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Futurama’s Comedy Central revival began in earnest with Season 6. The first new episode, titled “Rebirth,” starts with a cold open narrated by Bender, immediately acknowledging the show’s history by announcing that viewers would forget the series was ever canceled “by idiots” and later revived “by bigger idiots.” Unfortunately, the insult proved too sharp and pointed, even hurting the feelings of the network execs enough for them to remove it entirely.
The Futurama Joke That Didn’t Survive the Revival
Though the joke in question existed only briefly, it was an excellent distillation of Futurama’s relationship with the networks. Seen in the original U.S. broadcast of “Rebirth,” Bender’s one-liner explicitly frames the show’s death and renaissance as the result of incompetence by the networks, poking fun at both Fox and Comedy Central. While it was meant in good fun and a great example of the referential humor the show does so well, the line in question apparently had a little too much truth to it. It remains a mystery whether Fox or Comedy Central requested the revision, but fans have speculated it was the show’s former network.
