Family Guy Thread (Ladies and Gentleman, Mr Conway Twitty!)

[benji]

[Andrew]

Pretty good likeness.

Caught up with the last two episodes, the new one this week and the one from a couple of weeks back where Lois' sister ends up marrying Mayor West. Both weren't bad, the first one had a few funny moments and the second was fairly smart/creative by Family Guy's standards, a little reminiscent of what I'd expect to see on Futurama. Not quite as good or funny, but for a show that's been recycling gags like Peter farting on Meg's head, it was a pleasant surprise.

[[Q]]

i don't know if you saw the one that aired last night, but i loved it (which means you'll hate it)
the beginning was a bit too slow (when they have peter in the episode) put it picks up towards the middle and reminds me a lot of the older episodes you catch on reruns all the time.

[Andrew]

If you're talking about the time travel episode, that's the one I was talking about:

the second was fairly smart/creative by Family Guy's standards, a little reminiscent of what I'd expect to see on Futurama. Not quite as good or funny, but for a show that's been recycling gags like Peter farting on Meg's head, it was a pleasant surprise.

[[Q]]

ah ok gotcha. wasn't sure if you were talking about that episode or not.
bringing the other baby back was cool and stewie got to shoot & kill someone again. they mentioned this season that stewie had gone soft

[Andrew]

Best of all, they avoided pretty much all of the pitfalls that have really brought the show down in recent years.

[[Q]]

and at least the long drawn out joke wasn't as bad as the previous ones

[el badman]

Well, it had been a while since 3-4 minutes out of their 22 had been hijacked by playing an entire music video from the 70's or 80's, so I guess it was that time again. Too bad, I thought the episode wasn't too bad until that, but then it just ruined it for me. I really don't get why they feel they have to resort to that, you basically feel cheated watching the rest of the episode afterwards.

[Andrew]

Yeah that was poor, I just ended up skipping past it. I've seen things like that and the Conway Twitty cutaways defended as being examples postmodern comedy but I feel that's being way too generous; at best, it's a pretty bad attempt at it. To me it's just lazy, hack writing and another example of how FG's writing staff doesn't really get how comedy works a lot of the time. The mere fact it's kind of random and poking fun at a bad and dated music video doesn't make it funny, same as simply being tasteless or controversial doesn't instantly make a joke hilarious. There has to be, you know, a joke or something funny in there somewhere.

As for the rest of the episode, there was nothing spectacularly bad about it but it did feel like one long shaggy dog story without enough laughs to compensate. I did like Chris' line asking why every day was an introduction to the course and the callback at the end with the teacher naked on a scooter was alright (until they ruined it with an overly long joke) but for the most part it was pretty forgettable.

[[Q]]

the funniest part was when you saw joe walk out with Quagmire strapped to his back walking for him.

[Andrew]

That was funny, I was wondering how they were going to explain that before the reveal. Putting Joe in the old opening titles for American Dad was good too, Patrick Warburton did a pretty good job singing the theme and it was a nice dig at the similarities in the character design.

[Andrew]

Finally got around to watching "It's a Trap!". The opening crawl wasn't that funny but it did succeed in getting me to lower my expectations. Even so, I thought it was actually pretty good and got better as it went along, though they dragged a couple of jokes out a bit too long (the nodding scene, for example). I'd have to say I enjoyed it more than "Something, Something, Something, Dark Side", though I do love that title and the original cutaway gag that inspired it.

The Seth Green references were kind of grating at first but they worked for the scene and were worth it at the end. One of my most common complaints is that Family Guy spends too much time taking shots at everything (good or bad) while putting out some pretty substandard material themselves but I liked that they took a shot at themselves this time and that Seth Green (via Chris) was allowed to put one over Seth MacFarlane, with MacFarlane's characters sticking up for him and the rest of the cast ganging up on them. Carrie Fisher's guest appearance in the episode was some nice meta humour as well.

[[Q]]

you could definitely tell that seth macfarlane does not like return of the jedi.

[benji]

So, like the Simpsons I watched this whole season in a day or so.

I have to say, this was the best season in years. Not a great standard, but I enjoyed enough of the episodes that it reached average. (And the season premiere was so awesome. Plus the Rush episode killed it.)

The old man fight was beyond amazing and those who disagreed are terrorists.

Although the best joke of the season was probably Bonnie's "I need these voiceover checks to support my gambling addiction."

[Andrew]

Best season in years? I'd definitely agree. More hits than misses.

[Andrew]

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.

[Andrew]

Another weak episode in my book. Pointless stuff with Meg telling off the rest of the family. Like the initial Quagmire/Brian stuff, it was on point (more so than Quagmire's rant and less hypocritical) but simply listing the reasons why the characters have been made shallow and unlikeable doesn't really make for great television. If Family Guy paid more attention to characterisation and the like it'd matter, but even then they threw it all out the window at the end by having Meg accept her status as a punching bag. It wasn't funny and the show doesn't really do character development, so it was ultimately a waste of time that left a bad taste in my mouth.

Brian's subplot was OK though, the crazy animation during his trip was well done and entertaining. Not enough to save the episode though.

[el badman]

I would agree, I thought this one was more mediocre than last week's. You could feel that Meg's rant would come sooner or later, but it ultimately was not entertaining or funny. A few jokes were far too extended as usual and really screamed "well, we need to fill those 22 minutes somehow!". Pretty weak.

[Andrew]

Absolutely, Peter singing/humming along to the Indiana Jones music is a good example (even if it did segue into Meg's plot). There's an art to pulling off jokes that run long and it doesn't work for everything. They don't seem to get that, sometimes they work but they try to force it way too often.

[Andrew]

So...the new episode wasn't terrible, the clown porn jokes were stupidly funny and the intervention had a couple of good moments as well but Family Guy's characters just can't carry a story like that. With all that he's done, it's difficult to buy Quagmire as an admirable character who is in any way respectful of women or has any kind of decency. At least they didn't give us another round of Brian vs Quagmire, I've had more than enough of that.

I don't mind that Family Guy does try to be a bit more serious at times and they did a decent job of balancing the subject matter and storytelling with their brand of humour, such as the letter at the end. It's just that because their characters are so shallow and generally monumental jerks, it's difficult to slot them into sympathetic roles. It made a decent episode, nowhere near their worst, but kind of forgettable.

[Andrew]

The latest episode was just bad. The Ryan Reynolds stuff was chronically unfunny and went absolutely nowhere. Pretty much every other joke missed the mark and fell flat for me, it just felt phoned in. Very forgettable.

[el badman]

You know, I'll admit that the main plot was just plain lazy but I thought the episdoe as a whole was very tolerable thanks to several of the jokes and cutaways (like Peter killing himself rather than joining Lois' book club, or Stewie getting stabbed in the street for no reason). I laughed my ass off with a few of those, and that's fairly rare with FG these days. They were cheap jokes but I thought they worked quite well for once.
However, I still don't understand what they're trying to do with Brian, they've tried too many things for him and his character is just getting nowhere at this point.

[Andrew]

Actually, I did like those two jokes. There were a couple of good ones like that but I felt most of the jokes fell flat.

I think Brian works best as the straight man, tossing out the occasional dry remark. He was originally my favourite character, I liked how he was used early on in the series but expanding his role and status as an author avatar has made him more annoying.

[ixcuincle]

The Reynolds storyline was very bad, but the Stewie one was moderately watchable. I don't often complain about FG, several of the more mediocre episodes I've kept quiet on, but this one was just bad.

[Andrew]

I'd agree there too. I don't know what they were thinking with the Ryan Reynolds plot.