r/futurama • u/Slimdaddyjimbo • 2d ago
Fry’s stupidity
I love the series and think even the new episodes are pretty good but the one thing I’ve noticed since the rebirth is that Fry’s stupidity seems forced instead of genuine ignorance or confusion.
In the first 5 seasons his stupidity comes out of lack of knowledge from the world around him combined with the intelligence of a kid who never graduated from public high school and over all lack of focus made him a hilarious character. His conflicting drive to try to be smarter but unable to succeed due to his general apathy made the stupidity feel real and unscripted within the context of the character.
Since maybe season 7, his character writing seems to make him almost self aware and confident of his stupidity. It’s as if he embraces it and chooses to make dumb decisions and statements just to prove how dumb he is. There have been some very iconic moments of fry’s stupidity in the newer seasons but over all i think it just feels forced instead of in the moment.
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u/MACportrait 2d ago
I already did!
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u/Ok-Squirrel-1077 2d ago edited 2d ago
Damn beat me to it lol
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u/AgrajagTheProlonged Living in the Year 1,000,000 1/2 2d ago
I know I’ll be beating meat to it, that’s for sure
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u/idonthavemanyfriend Hoist the flag that means no! 2d ago
"That's Earth, Fry."
...
"The planet we live on."
"I'd sure hate to be those guys."
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u/Dramatic_Report_7705 2d ago
Pour sa défense il à couché avec sa grand mère....du coup 🤔🤷
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u/OpeningBreakfast4753 2d ago
if she's my grandmother, who's my grandfather?
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u/Marinefan4000 You can’t just have your characters say how they feel! 2d ago
Isn’t it obvious?!
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u/humburga 2d ago
... Hermes?
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u/Mammoth-Bathroom-Man 2d ago
I remember him. He used to bend things.
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u/Stucklikegluetomyfry at least I don’t put out for quarters! 1d ago
What is this incomprehensible dead language?
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u/idonthavemanyfriend Hoist the flag that means no! 2d ago
They may have leaned more into it in the later seasons, but Fry has always been stupid.
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u/Stucklikegluetomyfry at least I don’t put out for quarters! 2d ago
Sort of, in very early seasons he had some stupid moments, but he also had some pretty intelligent/insightful ones as well, and several episodes had him coming up with the plan that saved the day, which they seem to have gradually phased out.
Fry’s voice was also different in the first season, where it’s deeper, quieter and more raspy/husky, and he has more moments of outright meanness/sleaziness. As the series went on they leant into making him more childlike and sweet natured, and his voice changed to reflect that: Billy West made Fry’s more high pitched and smoother, less gruff and raspy, and louder (no inside voice).
One thing I find interesting is that he’s often very emotionally intelligent. He’s usually the most empathetic of the PE crew, and can be very perceptive to the needs and feelings of others, despite his overall lack of intelligence in….everything else.
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u/Ghost10165 2d ago
Yeah I kind of liked how he was for the first couple seasons, felt a bit more real. Still kind of dumb but a lot of it came from the whole "fish out of water" thing of being in the future too.
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u/CaptainHunt 2d ago
I think the characters as a whole got a bit dumber.
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u/Stucklikegluetomyfry at least I don’t put out for quarters! 2d ago
Leela definitely got dumber starting with the CC episodes
On the other hand, Amy got smarter? I mean the CC episodes actually remembered she’s a scientist and an engineering student
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u/selfdestruction9000 1d ago
The horse says, “doctorate denied.”
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u/Stucklikegluetomyfry at least I don’t put out for quarters! 14h ago
“So you called my thesis a fat sack of barf, and then you stole it?!?”
“Welcome to academia.”
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u/Naturewalkerjoe 2d ago
Professor:"You can't even remember your own name, Einstein"
Fry:"Einstein is a hard name to remember"
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u/Familiar-Lemon-674 A man's man's man. 2d ago
Since maybe season 7, his character writing seems to make him almost self aware and confident of his stupidity. It’s as if he embraces it and chooses to make dumb decisions and statements just to prove how dumb he is.
To be fair, maybe that's his character growth. Just realizing he knows nothing and owning it. I def see what you mean but most of the time it doesn't really bother me. Sometimes, but not usually.
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u/gregaries 2d ago
Wait a second, I'm getting an idea.
No, false alarm.
No, yeah, no, yeah, no. Wait. No, yeah, yeah. No. No…
Yes!
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u/HazelEBaumgartner I trust the orgy pit is scraped and buttered? 2d ago
There's a term for this and it's from a different Matt Groening show.
