Family Guy Review: "Foreign Affairs"

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?

Family Guy Review: "The Big Bang Theory"

This past Sunday was Mother's Day, as all of us who were sprung forth from female loins were probably forcefully made aware if we weren't already. How did you celebrate it? I called my mother, and will regrettably be shipping off the pirated CDs of her request soon. If you were Family Guy, you celebrated Mother's Day with an episode where Mama Lois left to run errands early in the episode and was never seen again, and wherein a relatively newborn baby was shot between the eyes with a spear gun. Festive! But, ignoring the show's refusal to air an instalment with even a slight appropriateness to Overly Commercialised Maternity-Themed Holiday, I think we can at least be pleased that it is considerably less romance-themed than "Brothers and Sisters". Instead, it's about Stewie being the most important person in history and not being married to Generic Female Character #614. Also, despite its title, it's not about horrid socially awkward nerd stereotypes. "Bang" probably means something sexual, like intercoursing or something.

Family Guy Review: "Brothers and Sisters"

(Should I be specifying the spoiler-alert-ness of these reviews? I'd hardly think it would matter, because Family Guy is less a show than it is random selections from a filthy pop culture-themed jokebook, but, well, erm, just in case....consider yourself warned?)

Ah, weddings. According to the television industry, there's nothing more magical. If your characters get married, that means their relationship has succeeded because, I mean, marriages never go wrong, right? Even if you've been married, say, nine times before, the tenth time's the charm so long as it's on camera, right? What do you mean that isn't right? Are you implying that it's one of the hoariest clichés at work in modern entertainment media? Well, then, surely you'll love the exciting climax of the latest Family Guy episode, I say, with the sarcasm! In all seriousness, though, "Brothers & Sisters" already started off on the wrong foot with me, being about what I tend to think is one of the least interesting things a show can really be about: wedding drama. Despite being major life changes, weddings just don't make for interesting viewing. They just don't. Now, the question is, can a show that has already been lousy viewing with increasingly high frequency already possible mine anything decent out of the topic?

Family Guy Review: "Tiegs for Two"

Ah, the tasteless joke - ever increasingly a staple of the world of humour. Nothing seems to get these kids today off quite like jokes that the previous generation would find horribly distasteful, for better or worse. Now, I consider myself to be someone who, if not quite a fan of the art of the tasteless joke, at least has a thick skin and generally won't bat an eye at this sort of thing. That being said, last Sunday's otherwise fairly good Family Guy found a way to make me bat the hell out of my eye. It made me bat my eye out of the fucking park like it was some sort of generic baseball player, presumably on steroids, as they always are, according to Comedy.

Family Guy Review: "Trading Places"

In a season whose running theme seems to be hoary old clichés (and whorey old clichés, this show loves its sex jokes, but that's beside the point for the moment), it should come as no surprise that last Sunday Family Guy produced an episode centred on one of the hoariest old clichés of all: having the kids trade places with the adults because, oh my god, it's always so much easier to be part of the opposite group you're in now, isn't it? Now, as super-clichés go, this is one that remains more potentially amusing than most, so I suppose there was some small sliver of hope to be had going into this, I say, in an attempt at fake optimism, so as to appear unbiased.

Family Guy Review: "The Hand That Rocks the Wheelchair"

A Word From The Future: To those people reading my blog from back-to-front - and while I enjoy having new readers, it's embarrassing to have this older material here - allow me to explain the circumstances here. I lived with a roommate at the time, in Michigan, because I thought he would be a good friend, though in the end he turned out to be a truly evil devil, hint hint. But, anyway, he really dug Family Guy, and held it in unreasonably high esteem, so of course we ended up having to watch each new episode. As a general animation fan, I didn't outright mind, but I....didn't share his feelings on the show. (Or politics, or cheese, or perpetual virginity.) Just as something to do during a period of boredom, I decided I might as well write reviews every current episode the show while I was there. For some reason. I'd like to think I have better things to do now. Or, at least, I have more fun with the things I do now.

For some reason, it seems like this season has been receiving a relative amount of praise, for cutting back on the so-called "manatee jokes". (I use this term to call out a side note: South Park devoted a fucking TWO-PARTER to trashing ONE cartoon and, though Trey Parker and Matt Stone are certainly smart and clever people who make amusing things in other venues, it makes their show look pathetic, too) But, here's the thing - is a simple, bland, and non-engaging storyline without random jokes really any better than a simple, bland, and non-engaging storyline that's at least willing to break up its monotony? The effect is of writers who cannot write an interesting story attempting to do so, and it's a thoroughly awkward experience. Case in point: the last new episode, from a week and a half ago, "The Hand That Walks the Wheelchair".