simpsons or family guy?

Fatback · November 2005

I believe the torch has been passed.

DJ_Enki · November 2005

I agree that The Simpsons doesn't carry the torch anymore, but Family Guy damn sure didn't pick it up.

Swayze · November 2005

simpsons still for me.
family guy is just a bit too loud and obnoxious for my tastes.

Fatback · November 2005

i'm laughing out loud during all 30 min of family guy. i guess it's just me?

alieNDN · November 2005

i think family guy made it official with the best opening in cartoon history last week...it had Stewie riding his powercycles from first person point of view, and he rides his bike into the scene of the shining, to the first version of the video game Doom with the crazy pixelation, to a scene from the Sound of Music where he runs over Julie Andrews, to the best part...he's headed towards his garage, when Homer is in front of him freaking out and running towards the door (just like in the opening of the simpsons when Marge is chasing Homer in her car as she comes home) and STEWIE PHUCKING RUNS HOMER SIMPSON OVER. Peter Griffin opens the door, notices Homer on the floor and goes "Who the hell is that guy?"

the background of this joke is when The Simpsons first took a stab at Family Guy about 3 years ago in a Halloween episode, where Homer was making clones of himself, and when you looked in the background, there was Peter Griffin. Simpsons also made fun of Family Guy when their existence was questionable. Family Guy only aluded to the Simpsons only once prior to last weeks episode, referencing the Mr. Plow episode. They came back hard with a vengence on that opening and it was sweet. Now obviously Simpsons are the pioneers, but they are damn stale now. I couldnt stomach today's new episode, it was like watching King of the Hill or something, i didnt even watch the ending of it and im someone that used to tape every Simpson episode. Family Guy has the torch.

ps: If you want to see some hilarious sheit, download the episode of South Park called "The Simpsons Already Did It", it totally rips off the Simpsons, in a tribute sort of way. Simpsons bit back at that by spoofing South Park for 10 seconds in one of their episodes.

noz · November 2005

I don't know anyone who's a huge fan of "Family Guy." I don't even know anyone who knows anyone who's a huge fan of "Family Guy." Mediocre shows I don't like survive on the air all the time; taste is a relative thing. But when a mediocre show gets cancelled and then miraculously gets a second life because of out-of-nowhere fan devotion, it's worth investigating.

When Seth MacFarlane's Griffin family debuted in 1999, it was mostly dismissed as a cut-rate "Simpsons." Both shows were animated sitcoms, centering around a dysfunctional family led by a moronic father, heavy with pop references and a satirical view on "wholesome" middle-class American life. (Plus, the new program's infant Stewie talked a lot like Mr. Burns.) The comparisons dogged "Family Guy," but MacFarlane and his writers never really tried to establish their show as markedly different than its predecessor. Fox moved it around the schedule several times and finally dropped it altogether in 2002. But when Cartoon Network later aired "Family Guy," it became a huge hit. When the show was released on DVD, fans came out in droves to buy all three seasons of episodes. This Lazarus effect occasionally happens in the film industry -- when, say, the first Austin Powers makes decent money at the box office but then rakes in phenomenal rental business, suggesting a burgeoning base of supporters hungry for sequels. But in a rather unprecedented move for the small screen, Fox has brought back "Family Guy" to its Sunday lineup, additionally running "American Dad," MacFarlane's newest animated sitcom, centering around a dysfunctional family led by a moronic father, heavy with pop references and a satirical view on ???

Whether or not I know any "Family Guy" followers is irrelevant; somebody somewhere (and a lot of his buddies) loves this show and feels a passionate connection with the Griffins. So who are these fans?

