Original airdate: September 28, 2014
I absolutely hated Family Guy when I was younger. Following its initial cancellation in 2002, the show gained new life on DVD and reruns on Adult Swim, leading to its network revival in 2005. I was in high school during that in-between stage when Family Guy DVDs were being traded around like wildfire, and having the reputation of loving cartoons and drawing my own comics, many people assumed that I must have loved Family Guy. I did not. I had seen a couple episodes of the show and didn’t care for its style of humor, but its rampant popularity and people’s assumptions that I liked it made that dislike turn even more sour (South Park‘s “Cartoon Wars” two-part episode definitely felt like a catharsis, featuring a similar dilemma with Cartman and his crusade to get Family Guy taken off the air). My biggest gripe was its reliance on pop culture cutaway jokes which usually felt nonsensical and without any sort of satirical element. One that’s always stuck out to me is a retelling of the ending of Back to the Future, where Doc wants to take Marty and Jennifer to the future to stop their daughter from marrying a black man. When Marty asks why that’s a big deal, Doc stammers awkwardly and backpedals. The only real joke to the scene is that Doc is inexplicably a racist, which isn’t really based on anything contextual from the movie, or within the episode itself. The show definitely leaned heavy into shock humor similar to South Park, but mostly as one-off gags, so it just came off more like the show just wanting to make racist, sexist and homophobic jokes for their own sake. I never understood the show’s crazy popularity, so I just held that hate in my heart through high school and never let go. Past that, I remember randomly watching a couple episodes in college, at that point my extreme feelings having subsided. I’m sure I’ve said I hate Family Guy and Seth MacFarlane a couple times on this blog, but I don’t feel that strongly anymore. I just don’t find what he does that funny. Simple as that.
Since Family Guy‘s return to the airwaves, Seth MacFarlane’s comedy stock exploded in the late 2000s/early 2010s. Two more successful animated series, a couple of live-action movies, and what seems to be his most precious baby, The Orville, a live-action series starring himself in the most expensive Star Trek cosplay production ever made. I don’t know how hands-on MacFarlane is with Family Guy anymore; the fact that he voices a lot of major characters makes me believe he must be more actively involved in some capacity than Matt Groening is with The Simpsons. But with the show now in its 19th season, Family Guy has become its own television institution just like the show that inspired it. In Disney’s acquisition of FOX, the two shows definitely seemed like they were being positioned as equally valuable assets. They’re pretty similar at this point, two wildly popular animated comedies with a huge catalog of episodes that the majority of fans seem to think have lost their luster. I don’t know what the equivalent rise and fall of Family Guy is versus The Simpsons in terms of when things went to shit. Some fans only like the original three season run, while others thought the revival had a few good years in it before the quality dipped. If any of you out there are Family Guy fans and want to give your thoughts on this, I’d be interested to hear it. But either way, by 2014, both Family Guy and The Simpsons were cultural relics whose older fans had mostly grown disinterested in their contemporary antics. Why not have them do a crossover?
When I first heard about the Simpsons/Family Guy crossover, it was a few years after I had abandoned watching The Simpsons, so I really didn’t care that they were about to co-mingle with “the enemy.” What integrity did the show have left to lose? But I had absolutely no interest in watching it, not even out of morbid curiosity. The only clip I saw online when it came out was the Homer and Peter car wash scene, and that was more than enough to keep me as far away from it as possible. More than a few people asked whether I would be covering “The Simpsons Guy” in my reviews, which I didn’t because it was a Family Guy episode (unlike the Futurama crossover, which I did cover, because it was a Simpsons episode. It’s a bit confusing). So in the spirit of the season, I thought why the hell not give the crossover a watch, just to see how they pulled it off, and also to reevaluate my feelings on the more modern version of Family Guy.
Before the Griffins and the Simpsons officially meet, the first five minutes of the episode is the “set-up” of how Peter and the gang to end up in Springfield in the first place. This section served to give me a little taste of what newer Family Guy has to offer. Peter gets hired as a newspaper cartoonist, and comes under fire due to his offensive punchlines, specifically toward women. His cartoons are crudely drawn, with smudges and fingerprints all over the page, with purposefully inflammatory subjects like bestiality (a man on a desert island asks a monkey if he’s free later) to the one that gets him in hot water about spousal abuse (a man slams his battered wife on the counter, complaining, “My dishwasher broke!”) The cartoons are so on-the-nose offensive that I couldn’t help but laugh, but it made me think about how the series as a whole seems to be like that. I guess this reflects Peter’s sense of humor being incredibly off-color, but it feels like that’s a lot of the rest of the characters’ attitudes as well. There’s an overall meanness to this show that doesn’t seem to be rooted in any sort of specific commentary, it’s just kind of crassness for crassness’ sake. In the context of this one episode I’m watching, I can sort of appreciate it, but it feels like it would grow incredibly thin after a while, and certainly after almost twenty years. Anyway, when an angry mob descends on the Griffin house, they decide to leave home for a while, only to have their car stolen at a gas station. Thankfully they happen to be nearby a large town, as the camera turns to reveal them standing before Springfield, USA (“What state?” “I can’t imagine we’re allowed to say.”)
