remember those Dolomite skits from MADTV, and they were actually called Son of Dolemite. And I be believe it was Aries Spears that was said Son of Dolemite
Boyd Adkins IV
2023-05-08 06:43:11 +0000 UTC
