Category Archives: Other Media

People always say Jurassic Bark is crazy sad but…

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…The Luck of the Fryrish is the episode of Futurama that really got to me. I’ve seen discussions of Futurama online, and a large portion of people agree that among the show’s many emotional moments, the dog episode tops them all. Even though I agree that it’s probably the saddest episode overall, Luck of the Fryrish, which is often considered to be one of the saddest episodes rather than the saddest, has more of an emotional impact in my opinion. It’s not just straight-up sad, but also very bittersweet, which adds more to the impact than plain old sadness. The ending of Jurassic Bark left me with the typical sad scene feel, but Luck of the Fryrish almost made me cry, which says a lot because I’ve never cried from a work of media.

Compare the two episodes’ endings:

  • Before leaving for his final pizza delivery, Fry tells his dog he won’t be gone long. His dog spends the next day searching for him, finds him frozen, and waits for him to return for twelve solid years until he dies. There’s no degree of positivity in this ending, and the joy of the flashback scenes is what makes it sad in the first place. If Fry knew his dog never forgot about him, then it not be so “straight sad” so to speak, but he never knows this.
  • Fry goes to his brother’s grave only to find out that it isn’t actually his brother; rather than stealing his name and his lucky clover like he was led to believe, his brother named his son Philip J. Fry and gave him the clover. And thanks to reading the gravestone, Fry himself knows the truth about his brother and starts to cry with a smile on his face. Leela even tells Bender that Fry needs a moment to himself.

What is so impactful about Luck of the Fryrish? For one thing, I have an easier time relating to sibling rivalry than dog loyalty. As an oldest child I can easily find myself in Fry’s brother’s shoes, but I’ve never owned a dog. But another thing with this one is Fry finds out the tear-jerking truth, allowing the audience to cry with him, something Jurassic Bark does not do.

The reason why Jurassic Bark is considered the saddest episode is because it’s straight-up sad, rather than heartwarmingly sad. While Jurassic Bark is more sad overall, Luck of the Fryrish has more of an emotional impact, at least in my experience. It varies from person to person obviously. I’m sure some people have an easier time relating to Jurassic Bark, like dog lovers who never had any siblings.

But Jurassic Bark was still a great episode! Despite how cruel the ending was, it had some great moments. My favorite part is when the dog finds out what happened to his owner but his family doesn’t. It’s just that Luck of the Fryrish is even better, and still my favorite episode.

The thing with Futurama is that it’s perpetually hilarious, but unlike what I’ve seen of other shows of its type, it does a great job of making you feel for the characters. I can think of at least ten episodes that people typically bring up as emotional moments. I should note that I’m not that well-versed in television: there’s mostly a handful of cartoons (no live action shows, those don’t appeal to me) that I’ll watch when I have downtime, and a smaller handful that I follow or watch particularly often.

"The Why of Fry" Reminds Me of Homestuck (and to a lesser extent Phineas and Ferb)

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Top: foreshadowing.
Bottom: also foreshadowing.

For the past month or so I’ve been watching all episodes of Futurama in order. And I have to say, it’s one of my favorite shows. It turned out that there’s A LOT more episodes I hadn’t already seen than I thought. The Luck of the Fryrish made me tear up and is my favorite episode so far, Jurassic Bark was FUCKING SAD, and The Why of Fry is also really memorable because it heavily reminds me of the story webcomic Homestuck with its stable time loops and revelations of characters’ involvement in past events. Here I’ll go over these similarities because they really are pretty striking.

“You are the chosen one!”

At the start of the episode, Fry feels like a useless tool, with his crewmates accomplishing more than usual without him at their side. But then the mysterious little pet alien Nibbler takes Fry to his home planet where he learns that he is the most important man in the universe because he has brain attack immunities that arise from him being his own grandfather. Being the “chosen one” is also a theme in Homestuck; all of the major characters would be considered chosen ones. Out of the whole population of Earth, four nerdy teenagers are given the quest of creating a universe in the guise of a new video game. John, the protagonist of Homestuck, is also in a sense his own grandfather (having created all the guardians who in turn were cloned to create the four kids), but unlike Fry, who FREAKED THE FUCK OUT when he realized this fact, he took that revelation pretty lightly, merely thinking it’s a little strange.

But wait, it gets better, a lot better.

“That was a (Nibbler/Vriska) thing!”

We later learn that Nibbler was behind Fry getting frozen a thousand years in the future, an iconic event that at first seemed like a pure accident. This instantly reminded me of how Vriska in Homestuck loves involving herself in important plot events, such as Jade constantly falling asleep, Bec the omnipotent dog getting created, and Jack Noir turning into an omnipotent dog. The first two of those events are especially noteworthy because at first we didn’t know Vriska was behind those, just like we didn’t know Nibbler was behind Fry getting frozen.

This isn’t all Nibbler was behind. It turns out he did the I.C. Wiener “prank call” that led Fry to the cryogenics building. I have to say, that was a BRILLIANT plot twist which I previously did not know of at all. This further supports the whole idea that Nibbler is Vriska. I don’t mean he literally is Vriska, just that they have a lot in common.

Nibbler and Vriska are both pretty strongly foreshadowed as shown in the picture at the beginning top of this post. Nibbler is literally foreshadowed when his shadow appears as Fry is about to get frozen in the first episode. The title card page of Homestuck (which is 82 pages in) has the sun symbol that Vriska wears on her god tier outfit, which the author stated retroactively foreshadows her. Some argue retroactive foreshadowing doesn’t count but it’s close enough for me.

Going on, when we get a closer look at what went on when Fry was frozen, we see that future Fry went back in time in an attempt to catch Nibbler and stop this moment. He finds Nibbler under the table, argues with him about whether to freeze his past self, and as it turns out, he (not Nibbler as suggested earlier in the episode) blows on the chair at the last second, causing it to tip and his past self to fall in the tube as we saw, effectively not changing the past. Being unable to change the past is very much a thing in Homestuck (with a few exceptions), as are stable time loops.

“Nobody can know this useful information!”

Towards the end of the episode, Nibbler takes Fry back to Earth and wipes his memories of this whole experience. This is yet another thing that reminds me of Homestuck. In Homestuck it’s sort of a recurring theme that characters refuse to share useful information they know. For instance, Jade always hid her knowledge of the future from John, apparently because doing so would mess up the timeline, but I STILL don’t see the harm in telling him. Likewise, Nibbler pretends to be an adorable mindless little creature rather than the almighty universe maintainer he is.

This part also reminds me of Phineas and Ferb, a show I used to watch pretty often. Perry the Platypus has a similar thing going on to Nibbler: for some reason he can’t let the kids know that he’s a secret agent. The movie “Across the 2nd Dimension” explores what would happen if the kids found out (and like The Why of Fry, ends with the kids’ memories being erased); although I’m sure the movie makes it clear why the kids can’t know that Perry is a secret agent and I remember pretty well how the movie goes, I can’t remember why exactly they that fact has to be a secret.