It isn’t long before the Griffins run into Homer Simpson, where they meet up with the rest of the family at the Simpson house. While Homer helps Peter try to track down the stolen car, the other characters have their own little team-ups. Stewie practically imprints himself onto Bart, wearing his clothes in wanting to be as cool as he is. Seeing Stewie desperate for this ten-year-old’s approval is weirdly pretty sweet (“Y’know, I’m only wearing this diaper as a dare. It’s not like an every day thing…”) The scene where the two make prank calls to Moe is something I remember being talked about when this aired. People complained Stewie’s “Your sister’s being raped!” line was pushing it too far, but standing in contrast to Bart’s comparatively innocent prank, it works perfectly in depicting the comedic dichotomy of the two shows. Meanwhile, Lisa struggles to raise eternal punching bag Meg’s self esteem by trying to find something she’s good at. When Meg proves herself to be a better saxophone player, Lisa bitterly takes the instrument away, in a moment that definitely feels like modern-era Lisa (“It would be a shame to waste such great butcher’s arms on a musical instrument.”) But later, surprisingly, she redeems herself by presenting the sax to Meg as a farewell gift. Meg stammers and goes into a self-deprecating tangent, to which Lisa sincerely interrupts, “Shut up, Meg.” It’s another oddly genuine subplot, that like Stewie and Bart, blends the two show’s styles well, with the Simpsons reacting aghast at the Griffins’ more blue humor (Meg offhandedly mentions she usually beats up a cat when she feels depressed, causing Lisa to hastily shut the door on an eavesdropping Snowball II.) Chris and Brian are left to walk Santa’s Little Helper, with the Griffin dog aggravated at the Simpson mutt’s undignified behavior (responding to SLH’s barks, Brian is unable to communicate back, “I’m sorry, that’s a gutter language.”) Brian lets the dog loose, and he and Chris must chase him through town, running by and interacting with other Springfield residents and locations: Patty & Selma at the DMV, Dr. Nick at the hospital and finally Krusty at Krusty Burger. Considering the whole appeal of the episode is the Griffins visiting Springfield, this section was a logical excuse to check off a bunch of iconic characters and locations all at once. Lastly, Marge and Lois’ outing of going to a movie in the afternoon happens off-screen, presumably because both series don’t much interest in writing for women characters.
Homer and Peter’s efforts to find the missing car is definitely the weakest section, as they attempt to “think like a car” by gulping down gasoline, then proceeding to administer it rectally (followed by a cutaway gag of the videotape of their violation being sold at a sex shop). Next they hold a car wash for stolen vehicles, where they seductively clean cars in skimpy outfits to Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me.” It’s pretty gross, purposefully so, but it just goes on for so long that I don’t really get how anyone could find it funny. Things pick up when the Griffin car returns, having been stolen by a confused Hans Moleman, and Peter treats Homer to a drink in thanks, having brought his own Pawtucket Patriot Ale into Moe’s for him to try. Homer is shocked to find the beer is just Duff with a new label, accusing Peter of being a rip-off. The allegory is pretty obvious, but the dialogue is well aware of that and it’s pretty well done (“Duff is an icon!” “Yeah, but some folks prefer Pawtucket Pat. Don’t get me wrong, I used to love Duff when I was younger, but I haven’t even had it in like, thirteen years.”) This leads to a climactic court case where Peter is put on trial for grand theft. In a courtroom packed with Simpsons and Family Guy regulars, the Blue-Haired Lawyer helpfully narrates that the suit also calls into question other suspicious similarities between Springfield and Quahog, from the obvious (Mayor West and Quimby running off to smoke a J) to the tenuous, like Quagmire and Lenny (“You like sex?” “Ehh.” “I don’t think we’re very similar.”) The judge being Fred Flintstone, himself believing that neither party is very original, is a pretty good gag, and he rules in favor of Duff, leaving Peter and the many other employees of the Pawtucket Brewery out of work.
As the Griffins are about to leave, Peter snaps at Homer for costing him his job (“I think I speak for everybody when I say, I am over the Simpsons!”) This leads to an all-out brawl between the two, a seven-minute-long fight that has them tumble all over town, ending up falling into the power plant’s reactor, flying all the way up to Kang and Kodos’ spaceship, then sailing over Springfield Gorge (“We’re gonna make it!” “Trust me, we’re not”) before plummeting to the bottom. This is a variation of Peter’s ongoing battle with the Giant Chicken, a reoccurring Family Guy set piece that became longer and more elaborate each ensuing time. I guess the fact that it goes on for so long is supposed to be the joke? I was just incredibly bored by it more than anything. Plus the extent of the violence, how Homer and Peter get absolutely brutalized and seemingly are willing to murder each other definitely feels wrong to me. I know we’re playing by Family Guy rules here, but seeing Homer actually trying to kill somebody isn’t something I want to see (though we’ve seen it quite a few times in later Simpsons seasons, to “hilarious” effect.) The two make amends in the end (“I’m sorry we fought. I just wanted to make you laugh and cry. You see, I’m a Family Guy.” “I understand. I’m a The Simpsons.”) Back in Quahog for the final scene, we get a logical wrap-up from Lois as to why Pawtucket Brewery is in no trouble at all (“We lost, but how are they gonna enforce it? What, are they gonna come here? I think we know that’s never gonna happen!”) 
