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

[ixcuincle]

No, there was no episode last week. Yesterday's episode was watchable but not that funny. They also didn't really make fun of anyone this episode except Seth Rogen, where the researcher said that Seth Rogen doesn't say anything funny yet people still laugh.

The recurring bit now is the whole Cleveland bathtub bit which is repeated every now and then. "Oh, no , no no no! That's got all my stink in it. That's nasty."

[el badman]

was there an episode released last week? Nascar ran long and they didn't show any Family Guy here.

Yeah, I was referring to the episode from 2 weeks ago, sorry for the confusion.

[Andrew]

Had its moments but not nearly as funny as the writing staff probably thought it was. The Seth Rogen swipe is redeemable because he voiced himself so it's more a case of a guest star having a laugh at their own expense but still unnecessary when Family Guy's brand of humour is wearing thin these days. A decent premise but the stereotype driven humour was pretty tired, the ending was customarily deus ex machina and Stewie's lines were a rather poor attempt at heaping some more controversy in there (though the payoff was alright). I wouldn't say bottom of the barrel but certainly nothing special.

[cyanide]

I don't know about you guys, but I found that episode hilarious. Those first 10 minutes with the retarded horse kept me laughing all the way through. It was so absurd that it was hilarious.

[Andrew]

That made for the best moments but I still thought the rest was pretty ordinary.

[ixcuincle]

The first 10 minutes of the newer episodes always go off on some dumb tangent which has nothing to do with the main plot of the episode. Can't they have a full 30 minutes on one plot or something? Come on.

[JaoSming]

be, cause, it, is, fam, ill, E, guy?

[benji]

By "newer" you mean Family Guy since the cancellation? They've copied The Simpsons in this, both do the same stupid thing.

You think about Fox Sundays and KOTH and American Dad continue to stand out by miles upon miles as the only ones that aren't terrible every week. And how are they different? They're about characters, not scenarios. They keep continued storylines (even if A/B). And they follow sitcom conventions instead of stupidity ones.

This was an abhorrent Family Guy episode. The writers are apparently so fucking stupid they thought it was so funny they had to take us back to 2007 just so they could air it. And like another recent episode they still padded it out with three extended musical numbers.

They should just cancel this already.

[Andrew]

Awful all around. Unnecessary swipes at familiar targets, stale references, uninspired jokes, contrived plot and almost three minutes of footage of Conway Twitty from Hee Haw (or so Wikipedia says). Pretty insulting.

[el badman]

Those last two episodes have been abysmal in ever way. It's getting hammered by viewers on hulu, and rightfully so. That is just sad at that point...

[Andrew]

At the risk of sounding like a geek on the Internet - and I have over 40,000 posts on an Internet forum so I'm comfortable with that - if you need to use a roughly three minute clip of Conway Twitty on Hee Haw and other assorted padding techniques to make a 20 minute episode, you're not much of a comedy writer.

[cyanide]

That was a terrible, terrible episode. Probably the worst Family Guy episode I've ever seen. There were virtually no good jokes, the Conway Twitty and other musical crap is boring as shit, and the constant lame narration back and forth just tells me that nobody put any effort into this.

And finally, OJ Simpson? wtf. South Park ftw.

[Andrew]

I really think they're too convinced of their own genius these days. Beating cancellation has continued to stroke their egos and it's not doing the show any favours.

[Oznogrd]

those last 3 episodes were supposed to be funny? I caught them on hulu and i think i laughed maybe 1 time per episode. The conway twitty bit is funny, but for a full song? no. Peter applauding afterward was funnier than the cutaway itself. The "Susie" bit when stewie told brian to name 20 songs named for a girl...but other than that? just...ugh. They need new writers or they need to stop trying to be "family guy" and start writing story lines again.

[Andrew]

I'd agree with that, Conway Twitty in a 10 second cutaway was kind of funny the first time because it was such a stupidly random thing to cut to but a whole song is beyond ridiculous.

