It's a tough time to be in the television biz. The kids today are spending less and less time huddled around the ol' cathode ray tube, due to this passing Internet fad. Why watch something with fun characters and production values when you can watch cats doing cat things or virus-riddled kiddie porn or whatever it is they watch today. Ratings are, generally speaking, down, and everyone's had to make cutbacks. House, for instance, is throwing away Lisa Edelstein, which actually might be the best thing to happen to it in seasons. American Idol famously saved money last season by throwing away some of their famous people, and bringing in moderately less famous people. And Family Guy, it seems, has outsourced three minutes or so of the show to Mick Jagger and David Bowie circa 1985, thus saving valuable writing/animation time and money. What's that you say? That probably made it even MORE expensive, and as such there's literally no justifying this episode's already notorious centrepiece? Oh. Well. That really is unfortunate, isn't it?
But perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself. The incredibly deep titular plot this week involves Joe's forgettable wife Bonnie dragging Lois along for a vacation in beautiful Paris, France. But, much to Lois's chagrin, we soon discover that Bonnie didn't just come here to sightsee, oh no. She wants to cheat on Joe with some random dude. Eventually, she falls for a French dude, conveniently named François so we can't possibly forget he's French. François asks Bonnie to stay in Paris with him, something she heavily considers until Lois engages in some meddling and has Joe himself fly in to set things straight. It's fairly remarkable just how awful this plotline was - a string of the most half-hearted romantic melodrama ever. And it all leads up to Joe getting up and walking to "prove his love" or whatever, in a scene so eye-rollingly stupid that it transcends whatever ironic amusement the writers probably expected to achieve and becomes terrible in even that way. Is the final reveal that Joe accomplished this by duct-taping Quagmire to his back cute? Yes, it is. That's the thing. It's just cute. It's not nearly a big enough laugh to undo the minute of overwrought quasi-emotion we just had to endure.
Meanwhile, a news report about "goat flu" frightens Peter into taking his kids out of public school, despite Brian's half-hearted protests about news scare tactics that comprise his only lines in the entire episode. (Way to make good use of that character!) Now, theoretically, Peter homeschooling the kids was promising. Theoretically. In reality, this storyline was barely a storyline. They fit in Peter riding around naked on a scooter, a few mildly amusing history-themed cutaways, and an extended plagiaristic homage of The Doors, and that's about all that really happens here. The thing about homages is that, well, if it's something you only do once in awhile, it's cute. But if it's the only thing you do, it just shows that you're devoid of original ideas of your own. But I can't bring myself to complain about this sequence much, for at least it used original animation, and was kept relatively short...
...unlike a cutaway to the video for Mick Jagger and David Bowie's "Dancing in the Streets" (the "gayest music video ever"). Shown in its entirety. Three minutes of "found" footage. No, it's not unprecedented by any means. I'm sure anyone who saw "The Juice Is Loose" remembers the extended cutaway sequence, which received duly deserved amounts of scorn from fans. At least in my case, this sequence feels like even more of a low blow, though. Maybe it's the fact that the second time is, frankly, more insulting. Maybe it's the fact that this comes at the end of a season FULL of these lazy, "we can make them watch literally anything we want" sequences that reveal an outright contempt for the viewers at home. Maybe it's Peter's quip afterwards that "this happened, and we all let it happen" - ostensibly directed at the video itself, but also a thinly veiled truth about anyone who sat through the entire sequence. Or, maybe it's a combination of all three. Regardless, in this one move, the writers pretty much took a shotgun to my remaining good will towards the show.
About a year ago, some chick took issue with a very brief negative review of Reggie Watts, opening act for Conan O'Brien's Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour. It seems that people like to argue that Jesse just doesn't "get" meta-humour and anti-humour and other chemically harmful humour substitutes. The thing is, that's not true, per se. My issue is with the bottom-of-the-barrel crap that desperately and semi-arbitrarily applies the "meta-humour" tab to itself in a desperate attempt to avoid criticism for obvious laziness. And you really get the feeling that anyone trying to explain WHY tonight's vintage centrepiece is funny just isn't willing to admit what we really all know - we can see your dinghy, Mr. Emperor. Totally. In summary and conclusion, things like this make Family Guy look like the Jay Leno of the animated comedy world, relying on found humour because, hey, it's hard to be funny on your own, right? This final regular episode of the season is also the worst regular episode of the season, hands down.
No comments:
Post a Comment