I’ll give this easy compliment: “The Simpsons Guy” is a much, much, much better crossover than “Simpsorama” was. Outside of Homer and Bender being drinking buddies, “Simpsorama” didn’t seem all that interested in pairing the two show’s characters together or having them react to each others’ worlds, favoring cheap cameos and Easter eggs over anything of substance. It felt like such a severely wasted opportunity. Meanwhile, “The Simpsons Guy” feels like as well done as a Simpsons/Family Guy crossover could possibly be. Well, modern Simpsons at least. This is definitely a Family Guy episode featuring the cast of the Simpsons. Visually, it’s odd to see Simpsons characters with the incredibly flat and stiff staging of a Family Guy episode; despite all of them being on-model throughout, so it definitely doesn’t feel like a Simpsons episode in that regard. Writing-wise, there’s not a lot of isolated sections with just Simpsons characters, but the few there are, they definitely felt like jokes that would be at home in season 26-era Simpsons, if not a little bit better (Krusty Burgers being made from dog meat, Dr. Nick waiting on “Doctor Dog” to start the operation.) But the episode as a whole, focusing on the characters bouncing off of each other, building up to the meta-commentary about Family Guy being a “rip-off,” was plotted well and executed pretty entertainingly. I even enjoyed some of the Family Guy-only moments. I feel if there’s anything from the series I genuinely like most, it’s the Stewie-Brian dynamic (“He’s like something out of Mark Twain!” “Whose real name was Samuel Clemens!” “…how does that further this conversation?”) I also liked a bunch of the meta jokes, like when Peter tries to allude to a cutaway gag but Homer just gets confused, then in the back half of the extended 44-minute episode, Peter snaps at Lois, then apologizes (“Sorry, Lois, I’m tired, we usually only do these things for half an hour.”) 
So yeah, outside of the more egregious elements like the car wash and the endless final fight, I was pretty surprised how much I enjoyed this episode. I guess you could complain that it leans more Family Guy than Simpsons in terms of its focus and humor style, but considering the current-day quality of The Simpsons, I don’t really view that as a problem. Honestly, I’m kind of stunned as to how much I liked this. And seriously, if you’re reading this and you’re a Family Guy fan, or ex-fan, or whatever, I’d love to hear your thoughts about the trajectory of the series, its rise and fall, how the show changed over time, and what it’s like now. The only thing I kind of know is that the show is incredibly meta and self-referential now, more-so than it ever was before, but I don’t know if that’s good or bad. Is there a mirror image of Me Blog Write Good out there of someone watching every episode of Family Guy, impotently yelling and screaming about how the new seasons are horrible? Boy, what a sight that would be, huh?
Me Blog Write Good 
Mike, big fan of your blog, been reading for years but haven’t ever commented. It’s great. I love your write-ups, very in-depth, very articulate. I’m a season 1-9 die-hard and even run a Tumblr on the show.
I’ve watched most all of the ‘Family Guy’ seasons, yet I have utterly no love for the show. I’ve watched them mainly from boredom and a lack of other options. So I can say this without prejudice: It’s never been a good show.
It has moments; sporadic jokes, scenes and storylines can work, and MacFarlane’s delivery, particularly as Peter, can often elicit a chuckle, but as a show, it in no way holds up. Certainly, it’s not on the same planet as ‘The Simpsons’.
It’s hard to put down to one thing, but the storytelling is just so bland. It’s as if they believe the random cutaways and insanely offensive non-sequiturs will be enough to cover it. The only times the show manages to rise above being simply an unfunny, poorly written, and unimaginatively animated show, is when they raise the concept of it. Its best episodes are the ones that break the standard mould and attempt something different. An episode like ‘and Then There Were Fewer’ or ‘Brian & Stewie’ come to mind.
Yet, despite aiming to achieve something greater than itself, it’s over-reliance on crass, deliberately offensive humour stymies any pretensions it may have. One thing that comes up with frightening frequency in all MacFarlane’s work are rape jokes. You mentioned one in that episode. I cannot believe that any staff member at ‘The Simpsons’ would have been fine with that. This is a creator that criticised Fox for cutting out a joke about Quagmire going to Springfield to rape Marge. That particular incident should have been enough to scupper any potential link-up between the two shows, but, alas, they’ve both sailed so far down the river it suppose it was inevitable.
You aren’t missing anything by not watching ‘Family Guy’, it’s good episodes, and it maybe only had three or four a season anyway, have all but disappeared, and were never that good to begin with. The show now is an ever-constant rehashing of old plots, old jokes and guest stars whose names are repeated again and again, as if the audience could forget them. No character depth, no care in its world and no original ideas. It always wanted to be like ‘The Simpsons’, and I guess now it is.
(I would say ‘American Dad’ is a far, far superior show and I’ve enjoyed that for years, but even that has gone so far south it’s nearing the magnetic north pole. If you’re interested, it starts being good in the second season and carries on being fairly strong up to season nine. After that it’s a minefield of increasing length and width.)