If you're late to the phenomenon, the current Season Four is thus far not significantly different from the first 50 episodes. MacFarlane takes clich??d family sitcom plot lines and adds an ironic or "shocking" twist to them. The new neighbors aren't just wacky, they're nudists. Dad's not just upset that his son isn't doing better in school; he wants him to become Jewish so he can instantly be smarter. From "The Simpsons" to the "The Larry Sanders Show" to "Seinfeld," the '90s instituted a subversive postmodern approach to sitcoms that refused to reassure the audience that everything would be alright (or even resolved) in the end. These comedies argued that, deep down, we're all bastards -- and that can be pretty damn funny, too. "Seinfeld" creator Larry David has continued this approach on "Curb Your Enthusiasm," but MacFarlane takes the premise and mutates it horribly. "Family Guy" parades a disinterested, withering contempt for everything around it: families, society, media, the entertainment industry. I'm surprised so many people love it, but I understand why.

Going back and watching the previous seasons, I was reminded how instantly appealing -- and inevitably off-putting -- "Family Guy" can be. MacFarlane and his team never fail to generate a remarkable energy of ideas and gags; you can be irritated by how base the comedy is, but it moves fast with a giddy, bratty verve. The Griffins (dad Peter, mom Lois, son Chris, daughter Meg, baby Stewie and talking-dog Brian) each differ from their designated family-member archetype. There's nothing cuddly or lovable about the Griffins, and there's even clear animosity between some of them. (Particularly great is the realization between the dog and the baby that they're the sharpest tools in this particular shed -- and that they share no particular satisfaction in that discovery.)

Re-viewing the old episodes on DVD, I noticed how often I enjoyed these characters when they came on screen. They're drawn comically, and they're voiced humorously by MacFarlane and others, such as Seth Green and Mila Kunis. But as for the actual stories, my reaction arc was the same for every episode: amused, intrigued, underwhelmed, disappointed, kinda ready for it to be over. MacFarlane's writers unload their "shock" in the first act, and then instead of developing the satire, we get inundated with references -- movie quotes, bad TV parodies, kitsch cameos from Adam West. Like the recent years of "The Simpsons" -- when character development and clever storylines yielded to sophomoric physical humor and desperate randomness -- "Family Guy" isn't interested in saying much of anything. Even when they go for "edgy" commentary like on the unaired "When You Wish Upon a Weinstein," the supposed taboo-busting Jewish jokes aren't any funnier than the Optimus Prime gag they throw in for the hell of it.

This sort of weightless comedy is always blamed on "Seinfeld," but most people recognized that Jerry's show wasn't really about nothing -- it was a show about how the seemingly mundane minutiae of life actually defined and complicated everything we do. Conversely, "Family Guy" feels like the product of an empty life -- a community of individuals who get a perverse kick out of watching terrible television for how ironically "brilliant" its terribleness really is. Most guys grow out of this after college. (They wake up one more morning and discover what a dead end that endless loop of sarcastic comments and C-level Hollywood ephemera becomes.) But MacFarlane's show plays like a Never Never Land for undergraduates: Nobody grows old, and you can stay protected underneath its cozy skies of irony and condescension for as long as you'd like.

In a way, there is something fascinating about the appeal of "Family Guy." Like so much contemporary animated comedy -- and that includes Shrek and Shark Tale -- "Family Guy" doesn't ask you to think too deeply about the entertainment fixtures it touches on. You laugh because, hey, you know what they're talking about -- that's funny! MacFarlane makes sure you're part of the cool club by testing your pop-culture knowledge and then congratulates you for liking the same crap as him. (Heard of "Electric Company"? You're in. Remember the commercial for the Operation board game? Awesome -- right this way.) Whether the episodes were created before or after 9/11, the Griffins' world remains unchanged, populated by dumb people acting buffoonishly with brief flashbacks to earlier moments of dumb people acting buffoonishly. The depth of the show's insight is that Jennifer Love Hewitt has made some bad movies and that Mel Gibson has taken the religion thing a little too far. If it wasn't on cable at two in the morning, "Family Guy" knows nothing about it.

