Skins & Futurama

Skins is a British show about the decline of youth and the sex and drugs they get into. The first season is a little strained, but is fairly enjoyable, with kids doing stupid things and having sex (lots of nudity, and many shots of the male cast in underwear) and doing lots of drugs, in a mostly believable fashion. But the plot twist at the end of the first season is clearly a jump the shark moment, and while the first episode of the second season is still ok, the second is terrible (short of the Osama! musical (it's at least the third English spoof of an American musical with an ! after it, following The Tall Guy's Elephant! and Gay! A Gay Musical from The IT Crowd (and by the way, I've since seen the American IT Crowd pilot, and it's terrible, as it's the same jokes as the English version, but Joel McHale as Roy is no good, and the woman who they brought in to do Jen was way off, and although Moss was the same, it wasn't nearly enough to make that a travesty of television), which I think is making fun of Oliver!) which is funny), and it just gets worse and worse. The third season starts over with an almost entirely new cast, so I didn't even bother watching those. So, Skins first series is watchable, but second isn't.

Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder is something I saw back when it came out on DVD. I also realized I hadn't rated it back then. It seems like a good time to do that, now that Futurama has started airing new episodes on Comedy Central. Those two episodes made me very happy, but weren't quite up to the high level of the show pre-cancellation. Maybe still more nudity and ridiculousness than the Fox episodes, but they fit in quite well with the movies. Back to which, it really is very much for fans. Call-backs to previous plots, along with obscure science references are classic Futurama, but it just wasn't as funny as I would've wanted.