I’m curious, can you go into a bit on the evolution of American Dad? It’s obviously grown up beyond Bush-era politics from what I remember seeing in the first season, and I’ve heard had gotten mostly apolitical, which is weird to me? Without the political angle, what separates it from just being Family Guy with an alien instead of a talking dog?
AD was very political, in-fact, they even had Bush in an episode (not guest voiced, of course), as well as other figures from that time, like Karl Rove (again, imitated). It began to dip in and out of that from the second season when the idea of what the show was began to change.
Roger (the alien) was a big impact on that. He was housebound originally, but once they started having fun with him going out in his various disguises the plots subsequently became more outlandish.
Stan’s function now is either highly conservative or highly liberal, depending entirely on what suits the episode. Certainly, he isn’t as uptight as he was earlier on, in fact, all the character began losing some shape as it went on, simply because they’d explored a personality type for a while and probably gotten bored of that kind of portrayal.
Also, much like Homer, the fact that Stan is CIA often has no bearing on the episode, and if it does, it’s usually to facilitate whatever madness the family is embarking on.
What separates it from FG? Aside from having no cut-away gags, it’s willing to go for broke and fully commit to its plot, even if it doesn’t work, and nine out of ten times in the past six seasons it hasn’t, but I admire its continued commitment to that principle.
When it was well written in the early days, it pulled off some fantastic stuff, and that goes for the animation too, it’s more daring there, even if they have the same dull facial expressions. Also, and this is a massive thing I have against FG, AD actually likes its characters, and at its best, it was able to elicit genuinely emotional plots.
Its best episode, in my opinion, ‘Lost in Space’, takes place on a spaceship and focuses entirely on Jeff (a secondary, married-in family member) trying to prove he loves his wife in order to gain his freedom.
At this point it’s long past its magic, and the plots have become less daring and the chances they’re taking are backfiring massively, but it’s renewed through to 2022, so it won’t be going away anytime soon.
(They changed showrunners at season 9 and I’ve often wondered if that was why the quality waned.)
Merry Christmas btw.
American Dad was actually consistently good until it lost Mike Barker and went to TBS. Then all of a sudden the quality dropped like a rock. I hung in there for about a year and then gave up on it.
Family Guy is to The Simpsons, what Cheese Nips are to Cheez-Its.
American Dad is the only watchable thing Seth MacFarlane has ever made, if you ask me.
That may be the best analogy I’ve ever read. Cheese Nips are the absolute worst.
They were basically made to cash off the success of Cheez-Its. They’re made with greed, not with love. Maybe that’s why they taste so bad.
The early seasons of Family Guy, like the Simpsons, are decently enjoyable.
After that, RUN AWAY…
The general consensus about Family Guy’s decline is that it was sometime around or after it came back on the air.
My personal consensus is that it was always flawed. The show’s had its share of good jokes or stories – usually earlier on – it’s just that from day 1 it was always on “pop culture/cutaway” autopilot, only beginning to get really about shock value after it came back (the show gets almost scary sometimes).
It’s fine for background noise when I have Adult Swim on, maybe a good laugh or two, but given the choice I’d watch American Dad instead. Consistent characterization, actual story structure, and often funnier. I think the difference in showrunners and writers have parts in that.
Also, Cleveland Show’s fucking garbage.
The difference between Post-Classic Simpsons and Post-Classic Family Guy is very significant. Whilst I’ll always treasure the first 3 Family Guy seasons, I don’t vehemently hate what came after and in fact I can enjoy any era of the show up to the present day. That’s the key difference between the two show’s drop in quality. The Simpsons in the 2010s became so incredibly boring and yet agonising if you actually tried to pay attention, because the dialogue is absolutely painful. Family Guy by contrast is just 20 minutes of inconsequential nonsense that’s pretty enjoyable for a quick and easy watch. Enjoyable and Zombie Simpsons are not synonymous in the slightest. Also if you’re softening on Family Guy, I would highly highly recommend the first 10 seasons of American Dad, the show really gets into its own groove and is, dare I say, pretty darn hilarious and of a higher calibre than Family Guy.
Holy damn, I did not see this coming at ALL! And it was a POSITIVE review? What were you drinking this Christmas?!
In all seriousness though, I watch Family Guy occasionally and I think it’s wacky pop-culture driven humor can work considering what it is. I also like how fast-paced the comedy is and Stewie Griffin is awesome (At least, back when he was an evil mastermind.) I personally think Family Guy began to get really awful come Season 7. “Not All Dogs Go to Heaven” is the episode that truly killed the show for me. Now let’s put this Rhode Island family behind us forever and focus on a show with a much better Season 7. See you in what is hopefully an actually good year. (2021 will automatically be a good year if Zombie Simpsons finally concludes!)
I’ve got a theory about Family Guy’s trajectory lately. In my opinion, the first three seasons, with their cutaway gags and pop culture references were ahead of their time, which is why the show struggled to find an audience (The Simpsons had these too, but they’re much more prominent in Family Guy. If you were to ask someone to describe The Simpsons for you, cutaways would not be the first thing that came to mind). Its quick cancellation also enabled it to become a cult favourite and replace The Simpsons as part of the in-club counter-culture.
