The Family Guy Topic

[BSwiss]

Hate to jump on the Family Guy bashing bandwagon but its a truly awful show. I'm glad South Park did the 'Cartoon Wars' episode so I can refer people to that rather than explain my feelings towards it. I used to get so worked up at my ex when she sang 'Bird is the Word' over and over, thinking it was funny. I nearly left her for that indiscretion.

Mid-Late 90s Simpsons was so, so very good. 'Max Power' & 'Trouble with Trillions' are masterpiece episodes. I have seen episodes from this period over and over due to them being repeated day after day at 6.00 on BBC2 then C4.

I was 11 when I first saw South Park, I couldn't believe what I was watching. My friend somehow had a VHS of the first half a season (I'm not sure it had even been on TV here by then but we'd all kind of heard about it) and about 6 of us had a sleepover and watched it over and over. It was like a revolution for us. With it being 1998 and the internet not really affecting us we had no access to anything that wasn't on the TV. It was undoubtedly a watershed moment for us. I still love it to this day.

 

[Mankey]

I LOVED Family Guy when I was about 14... Now I think it's pure rubbish. When I was younger I liked the whole "OMG THATS SO RANDOM!" aspect of it. I found all the jokes I didn't understand to be funny purely because they were so out of place. Whereas South Park on the other hand is very well written. Some of their writing is just so clever. I love how the boys are supposedly the only sane set of people in the town, and their parents are the doomsday loving group of parents that exist today. I mean the episode where they go to all lengths to protect their children from pedophiles is just hilarious, because they end up completely casting them away because they're supposedly the biggest threat to their children. They don't think straight, when their kids do.

I shall leave with this quote

Chef: "Have you ever heard of the emancipation proclamation?!"
General: *pause*... "I don't listen to hip hop!"

 

[MattyH]

Just as a wee point, has anyone here seen Ted yet? It's basically Family Guy in human form (with an animated bear) on screen as Seth McFarlane and Mila Kunis star, whilst cameo appearances from Patrick Warburton (Joe Swanson) and the recurring cutaway character of the foreign blonde guy who doesn't get English phrases are also there...

My point is that Seth directed it and is actually an example of him doing his usual Family Guy humour (yes, there's a couple of cutaways and spoof moments) but intertwining it with a story that was actually surprisingly heartwarming in places.

got it on dvd for chrimbo

 

[Ted]

My views on Family Guy are this:

I started to watch it when I was about 11, I found the show funny at the time, but now I just find it very irritating with jokes that have no relevance whatsoever to the plot. It's a poorly written, poorly plotted show with what I think is bad animation. There's a lot of shows that were good then went bad, but to me the older episodes of family guy are just as bad as the newer ones. The characters are awful, you have a family with a retarded father and a retarded son, a daughter who gets abused for comic relief, a douchebag of a dog were about 80% of the episodes focus on him trying to find his special partners, and finally you have a bisexual 1 year old baby...Worst part of the show is how they completely rip off The Simpsons and South Park, both of which are two excellent and funny shows (only the older episodes for the former)

I'll stick to South Park And Simpsons thank you very much.

 

[Rose Of Dawn]

Personally, I love the show. I understand why some might dislike it,but I can't help but feel that a lot of it is simply hating something that is popular. Like all the hate Titanic had until Avatar became the most successful film of all time. Coincidentally, it was at that moment that Avatar became the worst movie ever made.

I don't watch Family Guy because of the risqué humour. If I want to watch something that's offensive simply for the sake of it, I'd watch Drawn Together. But there's something about the writing that I love.

I don't find the show that unoriginal either, if truth be told. The outlandish nature of Family Guy allows it to get away with more unique stories than that of The Simpsons, which firmly grounded itself in reality for the first eight seasons and as a result doesn't feel right when it does things that are out of the ordinary. My favourite episodes of Family Guy are usually the ones that revolve around Brian and Stewie together. Brian is fairly dull on his own, but with Stewie to play off he comes into his own. I personally find the random adventures of an alcoholic dog and a bisexual baby to be quite funny, and comes across as more of a classic pairing off than copying South Park.

