I once wrote a list of what I thought was the funniest things on TV. Family Guy came third in that list. However, I must admit lately I've grown weary of it. Since I wrote that list, there's been several more seasons, and each one has taken us further and further from what was originally so good about the show.
When it first started, Family Guy was unique. Sure, the set up was pretty similar to that of long running and award winning show The Simpson's, in that you had an idiotic overweight father, a smarter, more well rounded mother, with three kids, one of which was a baby. There's also a dog in both shows, but Santa's little Helper plays a much less significant roll in The Simpson's, than Brian does in Family Guy.
Family Guy is an adult comedy. That's what makes it different from The Simpson's. It wasn't the first adult orientated cartoon (South Park was out a few years before it, and I doubt highly that that was the first), but what made it unique was it's cutaways. The cutaways were simple non-sequitter's that had almost nothing to do with the main plot, like the time I went off on a pointless tangent within this blog.
They weren't the source of all the jokes, but a lot of the humour did come from those moments. And this hasn't changed. No matter what series you see an episode from, you'll see a cutaway. likewise there are still jokes that are designed to push the censors buttons, another staple of the series. But I can't help but wonder if maybe the writers are relying too heavily on these sort of jokes for shock value. There's a scene in one episode that involves newborn babies singing in an alley behind a school, swinging there umbilical chords like the walking sticks of singers in the thirties/forties, for instance.
But somewhere down the line Family Guy lost it's way. The characters slowly became flatter, one dimensional, and the jokes just became tired, and almost all predictable. Take for instance Peter. When the series started he was just a somewhat stupid, but caring father. Now he's just a retarded (literally) moron whose only interest is himself, and will do stupid things for a giggle regardless what the situation is. Sure, there's the odd episode where the old Peter appears briefly as a caring father and husband, how he used to be, but for the most part, he's a jerkass who does things just because they're funny to an audience.
A good example of this change is an episode where he opens his own restaurant, which quickly becomes a hangout for his friend Joe, and Joe's paraplegic friends. Now Peter has known Joe since the first series, and bar when they first meet (where Peter assumed because of some trophies that Joe would be good at baseball, then assumed that because Joe's in a wheelchair, he wouldn't be after Peter had promised his boss a star player), the handicapped status of Joe's has almost never been an issue. Compare that to the episode in question, and Peter gets really annoyed with all the paraplegics, tells Joe that he thinks it's "a poor lifestyle choice", and bars them from the restaurant just for being in a wheelchair.
Now that in itself shows how much the characters have changed, but the next thing shows just how much the very show itself has changed. In retaliation to this Joe and his wheelchair friends form "Crippletron" a gigantic human pyramid that for all intents and purposes works like a robot and even fires some of the paraplegics as explosives. I wish I was making that up.
This isn't a cutaway by the way. That is what actually happens. Please remember that some of the first few series' generally kept everyday life of Quahog realistic bar in cutaways, and whenever Stewie and Brian were involved. Sure, it wasn't real life realism, there were some things done for the sake of plot convenience or comedy (anyone here met Death for one?), but as a rule there was a consistent logic to everything. I know that the longer a show runs, the more likely it is that plots become less realistic (after all, The Simpson's have reached a point now where they've had the entire town encased in a bubble), but Family Guy has devolved so quickly.
The trouble, as far as I can see it with Family Guy is that they rely far too heavily on running jokes. The prime example is the Chicken fight, which usually happens once a season. It started in there Y2K episode, where Peter received a bad coupon, and then goes into an extended fight scene. The scene itself is a visual treat generally for anyone who'se fond of big budget fight scenes, but when it comes to comedy, it's several minutes of dead air, and filler material. Usually it's commented on at the end, with Peter trying to return to the scene that was interrupted, but that was only funny the first time. The Chicken is a one a season problem, but it's so well loved by Family Guy's fanbase, that it keeps coming back, even though it stopped being funny a long while ago, and there are better ways to fill the time.
But it's not just that that keeps coming back. The creepy paedophile Herbert for one is such an one joke, one dimensional character that just won't go away. His only joke is that he's trying to seduce young kids (particularly Chris), and on more than one occasion it's just not funny.