Once Family Guy became popular enough, the show was revived, and the sort of anarchic, irreverent humour that was its stock and trade was all the rage in the mid-to-late 2000s. However, the show’s popularity declined in the 2010s as viewing habits and comedy tastes changed. Binge watching, overarching long-term storylines and character development became popular, while pop culture references and lol randumb humour fell out of favour. Since Family Guy is almost entirely jokes with little interest in being more substantial than that, it was now behind the times, and that’s where it has stayed ever since.
As for the quality of the show itself, I’d agree with the commenter that said Season 7 was the decline. The Writer’s Strike was around then, and Fox aired a few episodes that weren’t quite finished without Seth MacFarlane’s approval, so I think that’s when he lost interest in the show, and started viewing it as the paycheque that funds his real passions. I would also say that Seasons 8 and 9 somewhat improved on Season 7, but not enough to counteract changing audience tastes.
Bearing all this in mind, Family Guy’s heavily joke-based approach does have its advantages in that the comedy is so rapid-fire that there’s bound to be at least a few jokes per episode that you laugh at, even if you don’t enjoy the episode as a whole.
Honestly, Mike, I’m just as shocked as you at how much you liked this episode. I definitely think you understood what the episode was trying to do and you didn’t go in with a “Family Guy sucks, so this is going to suck” mentality. As a longtime Family Guy fan, this is one of the last episodes of the show that I can say are truly classic. When this show commits to something and puts effort into a specific concept (in this case, the Griffins going to Springfield), it’s very enjoyable and has a lot to offer.
I’m also glad you thought it was much better than “Simpsorama,” which it was. When this episode came out, Family Guy was seen as a joke amongst internet circles. Many people despised it and were worried about the show ruining The Simpsons by having this crossover. I feel like people were going in wanting to hate it, which is why this episode ended up being trashed by almost every reviewer out there. I’m pretty sure The A.V. Club called it one of the worst episodes of TV in 2014. So, it’s a good thing that you, someone who has made it clear that you don’t like Family Guy or Seth MacFarlane’s work, were able to see past your feelings and appreciate “The Simpsons Guy” for what it was.
(Part one of two)
As far as Family Guy itself is concerned, it’s in the same place now that The Simpsons is: Stale, repetitive, irritating, and uninspired. It’s been that way for almost the entire 2010s, but I want to say that the show started seriously declining in season 14. Season 16 was somewhat of an improvement, but the show has gotten steadily worse every year. I still watch it, but I’m fully aware that it has given up entirely on storytelling and witty dialogue. The only time it snaps out of the current style is when it does a concept episode (like “Emmy-Winning Episode” or “Cutawayland”).
This show has done more to shape my sense of humor than any other show has. I’ve been a fan of it since 2007, way before I got into other adult animated shows. It was also one of the shows to inspire me to become a writer myself. I would say the first five seasons are prime Family Guy. Around season four is when it begins abandoning characters and stories for jokes, but the jokes are so good, you don’t even notice it. Also, prime Family Guy had a fast pace. Rarely did it linger on a joke for too long or repeat a gag like it does now.
The show was still entertaining in seasons 6-8, but it was definitely affected by the writer’s strike. I believe this was the peak of the show’s popularity, enough to get it an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Comedy Series. This is around the time the characters become even less sympathetic, the random humor is ramped up more, and they begin talking about subjects that they’re not equipped to handle (like “Not All Dogs Go to Heaven,” “Peter-assment” or “Quagmire’s Dad”). Personally, I didn’t start noticing something was wrong with the show until season 11, but even that season was better than whatever they’re doing now.
I 100% agree with everyone else that you should check out American Dad. It’s a sweeter, weirder, more competent version of Family Guy. It’s also far more consistent. It doesn’t start falling off until season 10 when Mike Barker left the show, and the absolute best episodes are usually between seasons 2-7. Because it was underrated and overlooked for so long, it was able to do all these strange, ambitious concepts that it wouldn’t have been able to get away with if it was more mainstream. It’s what Futurama was to The Simpsons.
I also liked this crossover more than I expected to. One reason for that is the palpable enthusiasm the writers had for doing a Simpsons episode, an enthusiasm that seemingly left the Simpsons’ own writers room years ago.
I can’t believe this is already six years old. Time sure does fly.
I thought “Family Guy” had a decent-enough first three seasons, but even then there was a lot of stuff I wasn’t really fond of. I thought early “American Dad” was better. Of the two, I’d say that “American Dad” is the one that’s gotten far worse over the years—”Family Guy” can at least remain amusing with its self-aware, meta humor while “American Dad” is just absurdity and tedium.
At least “Family Guy” these days is a show I can laugh at and mock for its tryhard jokes, with some occasional genuine chuckles. “American Dad” and “The Simpsons” don’t leave me with any sort of impression beyond pure disinterest these days.
Hey Mike, just wanted to add my thoughts as you said you were interested on a FG fan’s perspective.
For me, I always came to the show for cheap laughs – the show never really was that good with stories or characters, but had joke after joke thrown at you and a lot were pretty funny. The first 3 seasons I feel are a bit overrated for that reason as in those it does often come off as somewhat of a Simpsons clone.