Like most of Seth MacFarlane's shows, they all seem to revolve around families. And sure, you can only have so many animated family sitcoms. But its because that setup works, and allows for radically different stories in the same show. Indeed, I think the family dynamic actually works better in Family Guy than it does in The Simpsons - at least, it does now. Bart and Lisa are in the same school and share a lot of the same friends, so apart from Lisa being clever and Bart being a rebel, the characters stories can be quite similar at times. Maggie and Santas Little Helper (which I've seen people claim Family Guy ripped off, because no show can have a dog and a baby and not be The Simpsons) very rarely do anything - they add the occasional background joke, and that's as far as they ever go. Homer and Marge are very similar to Peter and Lois, though. Fat, stupid dad and good looking housewife. The only things that sets them apart is that Family Guy gives Peter more scope to be stupider than Homer.

I also don't understand why Family Guy is seen as a South Park ripoff. The shows aren't similar in the slightest. Apart from having the occasional crude joke.

 

[Funky_Monk]

The Simpsons is so smart, I used to watch all the shows as a kid and really didn't get it - I just enjoyed the fact that it was a cartoon but I've watched them so many times (thanks C4!) that I noticed really clever jokes.

Family Guy can do this but when it does it makes it blatantly obvious the episode where Brian and Stewie get locked in a bank vault for example - It's funny but you don't actually see Spooner Street in that episode. My point being is that it can and does work on more than one level but like rubs it in your face like a teenage kid tea-bagging on Call of Duty.

South Park I haven't watched enough of to judge correctly but I kinda like it I do though find the animation to be a little annoying but that's something personal - So don't judge.

I like American Dad the most it does what the Simpsons used to with the random humour of Family Guy so out of all the animated shows on TV I'd probably choose that.

 

[Martin]

"We ran out of plot lines and gags about Stewie being a 1 year old Bond villain so we're going to pretty much pretend he never was and instead make everything about him revolve around him being curious about his sexuality" - Seth McFarlane, probably.

 

[Jono]

"We ran out of plot lines and gags about Stewie being a 1 year old Bond villain so we're going to pretty much pretend he never was and instead make everything about him revolve around him being curious about his sexuality" - Seth McFarlane, probably.

"He originally began as a diabolical villain, but then we delved into the idea of his confused sexuality. We all feel that Stewie is almost certainly gay, and he’s in the process of figuring it out for himself. We haven’t ever really locked into it because we get a lot of good jokes from both sides, but we treat him oftentimes as if we were writing a gay character."
—Seth MacFarlane, "Big Gay Following", The Advocate interview


Nice try.

 

[Tim]

"We ran out of plot lines and gags about Stewie being a 1 year old Bond villain so we're going to pretty much pretend he never was and instead make everything about him revolve around him being curious about his sexuality" - Seth McFarlane, probably.

I wondered why everyone was describing him as bi. I don't really watch the show and the episodes I have seen have all been part of the first category.

 

[Rose Of Dawn]

"We ran out of plot lines and gags about Stewie being a 1 year old Bond villain so we're going to pretty much pretend he never was and instead make everything about him revolve around him being curious about his sexuality" - Seth McFarlane, probably.

Stewie still acts like a villain from time to time, and not all his jokes are based on his sexuality. They kinda just grew him from being a one dimentional joke to a character with a bit of depth.

If you're gonna criticise Seth MacFarlane for growing Stewie, then you should also criticise Trey Parker and Matt Stone for doing it with Eric Cartman. In South Park's early years, Cartman is just fat, spoiled and pretty stupid. Now, he's much more than that - he's manipulative, bigoted, intelligent (seems they decided to forget his stupidity from the early years) and just downright evil. He's probably the best developed character in television history. But it's only fair that if you think it's stupid that MacFarlane made Stewie more than a baby genius bent on world domination, then you'd feel the same about Cartman.

Character growth is good, especially when the show has been on the air for years. And in all seriousness, The Simpsons should take note as all that's happened with them is they have become more exaggerated than they were in the shows golden years.