Ken Keeler

Not to be confused with Dr. Ben Beeler.

Ken Keeler
Accepting a Writers Guild of America Award for "The Prisoner of Benda", in 2011.
Profession	Co-executive producer Executive producer Writer
Born	1961
IMDB profile	nm0444517
Wikipedia has information unrelated to Futurama
Category of episodes written by Ken Keeler

Ken Keeler is a writer and executive producer for Futurama. He helped create the show, and was for the first three seasons listed as a co-executive producer. By the fourth season, he was listed as executive producer. He is the Futurama writer with the second-most episode credits.

Keeler was previously a writer for The Simpsons, and he has written many songs for both shows. One of his most notorious Simpsons episodes was season nine's "The Principal and the Pauper", which is heavily despised by fans for rewriting Principal Skinner as a phony who assumed another man's identity. He has won two Emmy awards for The Simpsons, and two WGA Awards for the Futurama episodes "Godfellas" and "The Prisoner of Benda".

A character in the series, Ben Beeler, is loosely based on Keeler.

The heads of Ken Keeler, Claudia Katz, Matt Groening, Peter Avanzino and David X. Cohen as seen in the sixth Futurama podcast.

The pen name Nona di Spargement was used in place of Ken Keeler's name on the episode How The West Was 1010001 (see the #Trivia section).

Finales

Keeler has a history of writing the assumed series finales: he wrote the finale of the original run, "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings", when the writing team knew that the show was to be cancelled. After the show was picked up for four additional movies, Keeler also wrote the fourth and final of them, Into the Wild Green Yonder, which was also assumed to be the final TV media of the series. Before season 7 was announced in 2011, Keeler also wrote "Overclockwise", the finale of the sixth season, which was yet again possibly the final episode. All of these episodes were designed to suit as possible final episodes of the series.

The last episode of season 7, "Meanwhile", which is the actual finale, was written by Keeler as well.

As the nerdy writer

Keeler has a Ph D in Applied Mathematics, which has helped him write several of the nerdier jokes on the show, for example the several jokes concerning 1729. For the episode "The Prisoner of Benda", Keeler wrote a complete mathematical theorem in the area of group theory which was used in the episode by the Globetrotters and the Professor to save the day.

Episodes Written

• "The Series Has Landed" (1ACV02)
  
  (nominated Annie Award)
• "When Aliens Attack" (1ACV12)
  
• "Put Your Head on My Shoulders" (2ACV07)
  
• "Anthology of Interest I" (2ACV16)
  
• "The Honking" (2ACV18)
  
• "Time Keeps on Slippin'" (3ACV14)
  
• "Godfellas" (3ACV20)
  
  (won Writers Guild of America Award)
• "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings" (4ACV18)
  
  (nominated Emmy Award)
• Bender's Big Score
  
• Into the Wild Green Yonder
  
• "The Prisoner of Benda" (6ACV10)
  
  (won Writers Guild of America Award)
• "The Tip of the Zoidberg" (6ACV18)
  
• "Overclockwise" (6ACV25)
  
• "The Six Million Dollar Mon" (7ACV07)
  
• "Forty Percent Leadbelly" (7ACV14)
  
• "Meanwhile" (7ACV26)
  

Additional Information

Trivia

• The episodes that make reference to supervillains (1ACV12, 6ACV25, 7ACV14) were all written by Keeler.
• He is one of only four people to have writing credits in all seven production seasons, the others being David X. Cohen, Eric Horsted and Patric M. Verrone. While he is not credited in the eighth season, he allegedly wrote at least one episode under a pseudonym, as listed below.
• During the Futurama Fan Panel at the San Diego Comic-Con, 2022, Patric Verrone revealed that the script for How The West Was 1010001 was actually written by Ken Keeler.. The writer of record for this episode is Nona di Spargement, a pun on the term "non-disparagement," referring to a clause which legally prevents someone from publicly or privately disavowing a company.