Farnsworth's Invention

Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth is the ancient, absent-minded founder of Planet Express, a delivery company he runs mostly as an excuse to keep inventing. He speaks in a reedy quaver, forgets what century it is, and treats his employees' lives as acceptable collateral for science. He wants funding, glory, and someone to test his doomsday devices.

Billy West plays him as pure id wrapped in senility, so every callous instruction — 'Good news, everyone!' before something horrifying — lands as both cruelty and slapstick. The show trusts the joke that a beloved old man is also a menace, and West's cracked, gleeful delivery never lets you settle on which one he really is.