Futurama: Monster Robot Maniac Fun Collection

It’s gone now, thank goodness, but there was, not so long ago, a dark era when The Simpsons sucked and nobody would admit it. We didn’t have much, but we had Futurama. You remember: It’s that other, geekier animated Matt Groening show—the pop-culture-riffing Rip Van Winkle story of a pizza-delivery boy with no prospects (Billy West), cryogenically frozen on the eve of the second millennium and awakened at the dawn of the third. This four-episode package glimpses the show at its sassy, cerebral, inventive best, making good on an ad-copy promise of interplanetary pandemonium, if getting a little stingy with the special features. Apropos of the program itself, audio commentary is just affable enough to seem too brief and is most fun when the goofing, reminiscing actors slip in and out of their characters’ voices—and others, like West’s great James Gandolfini impression.