Season 4 and 5 are my favorites because the show got more identity then and emphasized humor above all else – and they were great at it.
Season 6 and 7 were produced during the writer’s strike and the rollout of those episodes caused Seth to break with the main creative aspects of the show. While a lot of problems were present in those seasons due to their turbulent nature, there was still some good stuff (think like Simpsons season 10-11 or so).
Season 8 is when the show’s quality falls off a cliff. The show moved far more towards emphasizing stories then but the stories were trainwrecks and the writing was abysmal, plus all the new “social commentary” that the show now adopted were terrible. The humor became far more dark and edgy, being really embarassing and miserable to watch. This continued to get worse and worse over the years, reaching its nadir around the time this episode came out (which, miraculously, is better than like, all of seasons 12 and 13).
Then at about Season 14 the show just kind of… gave up. They stopped trying to write stories and that is basically what led to the proliferation of meta-humor and ironic jokes. It’s very lazily written ever since, but the show is perfectly aware of it and a lot of the episodes are just the writers bullshitting a main story and throwing in a few random jokes they found funny here and there.
I haven’t consistently watched the show since season 16 or so but it hasn’t seemed to change trajectory since then.
All in all, I find Simpsons a much better show as a whole, but I’d rather watch modern Family Guy than modern Simpsons, as it usually has at least the ocassional laugh here and there and they seem totally aware that their product isn’t good, unlike Simpsons; Al Jean seems to genuinely believe he’s making good episodes still, somehow.
Happy new year and sorry for the wall of text.
I forced myself to like Family Guy at the peak of its popularity, but as it got nastier and lazier, I quit fooling myself. It’s just not my thing, and I stuck with it for as long as I did out of a fond contemplation of what it could have been, rather than what it was.
The lazy pop culture references are probably what bug me the most. You know, Mike, I do a webcomic set in the 1990s that riffs on the pop culture of the decade. But I try my best to use those parodies and riffs as a stepping stone to character-driven stories. The Simpsons in its heyday did that too, ripping plots from the headlines but wrapping them around its beloved established characters to ground them. Family Guy has never done that, falling back on pop culture in the laziest “hey, remember this thong from your childhood, laugh at that instead” way possible. As someone who strives to do better than that, it really sticks in my craw.
You might say it really grinds your gears.
Don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ve been reading your comic for years. You’ve always done well in blending pop culture within believable scenarios for your characters. Keep up the great work!
My take on Family Guy is that it started off ok, but always had terrible elements. They managed to subdue these elements enough to make it a decent show in the earlier seasons, after that it just becomes off the walls awfulness and meanspiritedness. Modern Simpsons at least has somewhat coherent narratives most of the time, Family Guy doesn’t. It’s really not worth your time to watch. Most of the episodes are just compilations of stuff happening, rather than stories.
I don’t think I ever truly liked Family Guy, and I feel relieved saying it. As a kid, I thought it was mean, as a teenager, I thought it was lame but I forced myself into liking it because you were a teenager and you did whatever possible to fit (even if you chose to sit by yourself during lunch), and as an adult, I find it to be a complete mockery of both animation and comedic writing. It has its audience, sure, but I don’t think it’s that difficult to make people on the lowest common denominator laugh if every character is an asshole and you’re just spouting random pop culture references just cause. Seltzerburg have an audience, as well. Doesn’t mean they’re GOOD at their jobs, you know?
The decline of The Simpsons is more dramatic (and tragic) since you took a show that was part of a counter culture movement on television and, in a way, it became the very thing it made fun of. I know folks will easily point to Mike Scully and say he’s 100% to blame, but when you look at writers like Ian Maxtome-Graham or Swinton Scott that came in later and didn’t understand the show during its early years and could only understand it at face value, it’s why they ended up creating a more wacky show with Scully in charge. Family Guy started off weird, but had a chance to embrace a more sensible show design (no random cutaways but instead traditional storytelling) when it came back. Instead, the show decided to become even weirder and more cartoonish, plus as the seasons went on, storytelling (the main weakness of the series) was abandoned entirely, as characters became irredeemable along with jokes focusing more on brutal shock value. The point of telling jokes on Family Guy was more of seeing how many folks would be offended as possible, which is why rape and domestic violence is a very popular subject matter to make light of in that series (I guarantee you that an entire generation of folks only know George Jetson as a wife beater). Some individuals may look at this and go “Well, of course it’s not for you, you’re easily offended!”, to which I say “It’s not that I’m easily offended, it’s that I think you’re being a tryhard edgelord.”
While I believe that comedy should recognize that there shouldn’t be too many sacred icons to not besmirch if you want to have creative freedom, there also should be lines to not cross if you want to avoid being “that guy”, and Family Guy is “that guy” who spawned dozens of terrible adult cartoons, web comics, and adult web cartoons as a result of its style. There’s more I could tackle about, such as the lazy animation, but considering where animation is going nowadays with character-driven stories that have long term consequences being valued over your classic daily comic strip format of characters never amounting to anything, Family Guy and The Simpsons are ironically both the same kin; ancient relics hanging on as the industry leaves them behind.