[el badman]

Another lame ass episode. Maybe not as bad as last week's, but still pretty embarrassing.
The Peter part of the episode was ridiculously weak, like a filler for the other side of the story, and they've managed to let Brian be an absolute caricature of himself.

Now that makes me think that I became negatively biased with this show, my expectations could barely be lower at this point. I used to love it a couple of years ago, but after so many disastrous episodes in a row, I'm wondering if I would be able to laugh again even if the episode was actually good.

[benji]

The Peter stuff was good. It was meta-commentary on their episode writing process. If you don't notice this, it's just boring. Should've had the whole episode based around the Handi-Quacks plot. Then shown the show itself more.

They should've made the Faux plotline a lot more interesting and could've made it way funnier. Also ditched the strange idea that someone being gay is something bad. If you're going to use Rush Limbaugh make it about drugs, not being gay. If you're going to make someone gay, at least use someone who's been voicefully opposed to gay marriage (Faux has enough of them on the air, as does MSNBC with Buchanan) rather than only criticism of judicial imposition of it.

I mean, it could've been insanely easy to mock Faux better than they did. I assume they don't watch it, so they can only stick to the standard talking points on it. Which isn't funny, just innaccurate and boring. I'll help:
-Okay, they had an extended shot with a Hannity and Colmes poster in the background. Ignoring that the show is long gone and they somehow made Colmes attractive, there was an obvious joke to make here. You draw the poster with the title "HANNITY and Colmes" and with a giant Hannity and a tiny Colmes hidden in the corner.
-Also, you're a show about references, how come you didn't reference O'Reilly's Inside Edition freakout? Or Carl Cameron's perchant for reporting internet rumors?
-No parody of BREAKING NEWS: SOMETHING PRETTY UNIMPORTANT HAS HAPPENED BUT WE HAVE TONS OF HOURS TO FILL SO WERE GOING TO JABBER ABOUT IT FOR HOURS DESPITE NOTHING NEW TO REPORT? (Not Faux alone, but Cable News, still...)
-Why was Lois made into a reporter? The person fired was one of the notorious "Fox News anchor babes" who merely read the Fox News Update/Alerts. Why not parody this instead of the unserious irrelevant plotline they created?
-And most strangely (related to the above), why was Faux portrayed as your local news? The bulk of the channels' programming (4-6pm, 8+ pm) is your standard 24/7 cable talking heads program. (Daytime is just filling air-time...it's the same at CNN/MSNBC, look at their schedules. Extended morning show, then extended daytime air filling, then talking heads once people come home with a "news report" type program around dinner time.) No willingness to mock how Cable News is essentially unqualified (i.e. journalists/politicians) people talking about the news?

[Andrew]

I got the self-parody in Peter's subplot but I don't know, I just found it way too smug. Another "Fuck you, we're getting paid for this!" kind of statement really and merely highlighted all the stuff that I least like about the show these days. The shot at Fox news is hardly fresh or creative and was exceedingly heavy handed, very few laughs overall. Oh well, they entertain themselves I guess.

[JaoSming]

Wacky Deli still > than any cartoon made up in another cartoon

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[el badman]

I got the self-parody in Peter's subplot but I don't know, I just found it way too smug.

Same here, that was pretty obvious but I still thought it was weak and uninspired. Having Meg being the buzzkiller, how creative!

[ixcuincle]

Wacky Deli still > than any cartoon made up in another cartoon

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[shadowgrin]

+10 respect points to Jao for Rocko's Modern Life reference.

[benji]

The TNG crew was balls. Pairing them with Stewie instead of Peter was smart.

Meg and Brian can go fuck themselves. (Or each other, since Andrew loves those kind of stories.)

[buzzy]

+10 respect points to Jao for Rocko's Modern Life reference.

Is somebody actually keeping track of respect points given out here?

[shadowgrin]

No, but it doesn't get tossed around easily as much as we would like it.