Reception
The first season of Futurama received favorable reviews from critics. Patrick Lee of Science Fiction Weekly commented, based on a viewing of "Space Pilot 3000" alone, that Futurama was deemed not as funny as The Simpsons, particularly as "the satire is leavened with treacly sentimental bits about free will and loneliness". The episode was rated as an "A- pick" and found to "warrant further viewing" despite these concerns. Rob Owen of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette noted that although the series' premiere contained the same skewed humor as The Simpsons, it was not as smart and funny, and he attributed this to the large amount of exposition and character introduction required of a television series pilot, noting that the show was "off to a good start." Andrew Billen of New Statesman found the premise of "Space Pilot 3000" to be unoriginal, but remained somewhat enthusiastic about the future of the series. While he praised the humorous details of the episode, such as the background scenes while Fry was frozen, he also criticized the show's dependence on in-jokes such as Groening's head being present in the head museum. The episode was ranked in 2006 by IGN as number 14 in their list of the top 25 Futurama episodes. Tal Blevins of IGN had positive review on the season and said "You really can't go wrong wherever you look in Futurama Volume One, and there are no stinkers in this collection." The season tied for 89th in the seasonal ratings tied with Profiler with an average viewership of 8.9 million viewers.
The series' premiere "Space Pilot 3000" garnered "unprecedented strong numbers" with a Nielsen rating of 11.2/17 in homes and 9.6/23 in adults 18–49. The Futurama premiere was watched by more people than either its lead-in show (The Simpsons) or the show following it (The X-Files), and it was the number one show among men aged 18–49 and teenagers for the week.
Read more about this topic: Futurama (season 1)
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