Family Guy - Season 5

Family Guy was off the air for about three years before it was brought back thanks to Adult Swim and DVD sales, and thanks to the time distortion field that occurs when you grow into adulthood, I was surprised to notice that it's now been back for the same amount of time, about three years. In that time, the show has moved away from what made it funny in the first place, and has driven many old fans away, although it's still always good for some silly laughs. The show now repeats old jokes and minor characters more often and breaks away from the story for some fourth wall-breaking meta-humor, which is often handled a little more clumsily than some better shows, and most of the main characters have changed to the point where they only resemble their original selves in passing.

It's a phenomenon you might have noticed before, called Flanderization (after the next door neighbor from The Simpsons), where some quirk of a character becomes more and more emphasized over time to the point where it pretty much takes over their personality. It's most noticeable in Meg, who went from the slightly boring daughter to someone who gets railed on at every single opportunity. They keep driving the peg into the hole to the point where the interactions become kind of stagnant. Although not quite Flanderization, Stewie has completely changed, from an infant obsessed with world domination to a flamboyant fratboy-type character and a vessel for anything the episode's lazy writer wanted to say about the world. The show's still enjoyable, it's just not as good as it was before the layoff.