David X. Cohen, executive producer and head writer for Futurama, knows a thing or two about comebacks. The popular animated series from The Simpsons creator Matt Groening is entering its third incarnation and its upcoming seventh and eighth seasons will be airing exclusively on Teletoon at Night in Canada starting Sept. 11.

Cohen is a veteran to the world of animation and comedy writing, coming from the writers rooms of Beavis and Butt-Head and The Simpsons – his first full-length episode was the popular “Lisa the Vegetarian” episode. He shares his experience and insight into his writing process with Playback Daily.

How much freedom do you get with writing Futurama?
This show has tremendous freedom. The nice thing is that we do fly under the radar to some degree, so that gives us more autonomy. It also comes from being part of the Matt Groening camp and knowing that’s the way he works. But if a crew has to fly to a planet filled with underwater, seven-dimensional alligators, that’ll cost $50 million if you do it in live action! I don’t know how you could do a show like this if it wasn’t animated. Futurama really does make use of the medium: there are animated shows that could be great non-animated, but Futurama is not one of them.

How do you test jokes without a studio audience?
It’s an amazingly complicated process. The feedback time is very long from when we write the show and when we see reaction to it, so we spend a lot of time at the very start of the process trying to work out the story. A writer will work on the story, then we take it to the re-write room to put it up on a big screen, comb through it and try to punch up the jokes line by line. Table readings with the cast are really our one chance to get feedback on our own work early in the game. At the moment we’re writing 26 episodes, that will take a little under a year and then you’ll have them moving through the comedy pipeline.

What advice would you give to animation writers?
The freedom it gives you is always a potential stumbling block. Many people think, “Oh, it’s animation, I can cut around to show what anyone’s doing at anytime” and they really focus on the plot of the episode. But you need a compelling story with compelling emotion behind it, no matter how crazy your cartoon setting is. People really have to buy into it on a human level, even if your characters aren’t human. They have to care about them. Play the story seriously despite craziness in the episode.