Like this one time I wrote a post about Family Guy.
So I have been sitting on this post for a while, having it be essentially footnotes (gotta cut footnotes) to a retrospective of the 80’s culture and the renaissance it had when the I love the 80’s launched. It’s taking a while because it’s part of a larger look into the strange culture of anti-celebrity America is going through, and how it likely relates to deep wounds of 9/11 and the Iraq war.
So, I waited and then South Park came out and stole my thunder about the weakness of Family Guy and how lame the story telling is.
Hell, watch it here:
Go to youtube.com and search for the episode. It’s probably on, yet you will have to get it in three parts thanks to the new posting limits.
The show was one of the better episodes in a while, and this season is now 3 for 3, which is about how many good episodes were in season 9. Both sharply satiric and referential in it’s jokes (“How would you like it if there was a show that made fun of Jews every week” (pause by Kyle)). The episode manages to combine free speech, the Muhammad comic protests, Islamic xenophobia, and an attack of a show of lesser quality all into a coherent and surprisingly exciting episode. It also gets back to the central morality of the show, that adults are idiots when it comes to making points, (the digging holes in the sand), and refusing to stand by the principles of which they believe in.
Anyway, on to the rest.
I can’t think of a show I have a bigger love/hate relationship with more than Family Guy. There are few shows out there than can be as consistently gut busting, yet there are also few shows that are consistently terribly plotted or told story wise. The show is about where Coldplay is now, where some of the stuff is definitively great, other times the writing is insipid and completely terrible.
Part of the problem I have with the show is the audience, who keep ranking it with the Simpson’s or South Park. That’s like comparing Coldplay with Radiohead or the Beatles, or Emo core with actual music. I have met few fans who have anything remotely negative to say about the show, and they almost always proclaim it to be the “Best Show on TV.” It’s aggravating because they seem bound by their love and part of me is loath to disagree that the parts they quote are not funny, and they never mention how every show episode falls on it’s face at least twice during 22 minutes.
It’s hard even qualifying Family Guy as a show sometimes, because half the jokes and plots are allusions to either pop culture or character flashbacks.
With the pop culture part, the quality of the joke is directly correlated with the time period. Anything pre- 1970 tends to be too over the top, like the Dick Van Dyke or Honeymooners jokes. Anything from 1971 to the late 80s are as good as anything on the show, my favorite being the time Peter goes into detention only to find an amalgam of cereal and John Hughes
http://youtube.com/w/Family-Guy%3A--Peter-Meets-Breakfast-Club?v=jPQjFrrQBZI&search=Family%20guy
taking the 2nd most needlessly overdramatic part of the film (#1 being Emilo’s reason for being in detention) and rendering it completely surreal.. There is no richer pop culture mine, and Seth McFarlane uses it for some of the best jokes in the show.
Then there is the shows modern takes, which have started to replace all the old references and are consistently sub par. Either it’s the leftist dogma of Seth and his crew (I counted at least 7 Bush jokes in the latest season, and almost all of them were weak and already covered) or they are making jokes about events that everyone else has: like Ashlee Simpson on SNL, or Marissa Tomei winning an Oscar, or Peter’s 5 minute Can’t Touch Me.
This period elicits some of the best jokes because during this period there were more borderline preposterous movies, commercials and TV shows imaginable. This was the time when there were two shows about black kids adopted by rich white families, the cartoon shows were top notch in every facet one could want (heroic, badass, unintentionally hilarious), and Weekend at Bernie’s was a huge hit. Because of the rise of cable (VH1, MTV, Nickelodeon) and videogames, TV and media were never so immediately iconic to the world. This stuff was coming into our homes at an alarming rate, yet it was on a small enough scale that people were still watching the same stuff. If you want to look at the effect Gen-X has had on the world, look no further than the Carter and Reagan years, where irony was almost completely off anyone’s mind (cocaine will do that to you), and than look at the world now. The good movies sucked then, but the bad B-movies were classics.
The shows most famous joke is probably Peter’s knee gag, where he hems and haws about his knee (eeeeeeeeee. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh.). It’s a great gag, but people forget why the joke worked so well, it followed a note perfect Charlie and the Chocolate Factory song that was going on for a good minute before pulling the rug out and having a surreal injury joke.
This is something the show did well in the first few seasons, but after they came back, the show turned into a thinner version of itself, relying more on dumb jokes, flashbacks, and ham handed self references.
