Decided to merge all the existing threads with the premiere of Season 10. I'll do the same for The Simpsons in a moment.
So yes, a new season is underway. Season 9 was probably the best in years as a few of us have agreed before, but for my money Season 10 got off to a lousy start. The premiere episode featured:
- A painfully unfunny opening credits gag. There was a joke in there somewhere, but I couldn't tell you what it was.
- Within the first minute of the show, we have a semi-cutaway live action footage to make a really poor joke. I have to admit jokes like that often get an involuntary laugh out of me because they're so stupid and this one did as well, but it really highlights the laziness of the writers.
- The plot was your typical "Peter is a jerk" fare, executed in the usual hit and miss fashion.
- South Park did the montage joke almost ten years ago. They did it better, too.
- CollegeHumour riffed on the Duck Tales intro
two years ago. I doubt they were the first so say Family Guy "stole" this bit would be an overreaction, but still...
- Pointless "take that" at True Blood. I know I harp on those jokes a bit but it annoys me because Family Guy (and at times South Park as well) do it so clumsily and smugly. The writers need to blog or tweet about this stuff, unless it's clever and funny - which they seldom are with Family Guy, mostly just annoying, hypocritical and misguided - they don't need to dedicate portions of the show to talking about stuff they don't care for. It's time that should be spent on the plot or an actual joke.
- A reference to an
eighteen month old meme? Way to be fresh, Family Guy.
On the plus side:
- Brian was more the "only sane man" character that I enjoyed early on in the series run
- That was a good narration joke with the waiter in the fancy restaurant.
- Winning the lottery again, getting to meet Kyle ("and that's not even Kyle!")...that was a good joke too, that's the kind of humour I like on Family Guy and something they can actually do pretty well when they're on their game.
- Great callback with the resolution and it even gave us a pretty good Quagmire joke. Completely tasteless of course, but in a way that makes Quagmire a funny character. Way funnier than him bitching out Brian, beating him up or running him over.
Looking back, there were a couple more positives than I first thought but on the whole it was another underwhelming episode, a showcase of what the show shouldn't be doing and how it doesn't live up to its potential. They just phone it in with episodes like this, which is really disappointing as they should be in their prime at this point. Instead, they're usually far worse than the things they see fit to bash week in, week out.