If the show was merely insubstantial, it would be less annoying. But there is a streak of deliberate meanness that negates its benign echo chamber of nonstop riffing. For example, it's common these days for family sitcoms and WB dramas to have sensitive, "misunderstood" kids who don't fit in with the popular cliques. In what could have been a novel idea, "Family Guy" distorts that overdone convention by making Chris and Meg painfully uncool. He's fat and dumb, she's fat and unattractive -- they are indisputable losers. And there's nothing sensitive or heartbreaking or redeeming about them, either -- they're spiteful and self-destructive. This is a clear reimagining of all the Lisa Simpson fictions out there, but these kids wind up just being helpless punching bags for MacFarlane. (Other than when we learn that Chris has a bigger penis than his father, I can't remember any form of kindness the writers have shown them.)

Maybe this is more lifelike, another way to show how typical sitcoms aren't real, but I'm not sure it's all that funny after a while. No matter how cruel the comedy, you have to like someone on a program to keep watching, unless you just love frying bugs with a magnifying glass. But not only does "Family Guy" reward its viewers' pop-culture trivia retention, it seems to delight in the smacking down of its characters. "Arrested Development" succ eeded because Jason Bateman's good-son martyr act revealed a flawed, recognizable vulnerability; he grounded the show's absurd diversions and nasty humor. "Family Guy" drifts through its flashbacks, snide musical numbers, tired allusions and rampant sexual gags with a grim belief that everything's a joke and nothing's worth a shit.

Perhaps the fans dig "Family Guy" because it allows them to feel like Brian and Stewie, comfortably superior to those around them. But even Brian and Stewie understand how futile it all is. Knowing the theme song to "Welcome Back, Kotter" hasn't made MacFarlane or his followers happier or more fulfilled; all that pop culture has only turned them more cynical. There's a crippling fear of the real world that underlines everything in "Family Guy," but the show has no self-awareness of its own agoraphobia. It's too distracted to do much about it. Maybe a nihilist could write a devastating treatise on how "Family Guy" speaks to the alienated soul within every man, how it reflects a society where modern life merely reflects bad '70s television. Well, good luck with that. Me, I just wish it was funnier.

http://www.blacktable.com/grierson050516.htm

noz · November 2005

Someone suggested to me that if I took the time to explain why I think Family Guy is a bad show, I might stand a chance of getting some angry replies from some of that show's many online fans. Since the main reason to do a blog is the hope of getting angry replies and/or denunciations on other blogs, I've decided to give it a shot.

Here are ten reasons why I think Family Guy is a bad show:

10. Stewie, the most popular character, is a double ripoff. His world-domination ambitions and dictatorial rhetoric are ripped off from the Brain of Pinky and the Brain. And his design and personality are ripped off from Jimmy Corrigan, a comic-strip character created by Chris Ware. A Jimmy Corrigan strip from 1996 can be found here.

9. It constantly recycles its own meagre store of gags. It's got about three basic gags -- a cutaway to something that references a work of '70s or '80s pop culture; one of those "stretching out something so long that it's funny" routines (they do this one about five times an episode), and sexual-innuendo jokes that are sort of The Golden Girls for frat-boys. I don't mind that they sometimes use jokes from other shows -- recycling jokes is inevitable in comedy -- but they managed to get through 50 episodes without coming up with a new kind of joke, and that wears thin.

8. The characters are so boring, such a dull collection of sitcom stereotypes from the creator's youthful TV-watching binges, that there is virtually no humor to be gotten from the characters. Good comedy writing gets laughs from the characters; the writers on this show write around the characters. By the last few episodes, Stewie was so tapped-out as a character that he was written out of character in almost every episode (that is, almost every gag featured him taking on a personality other than his own), a sign that the character had nothing to him in the first place except the stuff that was taken from superior characters (like the Brain). About the only actual character on the show is Brian the dog, and even he doesn't have that much to his character.

7. It uses references as a substitute for humor. Talk to the average young Family Guy fan and you'll usually hear that what they like best about the show is that it refers to things they saw when they were growing up, and they're just tickled to find that someone else remembers it -- like the "kid in me/adult in me" commercial. Well, I remember that stuff too, but that's lazy comedy writing: there's no perspective on the stuff Family Guy is referencing, no actual joke beyond the reference itself. A golden rule of bad comedy is that if people recognize the reference, they'll laugh even if the joke's not funny. Family Guy goes beyond that; it doesn't even try to have a joke half the time -- it just assumes that making a pop culture reference is inherently funny. Another Family Guy hater makes a similar point here.