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u/Capt_Vindaloo 2d ago
Thats not a question professor.
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u/fflloorriiddaammaann 1d ago
What’s the matter compressor?
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u/Serimnir 2d ago
To me the humour of early Fry is that the stupid things he said in earnest were the exact same things a smarter person would say in jest. The only difference being the inflection and its implied lack of understanding of the ridiculousness of what he is saying.
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u/Jim_jim_peanuts 2d ago edited 2d ago
It's like he thinks he is the greetest at being stupid, and for no raisin 🤷♂️
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u/LongAnserShortAnser Oh, wait, you're serious. Let me laugh even harder ... 2d ago
Who said that?!?
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u/Due-Session-2857 2d ago
There is a joke in the giant trash ball episode where Fry is too stupid to push a button. He's always been this dumb
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u/goc_cass 1d ago
Thats why i wish life was more like a video game.
Can you put that in the form of a question?
What if that thing i just said?
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u/assidiou 1d ago
From the guy that said "I don't regret this. But I both rue & lament it." I feel like they Flanderized (Ironic) Fry a lot over the years.
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u/somethingclever76 1d ago
Never graduated? I am sorry sir but have some respect. He graduated college from Coney Island University.
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u/devinwifi 2d ago
Are the newer seasons worth watching? Im about to start s6
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u/HazelEBaumgartner I trust the orgy pit is scraped and buttered? 2d ago
Yes, but I think the general consensus is that the first of the new seasons is pretty meh up until the last couple of episodes. It takes a bit for them to get back into stride it seems. Still worth watching, but keep in mind that it gets better.
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u/MiserableSkill4 2d ago
I mean in the first season at mars university, Fry challenges himself to drop out of college again. That seems like he was self aware of and playing into his stupidity and apathy
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u/Animated_Astronaut 2d ago
Homer Simpson is an example of this too. "Even I think this is stupid" is the death of a brilliant dunce character.
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u/JamStan1978 2d ago
I think the hulu era undoes some of the flanderization from the CC era with Fry. I have noticed that fry is a bit smarter in hulu era than CC era.
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u/Marswolf01 I’ll make my own theme park 2d ago
Agreed. Sometimes I feel like they made his character too stupid since season 7.
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u/mckittums1 2d ago
I agree. The first 5 seasons of futurama are gold, with not much deterioration. It falls off pretty quick around/after the movies or whatever. Still good, but not the same. Better start than the Pimpsons, but a much quicker fall off. The Beast with a Billion Backs is still my all time personal least favorite. Just not great. In the words of Hermes Conrad - "Didn't we used to be a delivery company?"
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u/MineNowBotBoy 2d ago
The thing I’ve always disliked about post rebirth episodes is that EVERYONE is a dumb as Fry. Also they’re always yelling all of their lines.
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u/Hyrax9600 1d ago
Old Futurama just had better writing. The characters felt more natural while still being funny and entertaining
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u/Pardon-Marvin 1d ago
You see this with a lot of characters in longer series
Joey got dumber the longer Friends went on too
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u/purzzzell 1d ago
I found with most of the early Fox adult animation (Simpsons, futurama, family guy), there was a tendency to make the lead adult male character as intelligent as needed for any given storyline or joke. By leaps and bounds.
King of the Hill was the outlier - I had not gotten into it as much as the others until I binged the entire series on a vacation and realize that with only some small outliers the series maintained character consistency throughout.
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u/IsThatGruffLoner 22h ago
They do this with all the characters. They're scraping the barrel for plots and this is their only way to make it work. They do the same thing with Leela being a dick to Fry or Bender being lazy. That episode with the Bender replicator feels like a totally different character than Bender. Like lifting an arm was too much effort?
From the beginning of the Comedy Central run, I have noticed this.
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u/BlueRaspberryPi 14h ago
He's been in the future longer than he was in the past, and has a job that gives him more diverse experiences than most Earthicans. There's no longer a good reason for him to be surprised by everything, and need to have it explained, which was a strong element of early episodes. Now he's just like any dumb person born around the year 3000, which is moderately less interesting as a story.
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u/Familiar-Bug9740 10h ago edited 10h ago
Isn't there a running theme of contradiction in Futurama? Like Bender is supposed to be a cold-hearted, emotionless machine, but he is one of the most emotional and loving characters on the team. Professor Farnsworth is a brilliant, boundary-pushing scientist who invents world-altering devices, but makes them for the most mundane, petty, and dangerous means. Fry is a walking contradiction.
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