Family Guy Season 4, Some peop,le are just too hard to please... Options

[Paul M. is baaac...]

Fox are an odd network, trapped in a particularly narcissistic limbo between the shows the studio decides to make and the shows the network deigns to air for longer than a few episodes. No where else is this struggle more obvious than with Family Guy, a show perhaps known first for being cancelled umpteen times, and second for being excellent regardless.

The current fourth season marks a return for the show after years of being gone, this time renewed due to huge DVD sales in the interim. It'd be a lie to say that it wasn't going to be a challenge to match the stellar first three seasons. It'd be an even bigger lie to say they had succeeded. Family Guy feels like it's jumped the shark.

Cut away to the first three seasons, when the show was much better.

Despite Fox's previous attempts to bury the show with a randomly changing airtime, Family Guy found an audience and became something of a cult classic. On the surface the premise is simple enough; it's about a family. Mum, Dad, son, daughter, baby boy and a dog. Below the surface though things were far more interesting. For one thing, the baby, Stewie, is an evil genius with a British accent and Brian is a sophisticated canine with a dry wit and a penchant for alcoholism.

What really makes the show though is a willingness to dive into the surreal. Peter, the father, is stupid in such a ridiculous, over-the-top way that obvious comparisons to unnamed yellow-skinned idiots are moot. Coupled with fast and frequent cut-aways that pepper each episode - like Scrubs only more insane - and you've got the recipe for a show that was frequently surprising, often controversial, and almost always hilariously funny.

Was.

Cut away again to the first three seasons of Family Guy being much, much funnier.

"Family Guy is not actually a real crazy show where anything will go."I imagine the new writing staff never having watched any of the original episodes. Instead I imagine their sole experience of the show being some drunken moron explaining it to them at a party. "Oh yeah, it's real wacky, and all this stuff happens, like, really fast. I don't really get it myself, but there's this greased up deaf-guy in one episode I really like." Unfortunately Family Guy is not actually a real crazy show where anything will go. It's not Fun House.

Although the first three seasons were filled with surreal humour and occasional random 5 minute long fight scenes involving giant chickens, the show still did have a sense of verisimilitude. The characters had actual personalities, within which there were things they would do and things they would not.

Stewie was undoubtedly evil before. Occasionally confused by feelings of affection or guilt, he was nonetheless relentless in his attempts to take over the world and kill his mother (or get rid of particularly offensive vegetables). New Stewie, however, rarely goes beyond mere insults. Despite one episode where he frees the beast and bludgeons a guy, he remains seemingly uninterested in his previous matricidal tendencies.

Brian has been equally neutered. Previously funny due to his acerbic observations and frequent outwitting of Peter, his supposed 'master', he has now become a cross-dressing racist. He spends so much time now out of character that its cause to wonder whether creator Seth MacFarlane is even still paying attention.

Cut away to American Dad, Seth MacFarlane's other show, being much funnier and much more consistent.

"season four is like a potato"While once a consistently laugh-out-loud funny show, these moments of humour or good episodes - which do thankfully still exist - feel like the old Family Guy trying desperately to break through from its persistent vegetative state. In other words, season four is like a potato, and the soul of Family Guy is trapped inside.

But the worst thing about the show is the sad stench of desperation that permeates the whole sorry affair. Given how many times the show has nearly been cancelled, it's perhaps no wonder that they're trying so hard to please. For those of us that celebrated the show's previous originality, it's painful to see previous rare or one-shot characters - evil monkey, the vaudevillian actor, or greased-up deaf guy to name but a few - turn up every episode for no other reason than fan service. That it makes no logical sense in the context of the story doesn't seem to matter anymore, just as long as they can milk every last piece of nostalgic joy these characters might inspire among the faithful.

I hope that the series will settle down, stop trying so hard to please and perhaps fire everyone but those writers responsible for the 4 or 5 good episodes this year. I hope that they'll look at the old episodes and realise that the characters are more than just repeaters of analogies to trigger the next random and painfully unfunny aside. But really what I hope most is just that they don't screw things up so badly that the first three seasons become tainted by association, because as it is, even when judged alone and purely on its own merits, season four simply isn't very good -- and that's painful.

Cut away.

Credit: whatinterest.com


Okay, what the HELL is this guy talking about? I recently bought the Family Guy Season 4 box set, and I find the show JUST AS, if not MORE funny than ever before. The show doesn't go "into depth" so much on characters, because we KNOW who the chracters are now.

What was that about Brian being calmed down?! In the episode "Petarded", he jumps up in Peter's face and shouts "IN YOUR f**king FACE, FUCKWAD!", and in a different episode, spanks Lois in a bikini, so this guy obviously doesn't know what the hell he is talking about.

As for Stewie, well, locking somebody in the boot (trunk) of a car and beating them, then going into the living room to touch the guys girlfirends boobs isn't insane? that isn't insane Stewie? Then what is?

But I suppose some people will just be miserables f**kers no matter what.