6. Seth MacFarlane's voice acting is quite poor: uninflected, monotonous, recycling the same few vocal tricks over and over the way the show recycles a few gag concepts. Mike Judge, Trey Parker, Matt Stone and others have developed into good vocal actors, but Seth MacFarlane is the best argument against creators voicing their own creations.

5. It's one of those things that presents itself as "cutting-edge" but is actually gutless. Its "offensive" jokes are neatly calculated to make sure they don't actually risk offending their fanbase; instead they make jokes that would be offensive to the kinds of people who don't watch the show -- sexual prudes, for example. Any genuinely cutting-edge comedy will risk offending people who watch it; but how is a penis joke supposed to offend the average college student? The answer is, it's not supposed to offend anybody who watches the show; it's supposed to give college kids a smug sense of superiority in believing that someone else might theoretically be offended by that penis joke. (An animated sitcom that actually dared to be tasteless and offensive was Duckman, which took on actual social and political issues; another animated sitcom that actually dares to challenge its audience is South Park, which takes the things that its youngish viewers have been told on other TV shows -- say, saving the rainforest is good -- and tells them the opposite.)

4. The style of the show, which its fans consider such an innovation, was pretty much familiar to anyone who had been following the Saturday morning and weekday cartoons of the early to mid '90s. Sitcom-style stories that went off into weird directions; a look and feel that parodied sitcoms of the '50s to the '80s; constant jokes about '80s pop culture: this was all characteristic of the funny kids' cartoons of the '90s. Essentially, if you watched enough episodes of the early Johnny Bravo (which Seth MacFarlane worked on) or some episodes of Tiny Toons or various other kids' shows of that era, then Family Guy looks like what it is: a kids' show, with all the things that characterized the kids' shows of the '90s: attempts to be hip, suspicion of big heartfelt moments, and lots of references to the shows the kids watched when they were very little. In other words, Family Guy isn't a sophisticated take on the sitcom; it's a kiddie show with some PG-13 references for older kids.

3. The animation was probably the worst of any animated sitcom ever, maybe neck-and-neck with the animated sitcom version of Dilbert. One veteran artist, who described Family Guy as the worst show he'd ever worked on -- and he'd worked for Hanna-Barbera in the '70s, so he wasn't saying that lightly -- summed it up this way:

"When I'd suggest some sort of minor gag... [the director] just looked at me and, deadpan, asked "why"? The designs of the characters were murder to draw, so bland and expressionless, but I was somehow expected to get more "acting" out of them. Believe me, Peter's model sheet poses for "happy" and "depressed" looked practically identical! I was told not to add eyebrows, not to distort eye-shapes, not to draw "cartoony" poses...but still, somehow, creating "acting". Yeah, right."

The animation on "The Simpsons" or "King of the Hill" may not be classic-level, but every character acts with his or her face and body to a certain extent; they have, let's say, at least two expressions. "Family Guy" has the most inexpressive characters I've ever seen, and the only distinctive movement on the whole show is a gag that the supervising director (Peter Shin) invented to make characters fall down really fast... a gag that was then repeated to death for the rest of the series.

2. The scripts are bad. I mean apart from the shoddy recycled gags and characters, most of the scripts are just frankly terrible in terms of story construction, coherent satire, etc. The satire is, again, gutless and timid (taking on such never-before-seen satirical targets as tobacco companies and feminists); the dialogue is sub-According to Jim; the stories tend to feature one plot point per act surrounded by many minutes of filler. I guess you can say that what I call "filler" is really the point of the show. Even if the gags were funny (which they are not), I wouldn't buy this. The show is in the form of a sitcom and it should have good story construction and all the other stuff one expects of a sitcom. Otherwise all you're left with is a big overlong comedy sketch with the same characters every week, not unlike a really bad year of Saturday Night Live.

