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It only takes a few minutes before Futurama<\/em>\u2019s new season starts explaining non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, a concept most people probably haven\u2019t thought about for more than a year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Despite being set in the far future, Futurama<\/em> has always been comfortable commenting on modern life. There have been episodes about smartphones and 3D printers that use sci-fi nonsense to complicate the concepts in a way that makes them funny. That has largely continued to be true over many years (and cancellations). But in its Hulu revival last year, the show really started to mess up the balance, and its topical jokes began to overshadow the sci-fi gags. The upcoming 12th season<\/a> struggles even more to find a Futurama<\/em>-style twist on absurd ripped-from-the-headlines storylines about NFTs and AI. It makes for an uneven season that often feels like it\u2019s missing what originally made the show so special.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The NFTs are the most egregious example, and they also happen to be featured heavily in the debut episode, which makes for a terrible first impression. The convoluted plot involves Bender selling a CryptoPunks-style<\/a> collection to make a quick buck, which somehow leads him on a quest to discover his origins in Mexico. Meanwhile, the rest of the Planet Express crew attempts a heist to liberate Bender\u2019s NFT collection from an art museum, only to be thwarted by the complexities of the blockchain and digital ledgers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The problem is that these aren\u2019t some sort of quirky Futurama<\/em> take on NFTs \u2014 they\u2019re just regular NFTs as we know them now, terrible art connected to a digital receipt. The episode spends an annoyingly large part of its runtime explaining the concept \u2014 which, to be fair, is hard to do succinctly<\/a> \u2014 without offering much by the way of jokes or commentary. It just assumes NFTs in and of themselves are enough to make people laugh.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n