This is one of the things that The Simpson's does well that Family Guy just doesn't. The supporting cast of Family Guy is too full of one dimensional joke characters who keep being shoehorned into situations where a new character would be better. Sure, there are some support characters who get plots, such as the doctor, the Pewterschmidt family, Peter's friends Joe, Cleaveland, Quagmire, Mayor Adam West, and the cast of Channel Five news (sans Ollie Williams who is one dimensional again), but the rest either exist as crowd fillers, or are there to make the same joke they made last time.
Cutaways tend to be more predicatable now too. Originally the cutaways would give you an expectation with the line that introduced them, and then show an entirely different chain of events. The subversive nature of them was what made them so funny. Nowadays though, and I'm not sure if it's because the audience is expecting a subversion, or just a case of a lack of ideas, but the cutaways are becoming more predictable, and more expected.
Family Guy has become a mere copy of what was originally great about it. It used to be an excellently subversive show, taking the standard comedy plots, and making fun of them, and has instead become this bizarre mismatch of running jokes, unfunny toilet humour, and stories that only exist as a way to tie one absurd scene to another.
But then, I guess that's what it's audience loves it for. As good as the first series of Family Guy was, it was cancelled. Then it was re-aired, re-commissioned, and cancelled again. So perhaps this is just a case of a show doing what it has to to stay on the air. The first few series' of Family might've been cleverer, deeper, and altogether funnier than what the show has become, but the show is more popular than ever, and as the old adage goes, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
Which means Family Guy probably won't change. As this low-brow, crude show which, in my opinion, relies too heavily on it's own in jokes and nostalgia, is most popular like this, then I can't foresee any changes in the near future.
But there is still hope. Sure, Family Guy might now be set in it's ways, and stuck as doing the same thing over and over, but it's unofficial sister show American Dad, is actually considered to be getting better at what it does, and the spin off staring Cleaveland can't realistically return to these jokes set up in another show for fear of alienating it's audience. So perhaps we can get some of intelligent, and subversive humour that was what made the original Family Guy brilliant, and is sorely lacking in more recent seasons.
Or maybe we'll just get half a season of fresh material, and then start noticing the repetition.
When it first started, Family Guy was unique. Sure, the set up was pretty similar to that of long running and award winning show The Simpson's, in that you had an idiotic overweight father, a smarter, more well rounded mother, with three kids, one of which was a baby. There's also a dog in both shows, but Santa's little Helper plays a much less significant roll in The Simpson's, than Brian does in Family Guy.
Family Guy is an adult comedy. That's what makes it different from The Simpson's. It wasn't the first adult orientated cartoon (South Park was out a few years before it, and I doubt highly that that was the first), but what made it unique was it's cutaways. The cutaways were simple non-sequitter's that had almost nothing to do with the main plot, like the time I went off on a pointless tangent within this blog.
They weren't the source of all the jokes, but a lot of the humour did come from those moments. And this hasn't changed. No matter what series you see an episode from, you'll see a cutaway. likewise there are still jokes that are designed to push the censors buttons, another staple of the series. But I can't help but wonder if maybe the writers are relying too heavily on these sort of jokes for shock value. There's a scene in one episode that involves newborn babies singing in an alley behind a school, swinging there umbilical chords like the walking sticks of singers in the thirties/forties, for instance.
But somewhere down the line Family Guy lost it's way. The characters slowly became flatter, one dimensional, and the jokes just became tired, and almost all predictable. Take for instance Peter. When the series started he was just a somewhat stupid, but caring father. Now he's just a retarded (literally) moron whose only interest is himself, and will do stupid things for a giggle regardless what the situation is. Sure, there's the odd episode where the old Peter appears briefly as a caring father and husband, how he used to be, but for the most part, he's a jerkass who does things just because they're funny to an audience.
A good example of this change is an episode where he opens his own restaurant, which quickly becomes a hangout for his friend Joe, and Joe's paraplegic friends. Now Peter has known Joe since the first series, and bar when they first meet (where Peter assumed because of some trophies that Joe would be good at baseball, then assumed that because Joe's in a wheelchair, he wouldn't be after Peter had promised his boss a star player), the handicapped status of Joe's has almost never been an issue. Compare that to the episode in question, and Peter gets really annoyed with all the paraplegics, tells Joe that he thinks it's "a poor lifestyle choice", and bars them from the restaurant just for being in a wheelchair.
