The agony of "Family Guy"
Unlike Brian, I like Family Guy. Or, to be precise, I liked Family Guy. I have the "old" Family Guy on DVD and love it to death, but the resurrected version which started to air again on Fox in May is, like most things reanimated from the dead, a pale, shuffling shadow of its former self.
I really looked forward to the return of Family Guy, and I've given it 8 good weeks to get its sea legs back, but it seems to me that the new rendition of the show has magnified all of the old version's flaws and retained almost none of the quirky charm or biting humor. The formerly sharp social commentary has morphed into the heavy-handedness of a Move On commercial, and the characters have subtlety and not-subtlety changed into warped versions of themselves.
The most obvious example of character shift is the neutering of Stewie, the foul-mouthed baby with a desire to conquer the world over his mother's dead body. Well, not any more. The matricidal tendancies are gone, as is any inclination to evil. I don't know if Stewie spent the show's hiatus at a "Love" Won Out conference, but there has nary been a single mention of secret plans or a shrill "victory is mine" in eight weeks.
The political commentary has also gone from sharp and focused to merely shrill. The entire Mel Gibson episode was a case in point. I agree that Gibson is a paranoid far-right Catholic with masochistic tendencies who probably thinks the new Pope is too liberal, but there's a funny way to parody this, and then there's the not-so-funny, Family Guy way.
The overt political commentary has been combined with another Family Guy annoyance, skits that keep going and going and going and going until all original humor has been lost. Remember the quip where Peter says that he has "performed for the President?" It cuts to a clip of Peter in the Oval office making funny noises and clown faces at Bush, who giggles and laughts like a happy child. Biting, and funny for maybe 2 seconds. But the scene goes on for probably 20 or 30 seconds, with Peter making silly faces and Bush he-hawing like a chimp, until finally, mercifully, it ends.
Last night's episode did this same thing with the "barf" scene, which went on about 30 seconds longer then was funny. It seems like each new episode has one or two of these extended repetitive scenes, almost as if the writers are running out of ideas and need to pad things out. Maybe they do.
The interesting thing is that Family Guy is getting quickly worse, while Seth MacFarlane's other new show, American Dad has been getting better. After a rough start, the last few episodes of American Dad have started to click. Ironically, for a show that is sometimes explicitly political, the heavy-handedness has lightened up significantly, and the characters have gone from "which Family Guy character is X supposed to be" into their own personalities. Maybe American Dad is where MacFarlane's "A" material is going, because it sure isn't Family Guy any more, the occasional flash of brilliance aside.
Unlike Brian, I like Family Guy. Or, to be precise, I liked Family Guy. I have the "old" Family Guy on DVD and love it to death, but the resurrected version which started to air again on Fox in May is, like most things reanimated from the dead, a pale, shuffling shadow of its former self.
I really looked forward to the return of Family Guy, and I've given it 8 good weeks to get its sea legs back, but it seems to me that the new rendition of the show has magnified all of the old version's flaws and retained almost none of the quirky charm or biting humor. The formerly sharp social commentary has morphed into the heavy-handedness of a Move On commercial, and the characters have subtlety and not-subtlety changed into warped versions of themselves.
The most obvious example of character shift is the neutering of Stewie, the foul-mouthed baby with a desire to conquer the world over his mother's dead body. Well, not any more. The matricidal tendancies are gone, as is any inclination to evil. I don't know if Stewie spent the show's hiatus at a "Love" Won Out conference, but there has nary been a single mention of secret plans or a shrill "victory is mine" in eight weeks.
The political commentary has also gone from sharp and focused to merely shrill. The entire Mel Gibson episode was a case in point. I agree that Gibson is a paranoid far-right Catholic with masochistic tendencies who probably thinks the new Pope is too liberal, but there's a funny way to parody this, and then there's the not-so-funny, Family Guy way.
The overt political commentary has been combined with another Family Guy annoyance, skits that keep going and going and going and going until all original humor has been lost. Remember the quip where Peter says that he has "performed for the President?" It cuts to a clip of Peter in the Oval office making funny noises and clown faces at Bush, who giggles and laughts like a happy child. Biting, and funny for maybe 2 seconds. But the scene goes on for probably 20 or 30 seconds, with Peter making silly faces and Bush he-hawing like a chimp, until finally, mercifully, it ends.
Last night's episode did this same thing with the "barf" scene, which went on about 30 seconds longer then was funny. It seems like each new episode has one or two of these extended repetitive scenes, almost as if the writers are running out of ideas and need to pad things out. Maybe they do.
The interesting thing is that Family Guy is getting quickly worse, while Seth MacFarlane's other new show, American Dad has been getting better. After a rough start, the last few episodes of American Dad have started to click. Ironically, for a show that is sometimes explicitly political, the heavy-handedness has lightened up significantly, and the characters have gone from "which Family Guy character is X supposed to be" into their own personalities. Maybe American Dad is where MacFarlane's "A" material is going, because it sure isn't Family Guy any more, the occasional flash of brilliance aside.
posted by Mike at
9:23 AM
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