1. Plenty of other animated shows that went off the air didn't get anywhere near the same kind of following, and certainly didn't get revived. Futurama, of course, was far better; but so was Pinky and the Brain when it was in primetime; so was Duckman, which was the offensive, shocking show that Family Guy never had the guts to be (and Duckman's "Road To" episode was a million times better than Family Guy's). Even The Critic, which had some of the same problems as FG (bad animation, unmemorable characters, over-reliance on pop-culture r eferences as opposed to genuine satire or parody), displayed a higher level of craftsmanship. Essentially Family Guy is a story of poor craftsmanship rewarded. I can't help but resent that.

Now, what do I think of the fact that this show has become so popular among younger viewers, popular enough to make it a huge DVD hit and guarantee a sizeable 18-35 demographic for the new episodes? First of all, I think that the Family Guy cult will look really embarrassing a few decades from now, because the '80s references will no longer be comprehensible, and so the episodes will consist largely of dead spots (since there are no jokes, just the references, which are supposed to be funny just because you "get" them). Second, I think it proves that people of my generation don't have better taste in TV than people of my parents' generation; in other words, how can I make fun of some elderly relative for enjoying some badly-written, badly-made CBS show, when I have younger relatives who enjoy the worse-written, worse-made Family Guy? In other words, I think "geezer TV" has been replaced by a new category... call it "whippersnapper TV": bad TV that succeeds because it appeals to the sensibilities of a particular age-based segment of the audience. All of which is a long way of saying that lots of bad shows become hits. This is another one of them.

Now, to add some fairness and balance: I actually did think that the last season of Family Guy showed some improvement, in the sense that there was some attempt to write coherent stories and give the characters something resembling a personality. It wasn't good, but it was better, and I suppose it's theoretically possible that the new episodes could be better still. There was one episode from the last season that I thought was just plain good: "Brian Wallows and Peter's Swallows," where Brian the dog meets a reclusive old lady who used to be an opera singer. That episode featured an original song that was quite a good attempt at a pastiche Broadway song, certainly better than anything Joss Whedon came up for for his Buffy musical, so I've got to give Seth MacFarlane credit for that, as well as for proving to college kids that musicals aren't for dorks. (I read that the upcoming Family Guy CD includes a song from Take Me Along by Bob Merrill, so he gets more points for that.)

Also, despite the life-ain't-fair tone of # 1, I'd say that in general, most animated sitcoms have gotten a fair shake; King of the Hill is still on, as is South Park; Futurama and Duckman got 70 episodes apiece; the animated sitcoms that outright bombed are mostly the ones that deserved to. So Family Guy's success doesn't actually take anything away from more deserving shows. It's just another mediocre-to-poor show on the air. The TV universe will survive that.

http://zvbxrpl.blogspot.com/2004/09/why-i-hate-family-guy.html

noz · November 2005

[i]doesn't anyone else notice this?! I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!

Kinetic · November 2005

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badder_than_evil · November 2005

robotchicken is my current favourite funny shit..

noz · November 2005

robotchicken is my current favourite funny shit..

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!

aleit · November 2005

the background of this joke is when The Simpsons first took a stab at Family Guy about 3 years ago in a Halloween episode, where Homer was making clones of himself, and when you looked in the background, there was Peter Griffin.

haha. just saw that one a few nights ago.

Kinetic · November 2005

the background of this joke is when The Simpsons first took a stab at Family Guy about 3 years ago in a Halloween episode, where Homer was making clones of himself, and when you looked in the background, there was Peter Griffin.

haha. just saw that one a few nights ago.

Oh shit, what simpsons episode is this? I have to see this shit!
Is it on any of the Simpsons DVDs that are out?

pacman · November 2005

robotchicken is my current favourite funny shit..

Oh yeah, Family Guy over Simpsons.

Kinetic · November 2005

robotchicken is my current favourite funny shit..

Oh yeah, Family Guy over Simpsons.

Just to expand on my arrow, i have been a huge fan of the Simpsons and South Park for ages, and I love both those shows dearly.