But the real problem with the show is that nothing is organic about it. It’s a rip off of the Simpsons that uses cheap jokes (though admittedly some are rather funny) and tries too hard.
I can only think of five solid from start to finish episodes
1. The Thin White Line
2. Peter, Peter Caviar Eater (the diamond joke and Stewie talking with the blue bloods are two of the series best gags)
3. Wasted Talent
4. I am Peter, hear me roar.
5. Road to Rhode Island.
What is the difference between these episodes and the rest of the run? They have plots. Plain and simple. The jokes also flow from the story, and they tend to better than most at simply delivering a joke.
An example of a good Family Guy joke can be found in any of those episodes.
The typical joke is like one from the fifth season, where Peter remembers his breakfast machine. The joke is to rip off the entire Rube Goldberg device from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, but instead of getting food, Peter is shot.
How funny would it be if someone at work came up to you and said: “Hey remember Pee Wee’s Adventure, and his breakfast machine? What if he got shot at the end. How funny would that be!”
Absolute crap.
You just get the feeling that Seth McFarlane and company can’t say no to a joke. The team behind Family Guy can make good shows, it just seems like they go for the easy route far to often and don’t know a GD thing about storytelling.
What is left is a TV show that feels more like a mashup than an original song. They take a set beats and pacing of a show like The Simpsons, and then take the best parts from other pieces to create a “new” show. Mashup’s can be great if they are done right, they contrast and reshape some of the most familiar of texts to new situations. They make one appreciate the songs in another light, and are meta fun in the process, but in the end they are shallow, and the people who created them are only connecting beats, not creating anything new. (Jurassic Park reference/quote warning!!!) :
I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're using here: it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you even knew what you had you patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you're selling it, you want to sell it!
If that’s too nerdy or highbrow, here’s a quote from Naked Gun that I feel captures the essence of watching Family Guy:
Dating a cop is like taking a spoonful of draino. Sure it will clean you out, but it will leave you feeling hollow inside.
So, I waited and then South Park came out and stole my thunder about the weakness of Family Guy and how lame the story telling is.
Hell, watch it here:
Go to youtube.com and search for the episode. It’s probably on, yet you will have to get it in three parts thanks to the new posting limits.
The show was one of the better episodes in a while, and this season is now 3 for 3, which is about how many good episodes were in season 9. Both sharply satiric and referential in it’s jokes (“How would you like it if there was a show that made fun of Jews every week” (pause by Kyle)). The episode manages to combine free speech, the Muhammad comic protests, Islamic xenophobia, and an attack of a show of lesser quality all into a coherent and surprisingly exciting episode. It also gets back to the central morality of the show, that adults are idiots when it comes to making points, (the digging holes in the sand), and refusing to stand by the principles of which they believe in.
Anyway, on to the rest.
I can’t think of a show I have a bigger love/hate relationship with more than Family Guy. There are few shows out there than can be as consistently gut busting, yet there are also few shows that are consistently terribly plotted or told story wise. The show is about where Coldplay is now, where some of the stuff is definitively great, other times the writing is insipid and completely terrible.
Part of the problem I have with the show is the audience, who keep ranking it with the Simpson’s or South Park. That’s like comparing Coldplay with Radiohead or the Beatles, or Emo core with actual music. I have met few fans who have anything remotely negative to say about the show, and they almost always proclaim it to be the “Best Show on TV.” It’s aggravating because they seem bound by their love and part of me is loath to disagree that the parts they quote are not funny, and they never mention how every show episode falls on it’s face at least twice during 22 minutes.
It’s hard even qualifying Family Guy as a show sometimes, because half the jokes and plots are allusions to either pop culture or character flashbacks.
With the pop culture part, the quality of the joke is directly correlated with the time period. Anything pre- 1970 tends to be too over the top, like the Dick Van Dyke or Honeymooners jokes. Anything from 1971 to the late 80s are as good as anything on the show, my favorite being the time Peter goes into detention only to find an amalgam of cereal and John Hughes
http://youtube.com/w/Family-Guy%3A--Peter-Meets-Breakfast-Club?v=jPQjFrrQBZI&search=Family%20guy
taking the 2nd most needlessly overdramatic part of the film (#1 being Emilo’s reason for being in detention) and rendering it completely surreal.. There is no richer pop culture mine, and Seth McFarlane uses it for some of the best jokes in the show.
