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[ J O Y C E_.M I L L M A N__O N_.T E L E V I S I O N ] . . . . . . . that 31st century show . . . . . . . MATT GROENING'S SPECTACULAR "FUTURAMA" SATIRIZES WHERE WE'RE HEADED -- AND WHERE WE ARE. BY JOYCE MILLMAN | A thousand years from now, people will be implanted with computer chips assigning them to jobs that they'll have to do for their entire lives; career changes are not an option. New York City will be a melting pot of humans, extraterrestrials and robots. The New York subway system will be replaced by pneumatic tubes that suck people up and shoot them to their destinations around town. Advertising will be pumped directly into your brain while you sleep. There'll be a suicide booth on every corner, where, for a quarter, you can select your preferred mode of death -- "quick and painless, or slow and horrible." And every Dec. 31, the cryogenically preserved head of Dick Clark will host "New Year's Rockin' Eve" from Times Square. This is Matt Groening's "Futurama," his long-awaited follow-up to "The Simpsons," and it's totally, amazingly perfect. "Futurama" is a densely detailed animated spoof of sci-fi entertainment ("Star Trek" and "Star Wars," especially). But, as in Groening's "Life in Hell" comic strip and "The Simpsons," the real target of its stinging, brilliant satire is Americans' seemingly bottomless capacity for boneheaded conformity and shortsightedness. The fads, social trends and celebrities du jour of the '70s, '80s and '90s have been ruthlessly dismantled on "The Simpsons," but it's even funnier to imagine how "The Stupid Ages" (as our current era is known on "Futurama") will look 1,000 years down the road. The "Futurama" pilot opens on Dec. 31, 1999, in New York City, where a 25-year-old pizza delivery boy named Fry (his overbite and Ping-Pong ball eyes unmistakably mark him as a Groening creation) is having a really sucky end of the millennium. His girlfriend dumps him, he's depressed about his dead-end job and then he accidentally gets trapped in a cryogenic chamber and frozen for 1,000 years. A few centuries pass uneventfully outside the window of the cryogenics lab; then, alien spaceships destroy New York City -- twice. Fry (voiced by the king of cartoons, Billy West) is defrosted on Dec. 31, 2999, and sent to his "fate assignment officer," a kick-ass extraterrestrial babe named Leela (voice of Katey Sagal, from "Married ... With Children") who has a purple ponytail, one big eye in the middle of her forehead and a habit of preparing for danger by stripping down to her undershirt like Sigourney Weaver in "Alien." Resisting Leela's attempts to brand him a delivery boy for (another) life, Fry escapes into the gleaming Jetsonopolis that is New New York City. On the street, Fry meets Bender, a morose, hard-drinking, phlegmy-voiced robot (John DiMaggio) who can't face another day at his job -- he bends steel girders to make suicide booths. The two strike up a friendship (they're sort of a 31st century version of Will Robinson and the Robot from "Lost in Space"), although Bender warns Fry, "I don't want people thinking we're robosexuals, so if anybody asks, you're my debugger." (And, yes, it is a marvel what Groening manages to get past the censors.) In one of the episode's funniest sequences, the fleeing Fry and Bender duck into the Museum of Heads, where the cryogenically preserved talking noggins of the famous are encased in glass jars, waiting to impart their wisdom to those who seek it. "It's a life of quiet dignity," offers the head of Leonard Nimoy -- and then the headkeeper comes in calling "Feeding time!" and Nimoy's head gulps down the sprinkled chow like a goldfish in a bowl. Eventually, Leela corners Fry, but, inspired by his determination to take his assigned job and shove it, she removes her own career chip and joins Fry and Bender as fugitive job deserters. They're pursued by a pair of lightsabre-happy robocops and the rabid head of Richard Nixon, which escaped from the museum's Hall of Presidents when Fry accidentally broke its jar. The pilot, written by Groening and co-producer David X. Cohen, is too richly layered with sight gags and nuances to absorb in one viewing (fire up the VCR); the robot jokes alone add up to an encyclopedia of computer-age humor (representative moment: Bender getting sloshed on "Olde Fortran" malt liquor). As the series unfolds, the cozy core group of Fry, Leela, Bender and Fry's only living relative, 149-year-old Professor Hubert Farnsworth, will be joined by other regulars, including the self-aggrandizing space hero Zapp Brannigan (who fancies Leela) and his embittered alien assistant, Kif Kroker. Nixon's head will also be back -- because every Groening satire needs a villain representing good old American repression. Presumably, we'll also find out who's behind the slogan "You Gotta Do What You Gotta Do," which the chip-implanted working folk of New New York quote like a mantra. Like Groening's poignant antiheroes from "Life in Hell" and "The Simpsons," Fry and Leela do what they gotta do, not what they're supposed to do -- they're all groping toward individuality in an individual-fearing society, refusing to blend quietly into mediocrity. Groening is a true pop culture hero who has spent his whole career working in the very rebellion-championing art forms -- rock critic, underground cartoonist, comic book publisher, creator of TV cartoons -- that conservatives, elitists, religious zealots, politicians and worrywarts tiresomely blame for all kinds of societal ills. For the past nine years on "The Simpsons" (it's the longest-running sitcom in prime time), Groening and his peerless writing staff have turned out bright, brave satire that could double as the true history of America in the 20th century. With "Futurama," it's going to be a kick following them to infinity and beyond. SALON | March 26, 1999 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - R E L A T E D_.S A L O N_.S T O R I E S "This dream brought to you by Diesel jeans." Move over, Y2K -- in Matt Groening's brave new world, it's the year 3,000 we should be worried about. By David Wallis Jan. 28, 1999