I thought you said you were not going to review The Simpsons Guy 6 years ago. What changed your mind now? Was it a…special Christmas gift for us?
I’ve never really liked Family Guy that much, but my brother did for a while. The humor isn’t really my cup of tea.
Sure, the earlier seasons have made me laugh, and there are some genuinely good episodes in there (“PTV”, “Da Boom”), but the show has always been overwhelmingly mean-spirited and crass. Now we get shit like “Not All Dogs Go To Heaven” (aka the “let’s waste our Star Trek guest stars on this story about the evils of religion” episode), “Seahorse Seashell Party” (where Meg finally stands up to her family’s abuse, but she is convinced by Brian to stay in her abusive situation for her family’s benefit), “Trump Guy” (in which Donald Trump rapes Meg for some reason), and “Life of Brian” (you know why this one is infamous).
I also really hate the art style. Thanks to Family Guy, almost every single adult cartoon that came after it has followed in its footsteps in being offensively ugly as hell, on the basis that a cartoon needs to look like a child’s drawings for adults to enjoy it. Now, sometimes this works to a show’s benefit (Aqua Teens, anyone?), but, most of the time, it just looks lazy to me.
Yeah, I think the reasons I never really liked Family Guy are that is a very mean-spirited show. All of the characters are just nasty to each other. It’s also only funny (to the extent you can say it’s funny at all) on a superficial level. Shows like The Simpsons reward paying attention to detail, and you can watch the same episode a dozen times and always pick up on new things.
I did used to like Family Guy when I was much younger, but it was around 2007, or season 6, when it just started to bore me. I quit watching around then. I have not seen Family Guy in years, but from what I remember, the pre-cancellation (first 3 seasons) were actually pretty decent, certainly better than Zombie Simpsons. It was dumbed down big time when it was revived for season 4, and that is when it took on a much more (well, even more so than before) crass and lowbrow tone. But it still made me laugh, so did much of season 5 even though it was beginning to wear thin towards the end. But season 6 was when it wasn’t even making me laugh anymore, or at least not enough to bother watching.
That clip of Doc being inexplicably racist is unsurprisingly from the post-cancellation period (season 4, The Courtship of Stewie’s Father). I honestly did not even remember that joke, that’s how little I thought of it.
“… so it just came off more like the show just wanting to make racist, sexist and homophobic jokes for their own sake.”
It’s not just that. They do jokes based on disabilities, religion, basically anything that exists, expect not as effective as South Park
Your first paragraph sums up exactly my experience with Family Guy (including finally feeling like my opinion was validated, if not necessarily vindicated, by the South Park episode). I’m also at the point where, honestly, I just don’t give a shit anymore because both shows have been garbage for two decades now.
It sounds like this episode was surprisingly good, outside of the Homer/Peter scenes. I’m still not going to waste my time on it, though.
I was thinking about saying this after reading this review again, but I feel like Family Guy has more of a reason to exist at this point than The Simpsons does. Here’s what I think.
Family Guy gave up on trying to be one of the best shows on TV a while ago. You had the earlier seasons, which still hold up today and the tone is very influenced by The Simpsons. Then you have the first few years of the revival period, which I believe had the writers throwing everything at the wall and seeing what stuck. There was this fast-paced, crackhead energy to a lot of those episodes that makes the jokes and stories work. Then at some point, you could tell the producers wanted Family Guy to be taken seriously. They wanted the show to be respected in the television community, by the people who decided the Emmy winners. That’s why you got episodes that never should have been made like “Quagmire’s Dad” or “Screams of Silence.” They wanted to be prestige TV, but didn’t realize that there has to be a sincerity to it to make it work. You can’t be raunchy and offensive and then try talking about domestic violence. It doesn’t work like that.
At some point, Family Guy realized it wasn’t going to be recognized as one of the best shows on TV and just stopped trying. With everything. It became this weird, sketch comedy/antihumor/shitpost disguised as a sitcom. It started acknowledging that it fell off in quality a long time ago, stopped writing cohesive stories and started going for more nonsensical, bizarre bits. It’s more self-aware than ever, constantly name dropping its own writers and talking about old bits that haven’t aged well. There was one scene where The Orville comes on TV, and Peter uses a handgun to shoot at the TV. When Chris asks Peter why he hates The Orville so much, Peter’s voice actor changes and he says, “Because it’s preventing me from doing my work here on Family Guy.”
I feel like Family Guy has intentionally put itself into a space where it can do anything it wants, be anything it wants. The show has no rules anymore. It’s like coming up with a game and making up the rules as you go along. Sometimes, it doesn’t work. They overuse that ironic, on-the-nose dialogue to the point where the characters just talk like that all the time now. Some jokes are stretched out for literally minutes, which is an eternity when you’re making a show like this. And even when they have an interesting idea for an episode, they sometimes waste it by not doing anything with the idea beyond what everyone expects them to do. It doesn’t really surprise you anymore, except when it does a concept episode which tend to be really good.