Then there is the shows modern takes, which have started to replace all the old references and are consistently sub par. Either it’s the leftist dogma of Seth and his crew (I counted at least 7 Bush jokes in the latest season, and almost all of them were weak and already covered) or they are making jokes about events that everyone else has: like Ashlee Simpson on SNL, or Marissa Tomei winning an Oscar, or Peter’s 5 minute Can’t Touch Me.
This period elicits some of the best jokes because during this period there were more borderline preposterous movies, commercials and TV shows imaginable. This was the time when there were two shows about black kids adopted by rich white families, the cartoon shows were top notch in every facet one could want (heroic, badass, unintentionally hilarious), and Weekend at Bernie’s was a huge hit. Because of the rise of cable (VH1, MTV, Nickelodeon) and videogames, TV and media were never so immediately iconic to the world. This stuff was coming into our homes at an alarming rate, yet it was on a small enough scale that people were still watching the same stuff. If you want to look at the effect Gen-X has had on the world, look no further than the Carter and Reagan years, where irony was almost completely off anyone’s mind (cocaine will do that to you), and than look at the world now. The good movies sucked then, but the bad B-movies were classics.
The shows most famous joke is probably Peter’s knee gag, where he hems and haws about his knee (eeeeeeeeee. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh.). It’s a great gag, but people forget why the joke worked so well, it followed a note perfect Charlie and the Chocolate Factory song that was going on for a good minute before pulling the rug out and having a surreal injury joke.
This is something the show did well in the first few seasons, but after they came back, the show turned into a thinner version of itself, relying more on dumb jokes, flashbacks, and ham handed self references.
But the real problem with the show is that nothing is organic about it. It’s a rip off of the Simpsons that uses cheap jokes (though admittedly some are rather funny) and tries too hard.
I can only think of five solid from start to finish episodes
1. The Thin White Line
2. Peter, Peter Caviar Eater (the diamond joke and Stewie talking with the blue bloods are two of the series best gags)
3. Wasted Talent
4. I am Peter, hear me roar.
5. Road to Rhode Island.
What is the difference between these episodes and the rest of the run? They have plots. Plain and simple. The jokes also flow from the story, and they tend to better than most at simply delivering a joke.
An example of a good Family Guy joke can be found in any of those episodes.
The typical joke is like one from the fifth season, where Peter remembers his breakfast machine. The joke is to rip off the entire Rube Goldberg device from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, but instead of getting food, Peter is shot.
How funny would it be if someone at work came up to you and said: “Hey remember Pee Wee’s Adventure, and his breakfast machine? What if he got shot at the end. How funny would that be!”
Absolute crap.
You just get the feeling that Seth McFarlane and company can’t say no to a joke. The team behind Family Guy can make good shows, it just seems like they go for the easy route far to often and don’t know a GD thing about storytelling.
What is left is a TV show that feels more like a mashup than an original song. They take a set beats and pacing of a show like The Simpsons, and then take the best parts from other pieces to create a “new” show. Mashup’s can be great if they are done right, they contrast and reshape some of the most familiar of texts to new situations. They make one appreciate the songs in another light, and are meta fun in the process, but in the end they are shallow, and the people who created them are only connecting beats, not creating anything new. (Jurassic Park reference/quote warning!!!) :
I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're using here: it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you even knew what you had you patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you're selling it, you want to sell it!
If that’s too nerdy or highbrow, here’s a quote from Naked Gun that I feel captures the essence of watching Family Guy:
Dating a cop is like taking a spoonful of draino. Sure it will clean you out, but it will leave you feeling hollow inside.
posted by Indiana at
1:12 PM
1 Comments:
You did notice how I did say I have grown apart from it and that I have gotten tired of the refrences. I liked the show, I didn't love it. I mean, half the damn post is about how I like the show, I am just ried of the inorganic style of this. Do you even read these things Portland Rose, or do you just glance over them and flame away. Have I ever compared FG to great TV? no, it's just easy to watch, but it's also easy to forget, that was the point. To be fair, I also have The Replacements on DVD, but I don't watch that anymore either. Part of me has grown out of Family Guy for it's hundrum, the other still likes some of the jokes.
By
Indiana, at April 10, 2006 12:59 PM
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