Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.

IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: March 28, 1999

PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: Futurama, “Space Pilot 3000” (Season 1, Episode 1)

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: When Futurama premiered, a good nine months before the Y2K bug was supposed to wipe out civilization as we knew it (depriving us all of Survivor, among other things), The Simpsons was already well into its TENTH season. Series creator Matt Groening was understandably looking to try something else, and that was the beloved semi-cult series Futurama.

What’s interesting about watching the Futurama pilot now is not only how spare it is (the only regular characters are Fry, Leela, Bender, and then the Professor at the end) but also how melancholy. Fry spends the episode trapped within the idea that no matter how far into the future he goes, he may not be able to shake the humdrum life as a delivery boy that is his fate. Leela is the only member of a race of one-eyed aliens that she’s ever met. Fry and Bender meet in line for a suicide booth. It’s not, like, Dan Harmon levels of existential depression or anything, but for a show that might have seemed more frivolous and disposable than its animated predecessor, that’s not quite the case.

Futurama would go on for seven seasons, including a surprise 4th-season revival six years after it was cancelled. The pilot hadn’t yet included my favorite character, Dr. Zoidberg, but it’s a likeable starting point, and it’s full of disembodied-heads-in-jars gags, and who doesn’t love those?

[You can watch “Space Pilot 3000” on Netflix.]

Joe Reid (@joereid) is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn. You can find him leaving flowers for Mrs. Landingham at the corner of 18th and Potomac.

Like what you see? Follow Decider on Facebook and Twitter to join the conversation, and sign up for our email newsletters to be the first to know about streaming movies and TV news!