Now that in itself shows how much the characters have changed, but the next thing shows just how much the very show itself has changed. In retaliation to this Joe and his wheelchair friends form "Crippletron" a gigantic human pyramid that for all intents and purposes works like a robot and even fires some of the paraplegics as explosives. I wish I was making that up.
This isn't a cutaway by the way. That is what actually happens. Please remember that some of the first few series' generally kept everyday life of Quahog realistic bar in cutaways, and whenever Stewie and Brian were involved. Sure, it wasn't real life realism, there were some things done for the sake of plot convenience or comedy (anyone here met Death for one?), but as a rule there was a consistent logic to everything. I know that the longer a show runs, the more likely it is that plots become less realistic (after all, The Simpson's have reached a point now where they've had the entire town encased in a bubble), but Family Guy has devolved so quickly.
The trouble, as far as I can see it with Family Guy is that they rely far too heavily on running jokes. The prime example is the Chicken fight, which usually happens once a season. It started in there Y2K episode, where Peter received a bad coupon, and then goes into an extended fight scene. The scene itself is a visual treat generally for anyone who'se fond of big budget fight scenes, but when it comes to comedy, it's several minutes of dead air, and filler material. Usually it's commented on at the end, with Peter trying to return to the scene that was interrupted, but that was only funny the first time. The Chicken is a one a season problem, but it's so well loved by Family Guy's fanbase, that it keeps coming back, even though it stopped being funny a long while ago, and there are better ways to fill the time.
But it's not just that that keeps coming back. The creepy paedophile Herbert for one is such an one joke, one dimensional character that just won't go away. His only joke is that he's trying to seduce young kids (particularly Chris), and on more than one occasion it's just not funny.
This is one of the things that The Simpson's does well that Family Guy just doesn't. The supporting cast of Family Guy is too full of one dimensional joke characters who keep being shoehorned into situations where a new character would be better. Sure, there are some support characters who get plots, such as the doctor, the Pewterschmidt family, Peter's friends Joe, Cleaveland, Quagmire, Mayor Adam West, and the cast of Channel Five news (sans Ollie Williams who is one dimensional again), but the rest either exist as crowd fillers, or are there to make the same joke they made last time.
Cutaways tend to be more predicatable now too. Originally the cutaways would give you an expectation with the line that introduced them, and then show an entirely different chain of events. The subversive nature of them was what made them so funny. Nowadays though, and I'm not sure if it's because the audience is expecting a subversion, or just a case of a lack of ideas, but the cutaways are becoming more predictable, and more expected.
Family Guy has become a mere copy of what was originally great about it. It used to be an excellently subversive show, taking the standard comedy plots, and making fun of them, and has instead become this bizarre mismatch of running jokes, unfunny toilet humour, and stories that only exist as a way to tie one absurd scene to another.
But then, I guess that's what it's audience loves it for. As good as the first series of Family Guy was, it was cancelled. Then it was re-aired, re-commissioned, and cancelled again. So perhaps this is just a case of a show doing what it has to to stay on the air. The first few series' of Family might've been cleverer, deeper, and altogether funnier than what the show has become, but the show is more popular than ever, and as the old adage goes, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
Which means Family Guy probably won't change. As this low-brow, crude show which, in my opinion, relies too heavily on it's own in jokes and nostalgia, is most popular like this, then I can't foresee any changes in the near future.
But there is still hope. Sure, Family Guy might now be set in it's ways, and stuck as doing the same thing over and over, but it's unofficial sister show American Dad, is actually considered to be getting better at what it does, and the spin off staring Cleaveland can't realistically return to these jokes set up in another show for fear of alienating it's audience. So perhaps we can get some of intelligent, and subversive humour that was what made the original Family Guy brilliant, and is sorely lacking in more recent seasons.
Or maybe we'll just get half a season of fresh material, and then start noticing the repetition.
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