What were the old ideas explicitly, and how exactly are the ideas in the new episodes redundant or stale in comparison?
The last episode I saw started with a completely unnecessary scene in a futuristic game show, called who wants to be a billionaire or something like that. It was a pop-culture reference just for the sake of it. It wasn't funny.
New Futurama is now full of these blatant pop-culture references. They used to refer to things metaphorically, but now they have dumbed it down (I guess so they don't get cancelled again) and they don't bother with the metaphors any more. Or, at least, they're
very weak.
The Da Vinci code. When the robot-monk starts whipping himself on the back like Silas from Dan Brown's terrible novel. They could've done
anything. The robot could've electrocuted itself. To just replicate what you are parodying in a slightly different context, is not clever.
Red Dwarf did exactly the same thing when it came back online. Season Eight of Dwarf and the new specials on Dave are crammed full of pop-culture references. There are blatant references to Escape from Alcatraz, Reservoir Dogs, etc. But they're three million years in deep space.
Before Dwarf was revived, the pop culture references made sense, they were contextualized.
I don't know, I get the impression that the guys who made Futurama are making what they think people want to see - another Family Guy, where all the jokes rely on celebrities and current events. I'm not saying there's no place for this. South Park is great.
Futurama and Red Dwarf shouldn't revolve around 20th/21st century pop culture references.
It doesn't make any sense.
(Leela and Fry being lovers ruins a bit as well. Every time a TV show builds a relationship for years - like Rachel and Ross, Niles and Daphne, etc - they always fuck it up by getting them together, it never works)