As others have said, The Simpsons is classic and always will be, but Family Guy is the new shit, and at the moment, it's what makes me laugh more.

noz · November 2005

Main Entry: sat??ire[/b]
Pronunciation: 'sa-"tIr
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle French or Latin; Middle French, from Latin satura, satira, perhaps from (lanx) satura dish of mixed ingredients, from feminine of satur well-fed; akin to Latin satis enough -- more at SAD
1 : a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn
2 : trenchant wit, irony, or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly

Shingaling · November 2005

BreakSelf · November 2005

Family Guy is defintely easier to watch these days. That said, seasons 3-7 of the Simpsons is hands down the funniest 5-year run of any program, animated or otherwise, in television history.

"Mr. Simpson, this is the most blatant case of fraudulent advertising since my suit against the film, "The Never-Ending Story"

slavin · November 2005

noz .. you mad?

actually i totally agree with you. the whole flashback and pop culture reference thing gets extremely old after like, one episode.

Swayze · November 2005

yeah-- they try and make every episode like a "i love the 80s" thing. too many cheap gags are done this way.
but this is the average family guy fan--"woah, a transformers reference--awesome!", "woah--a max headroom reference--awesome". "woah, a b-52's reference--awesome", etc, etc.
the episodes as a whole are filled with these references. it just seems more like quick, easy gags.
and the downfall of the simpsons has to do with this show--they are going more for those cheap gags that family guy has.
that said, i'll take a bad simpsons episode any day over family guy.
and the simpsons take on social issues is much more intelligent than anything family guy has come up with. it is still a smarter show.

Kinetic · November 2005

and the simpsons take on social issues is much more intelligent than anything family guy has come up with. it is still a smarter show.

Oh absolutely! I remmeber a Simpsons episode where these two fighter planes explode and the two pilots are parachuting to the ground and one says to the other "this is what happens when you take funding from the Military and put it into schools and hospitals." To which the other dude replies in heated fashion, "it's a good system, just give it a chance" at which point they begin to fight!

Family Guy, on the other hand, just takes the piss out of everything, which in my old age, I love.

DJ_Enki · November 2005

and the simpsons take on social issues is much more intelligent than anything family guy has come up with. it is still a smarter show.

That Simpsons parody movie of the Left Behind books/movies was fucking brilliant.

"When we turned from God--tacitly accepting Satan--we brought the rapture upon ourselves!"
"I though all religions were a path to God--I was wrong!"

Also, yeah, Family Guy relies way, way too hard on, "Hey, remember this thing from the '80s? Us too! Neato!" as a substitute for actual comedy.

day · November 2005

and the simpsons take on social issues is much more intelligent than anything family guy has come up with. it is still a smarter show.

Also, yeah, Family Guy relies way, way too hard on, "Hey, remember this thing from the '80s? Us too! Neato!" as a substitute for actual comedy.

That said, I like them both.

noz · November 2005

noz .. you mad?

you can't be askin me no questions! fuck is you to be askin me questions? they not respecrecognizin know what i'm sayin i'mma tell you why i'm mad

seasons 3-7 of the Simpsons is hands down the funniest 5-year run of any program, animated or otherwise, in television history.[/b]

i consider family guy to be amongst the most disposable, lowest form of what american culture has to offer. it's mcdonalds caliber animated comedy. and it shocks me to see that so many people not only watch and enjoy it, but hold it in such high esteem that they would dare compare it to the undisputed GOAT of the genre. i mean i'll eat a mcgriddle on the rare occasion and enjoy the sugar-salt induced comatose that follows, but i won't try to equate it with fine cuisine. by doing so would be a disgrace to the culinary arts, and to put family guy on a similar pedestal is equally disgraceful to the past hundred or so years of animation. the success of this show has set animated comedy back at least twenty years.

Secret_Chimp · November 2005

All I know is that I can't stop laughing like Peter Griffin. EHHH-HHH-EEHHHH!!

Also, the likeness between Peter and Karl Rove in the above picture is kind of freaking me out.

