Family Guy - Season 9

As I hinted in the last post, I'm not really feeling this show much these days. It's just different in ways I don't like, and I'd say more different from the show when it came back from the dead than it was then in comparison to its original run. You still have most of the same characters and an unending dedication to remembering pop culture no matter how bad or obscure it is, but the style just isn't right. It feels less like a sitcom and more like... I don't even know what, it's just really weird now. They'll do murder mysteries and reenact scenes from movies and stuff like that, and they're ideas that I would have liked to have seen a few years ago, but the pace now is just so slow, and the focus seems to be more on getting all the story beats and camera moves right rather than entertaining the audience. It's like the fun has been sucked out of the process, a lot of the jokes are the same as ever, but the sense of fun is missing. There will be a scene where two characters are just talking in a car for several minutes, and you'll wonder what the hell they're trying to do with it.

They also try to have emotional moments, and they just don't work. This is Family Guy, a show for which nothing is sacred, a show that will casually toss out racial insults in increasingly non-ironic-seeming fashion, a show with a producer who was one of the idiots making insensitive comments about Japan on twitter after the Tsunami, a show that made an episode about abortion and then didn't air it but still sold it on DVD by itself for $15. So I just can't give a shit about the show pretending Brian might let himself die to give Peter his kidneys for half an episode. The show has no soul, and there's no sense trying to give it one now. It's best when it's firing a million jokes a minute and a few of them manage to land, and what they're doing now just isn't very entertaining. I won't pretend there weren't moments or even entire episodes that I didn't enjoy, but the show just isn't worth dedicating time to it on a regular basis anymore. I won't turn it off if it comes on and I'm bored, but I won't make sure to see every episode.

Family Guy - Season 8

So Family Guy trundles on through middle age, now having aired double the number of episodes made before the cancellation since they came back. They're doing pretty much everything they can to stave off stagnation, getting increasingly dark and esoteric, seeming to go anywhere to avoid the accusation that they're running out of ideas. And I have to say, it's mostly working for me. I thought this was the best season in a few years as the focus has shifted away from the more spiteful and uncreative pop culture jokes and more towards pure weirdness. They've gone places I'd not have expected, even for a routinely controversial show like this, but haven't quite gone too far yet.

There were a number of notable episodes, including a couple that were double length. The 150th trapped Brian and Stewie in a bank vault, and mostly focused on their unique love/hate relationship. I didn't like all of it, but it was an interesting experiment. The musical stuff was mostly just filling time though, as there was only a single piece I hadn't seen before. They finally aired the sequel to their Star Wars episode from a couple years ago, this time based on The Empire Strikes Back, which was already put out on DVD last fall. While I often don't like it as much when the show just recreates a famous scene wholesale because there's not actually a lot of creative energy behind it, for some reason these remakes of the movies work for me. It's half nostalgia for when Star Wars was fun, and half enjoyment of all the ways they poke fun at the sillier or illogical moments in the series. The yearly road show episode was really good too, this time traveling through a bunch of parallel universes with increasingly wacky differences. I wonder how untouchable this show is at this point. In ten years are we going to be looking at season 18 of Family guy alongside season 31 of The Simpsons? I guess we'll find out in time.

Also, I blogged about American Dad! a while ago because Sons of Tucson took over its time slot, but that show was quickly canceled and Dad was brought back for five more episodes to finish season 5 with 18. I wouldn't have bothered to mention this if they weren't really good, especially "Bully for Steve", which is one of the best in the series. I won't forget Stelio Kontos for a long time.

Family Guy - Season 7

Family Guy's seventh season was pretty wildly inconsistent, with some pretty terrific episodes but also some awful ones. "I Dream of Jesus" is probably the worst offender. I can understand appreciating the Andy Kaufman-esque nature of the "Surfin' Bird" stuff, but just because it's intentionally unfunny and irritating doesn't make it... not unfunny and irritating. But even ignoring that, the complete whiff on actually doing anything interesting with Jesus Christ as a character is inexcusable. I mean... this is Family Guy! Go wild! But they didn't. After it got better for a while, it stumbled again with stilted, untimely jabs at FOX News and O.J. Simpson, a completely terrible homosexuality episode (How can a show with such an extremely liberal agenda be this unfunny and crude with the subject?), and consecutive episodes featuring Brian flaunting his bleeding heart that pushed the message way too hard without an ounce of subtlety or, again, telling good jokes.

There were some really good episodes though, that make me continue to want to see what else they can do. It's getting to the point where the show is only funny if it's either just ignoring pop culture or diving head first into witty homages that last for the entire running time. When they just try to make a quick gag, they're getting increasingly blunt and decreasingly creative, but stuff like "Road to Germany"'s nod to every adventure movie ever and the pretty solid send up of Stephen King's work in "Three Kings" is entertaining and still true to the show. Also, I was amazed to see them actually let Bonnie have the baby. So many times the show just makes you wonder what the hell's going on in the world, like how she was apparently pregnant for years while her other son died in Iraq in a complete throwaway line (hilarious), and how Peter's gotten out of serious jail time repeatedly for no justifiable reason. They're really pushing the "It's just a cartoon!" button a lot these days, and it's something I've come to accept.

Family Guy - Season 6

The sixth season of the now venerable show was fairly brief, but had some pretty solid episodes. Over a hundred episodes later, they're running out of steam a little bit, but things like the hour long Star Wars parody and two part special where Stewie finally tries to kill Lois were pretty interesting. The Star Wars episode might have stuck a little too closely to the movie at times, but it was fun to watch. There weren't really any outstanding episodes during this run, but none of them were bad either. They still squeeze out laughs wherever they can. They have been adding some continuity, which is nice, like an actual arc to Brian's relationship with Jilian.

To continue being honest about the show, I feel like it's running out of steam and would benefit from ending sometime fairly soon. They have to really stretch to find new things to make fun of, and increasingly just completely misfire. I don't see what humorous about, say, Michael J. Fox having Parkinson's disease. But it looks like the end's not in sight, with plans to make episodes for the Star Wars sequels and creator Seth McFarlane recently signing one of the biggest TV deals in history. It's no big deal if the show goes forever though, because even if I stop watching it regularly I can be pretty sure to get a laugh somewhere any time I watch.

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.