Family Guy can at least still make people laugh, even if it’s for a random, stupid joke that doesn’t make any sense. You can make a YouTube compilation video of funny scenes from literally any episode from any season, and people will enjoy it. You don’t even have to remember what episode a joke is from, it just has to be funny. You can’t do that for The Simpsons, at least not anymore. They try to tell stories and make heartfelt episodes, they just fail at it. It doesn’t really have a sense of humor beyond what an old man would find funny. That’s why even though many Family Guy episodes blend together now, you can still get some good jokes or scenes from them. A character can say some weird shit and it will be funny. The Simpsons has been stuck in the same place for years, and when they usually try something different, it doesn’t work (except for the rare episode like “Road to Cincinnati”).
Even though I have a lot of issues with the way Family Guy is now, it can still make me laugh, and the episodes are less irritating with multiple watches and YouTube clips. I watch The Simpsons, but half the time, I’m not even paying attention to what’s happening. And since they still want to try, it’s more irritating when I don’t care about what they’re trying.
Have you ever considered writing a post on the South Park episode “Simpsons Did It”?
This is probably going to get buried because it’s been almost 3 years since this post was made, but I did want to add my two cents. I strangely recently became a fan of the first few seasons of Family Guy? Maybe I’m just crazy but I feel like there’s been a big uptick of Family Guy memes on the internet recently and as such it kind of made me reevaluate my relationship with the show and made me reach the conclusion that the only reason I didn’t like it was just because I was because I was told so. I got into adult cartoons around 2013-2014 when hating on Family Guy was a big trend on internet cartoon spaces and the fact that most of the classmates that either bullied me/were annoying were into it. I always heard the first few seasons were good, and because that uptick had me reevaluate my feelings on it, I feel like there was no time like the present to give the first few seasons a watch.
And? It’s definitely an acquired taste, I will say. If you want good storytelling and characterization, Family Guy is probably one of the single worst things you can watch. However, if you just want a good laugh that you don’t have to think about and a bunch of random zany nonsense happening on screen, Family Guy really is a good show for that. Family Guy is almost always at its absolute worst when it is trying to be poignant or tell a character driven story (with a few exceptions like the fan favorite “Brian Wallows and Peter’s Swallows”), and at it’s best when it’s just a bunch of random zany stupid stuff with the occasional hint of satire (episodes like “E. Peterbus Unum”, “PTV”, or “To Love And Die In Dixie”) because once upon a time, the show was really damn good at getting a laugh. There’s definitely a place for Family Guy and I don’t think it’s a Simpsons ripoff. The humor is definitely a bit more edgy and mean spirited, but that’s fine because they level it out by not going too into it (that is until the later seasons) and there’s definitely way more of a surrealist edge to it. There’s a place for gag-centric shows like Family Guy amongst more character driven and down to earth comedies like The Simpsons and King Of The Hill.
I will also echo others in this thread by saying American Dad! is absolutely the better show. It’s way more consistent, the characters are better and as such are funnier, and because it almost always lived in Family Guy’s shadow, it feels like they were able to get away with a lot more surreal plotlines. Some episodes of American Dad are just complete unadulterated chaos and go off the rails in such bizarre ways and a lot of times, at least for me, it lands. I feel like in a way, the characters of American Dad feel like an evolution of the characters in Family Guy. Take Chris and Steve for example- Chris’s real only two character traits are that he’s dumb and that he’s horny because he’s a teenage boy. Steve, on the other hand, is a teenage boy just like Chris, but is a whiny little shit nerd with a massive ego who thinks he’s incredibly suave when he’s not which feels way more realized. Meg too- I think punching bag characters work the best when the audience is given a legit reason to dislike them/see them as undesirable, and all Meg has is “she’s ugly” and not to be on some Chris Chan shit, but it doesn’t work just because she looks just like a normal girl. Compare this to something like Zoidberg from Futurama, who similarly is often a punching bag stemming from his looks, but there it works a lot better considering he’s a giant weird lobster alien monster.
I will also echo that I do think the recent episodes of Family Guy are leaps and bounds better than current Simpsons. As a previous poster said, Al Jean and a lot of the showrunners definitely live in a bit of a delusion where they still believe they are in the golden age and are popping out heartwrenching classics and knocking one out of the ballpark every week, but in reality are just creating the most milquetoast and boring episodes ever. Family Guy is just a bunch of goofy nonsense that you don’t need to think about. It’s not concerned with characterization or stories, it’s there to make you laugh and even though I’m sure Family Guy is super tired now (I haven’t seen a lot of modern episodes but the ones I have have been… not good but it’s also been a good 7/8 years) I’m sure it’s still capable of making me laugh every now and then. I remember reading somewhere that there’s like 5/6 jokes per minute on average in Family Guy, so one of them has to eventually stick the landing, y’know?
To round this out with an unpopular opinion, I see a lot of people consider “Brian Wallows and Peter’s Swallows” to be Family Guy’s best, but I disagree. It’s a fantastic episode, but the stellar Brian A-plot is saddled with a really meh and forgettable and not super funny Peter B-plot. “Road To Rhode Island” is definitely my favorite episode and what I would consider to be the best. It’s oddly heartwarming, consistently funny, has two very enjoyable plots, a stellar musical number, and above all else, it’s a Brian/Stewie episode which are IMO, the best episodes in Family Guy. There’s nothing not to love about that episode.