Kinetic · November 2005

noz .. you mad?

you can't be askin me no questions! fuck is you to be askin me questions? they not respecrecognizin know what i'm sayin i'mma tell you why i'm mad

seasons 3-7 of the Simpsons is hands down the funniest 5-year run of any program, animated or otherwise, in television history.[/b]

i consider family guy to be amongst the most disposable, lowest form of what american culture has to offer. it's mcdonalds caliber animated comedy. and it shocks me to see that so many people not only watch and enjoy it, but hold it in such high esteem that they would dare compare it to the undisputed GOAT of the genre. i mean i'll eat a mcgriddle on the rare occasion and enjoy the sugar-salt induced comatose that follows, but i won't try to equate it with fine cuisine. by doing so would be a disgrace to the culinary arts, and to put family guy on a similar pedestal is equally disgraceful to the past hundred or so years of animation. the success of this show has set animated comedy back at least twenty years.

I seriously do understand where you're coming from on this. But the mistake I think you're making is assuming that family guy is not aware of it's own short-termness. It's not trying to be The Simpsons, despite the obvious references to it. It is, by nature, disposable comedy. But I think it is brilliant for what it does.

mylatency · November 2005

That said, I like them both.

noz · November 2005

I seriously do understand where you're coming from on this. But the mistake I think you're making is assuming that family guy is not aware of it's own short-termness. It's not trying to be The Simpsons, despite the obvious references to it. It is, by nature, disposable comedy. But I think it is brilliant for what it does.

self awareness is not a legitimate excuse here. if something is bad, it doesn't become good just because the creator(s) recognize it as such (or, even worse, because they actually strive for mediocrity or failure)

i think your argument would be better suited for a show like robot chicken, which i also hate, but recognize as self consciously disposable. in the case of family guy, if the notion of disposablity is being applied consciously then why do the creators insist on the contrived narrative structure? i mean i understand the reasoning from a marketing perspective - the show's success hinges on a modernization of the simpsons formula - but i think it greatly stifles the comedy of the show and is absolutely disgraceful to the legacy of traditional story telling. in short disposable comedy doesn't lend itself to the sitcom format, where success hinges on a percieved "bond" that's built between the audience and the characters. this cannot happen without character development. the characters on family guy are merely an assemblage of reoccuring gags.

the marx brothers/three stooges/tom & jerry approach was a great model for what you're calling "disposable". the creators never strived for any narrative continuum. they just threw the characters into a plot and let them thrive on their inherent one dimensionality. and it was hillarious.

but i'm getting way off track here.

noz · November 2005

maybe i'm having a memory lapse but i can hardly think of any character development that existed in the simpsons. to me the simpsons have always seemed like an assemblage of recurring gags. if i'm missing something please break it down further. the only thing i could say that the simpsons had over family guy is they had about 20+ characters that could carry an episode where as family guy really only has the family plus quagmire.

sounds like you need to hollar at

seasons 3-7

autez · November 2005

The Simpsons

Grafwritah · November 2005

i'm laughing out loud during all 30 min of family guy. i guess it's just me?

Overall I think it's fucking hilarious, but it does have plenty of points where the joke just misses and/or carries on for wayyyy too long.

I think to appreciate the Family Guy you have to have a certain sense of humor. It's loaded with 1980s pop references that some people aren't going get or find amusing. It also has a sick sense of humor that some people are just not going to appreciate no matter how funny it is (to other people).

Case in point, I was dying fucking laughing tonight when they have the imitation Stephen Hawking and his imitation wife on and they had that whole interaction thing going, like when he ran into her wheelchair with his and was like, "SORRY I HAD TO HIT YOU." Or when they flashed to the scene with the two of them, in their underwear but still in their wheelchairs, laying in bed with their voice synthesizers going, "OOH AHH. OOH AHH. OH YES. OOH. AHH."

My girlfriend didn't laugh not once and I was practically falling on the floor.

I couldn't help but think of what poor taste it was but how fucking hilarious it was.

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simpsons or family guy?

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