Now, threatening actual mayhem over my opinion that FAMILY GUY in its previous incarnation was derivative, desperate and overly crass is maybe the most amusing, and sad, thing I’ve seen in my Inbox since that poor Nigerian woman lost her husband and needed an outlet for all his millions. What some of these angry fans don’t get, or don’t care about, is that coming back with such vehement, angry defenses is probably only going to result in us talking in a derogatory fashion about the show at every chance we get. In fact, if you look back at my TV Recommendations over the past few years, that’s maybe the only thing I’ve done more often than push people to watch ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT (well, I play up the abundance of Nazis on the History Channel a lot, too).

When this site started 35 months ago, FAMILY GUY was only recently cancelled. So in these past three halcyon years, I’ve only had the chance to mock it in retrospect. I never figured Fox would be so desperate that they’d bring the show back—what next, the return of THE PJs?—and I certainly never thought they’d bring the show back at the expense of the finest network comedy to grace the airwaves since the good years of SEINFELD, ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT. But that seems to be where we’re at, AD giving way for the return tandem of FAMILY GUY and Seth McFarlane’s newer and even more actively unfunny animated sitcom, AMERICAN DAD.

Fox has made a big to-do about the fact that FAMILY GUY, low-rated and cancelled like it originally was, made a huge showing in re-airs and subsequent DVD sales, heralding its return. Even more forebodingly, they’ve also stated that FAMILY GUY is no longer so dependent on solid ratings, since DVD sales will carry it through loss of ad revenue from wise sponsors. Now, this is partly crap, of course—if AMERICAN DAD tanks, you can bet that Fox won’t be patient with it and think that its DVD sales will make up its losses, and FAMILY GUY has to at least put up decent numbers to stick around. And, this being America in 2005, I’m sure it will. After all, more and more, we’re seeing that mediocrity on TV is rewarded, and true originality and actual cleverness is relegated to cable channels, both pay- and basic. And if you think that’s unduly harsh, please explain to me why else AMERICA’S FUNNIEST HOME VIDEOS will soon be old enough to get its driver’s license. Cheap production costs ain’t the only reason, I’ll tell you that.

If you read this week’s MAIL SHOOT, you see a lot of people asking why we’re so hard on FAMILY GUY, what’s so wrong with it, why I can’t just live and let live (never mind the fact that this is all only my opinion). Basically, it’s like I said above. The show’s creator, Seth McFarlane, exudes a creepy, cocky vibe that doesn’t do his shows any favors. But the larger problem is the show itself. At first I thought it was the lead character Peter’s appearance—it’s hard to watch an animated dad with balls for a chin. But that’s not it—after all, the appearance of a nutsack on ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT was hilarious, proving that well-placed balls can, in fact, work.

No, the problem I have is that the show’s crudeness is exceeded only by its desperation to be liked. Don’t get me wrong—crude, when done right, is great. Trey and Matt prove this every week on SOUTH PARK, or in their hilarious TEAM AMERICA movie. But FAMILY GUY always seemed more about pushing an insult as far as it could, funny or not (more often, not). I’ve laughed at the show, yes, but the larger problem is the fact that it throws bursts of jokes at you every chance it gets, working in pop culture references that have nothing to do with the show, but everything to do with jumping up and down to get your attention and force you to laugh. Don’t like these ten jokes? Fine, here’s ten more. And ten more. Please, like us, we’ll eventually get ya! And maybe eventually they do. But it’s just sad and desperate. If I wanted a show that worked in inane pop culture riffs, I’d go watch old episodes of THE CRITIC (which, incidentally, would make me much happier if it were to return instead of FAMILY GUY).

It’s just hard, having experienced (and continuing to experience, through syndication and DVDs) the glory days of THE SIMPSONS to watch this poor knock-off.

Still, I’m evidently in enough of the minority that the show’s back, as of last night. So I figured, bad feelings about the show in the past aside, I’d actually try to be fair and give the new show the benefit of the doubt. Of course, this will be tough, since I’m biased against the show and the one that follows it, AMERICAN DAD, and because THE SIMPSONS’s 350th episode showed me that that show is still better than anything that McFarlane can copy from it. Still, I muddle forward and watch both shows with only a slightly jaundiced eye. How can I do this after being so forthright about me not liking the show or wanting it back? Easy—I’m a professional.

FAMILY GUY

So as I’m sitting here watching this show, it’s impossible for me to not be filled with regret over Fox’s terrible decision. I should be watching Buster and his hook hand instead of this nonsense… still, it opens up with the funny bit of Peter telling his family they’d been cancelled and then running down every show Fox put on since it was cancelled. This bit’s funny because it plays up how many very bad shows Fox has tried. But there were also some good shows on that list (FIREFLY, for one), so the bit becomes less funny and more tragic that Fox just can’t seem to do much of anything right. We then segue (way too polite a word for the ham-fisted jumping from joke to joke that this show engages in constantly) into a dated joke about THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST. It’s not the fact that it’s dated that bugs me, just that it’s not funny. Really—Peter seeing himself as Christ and then telling the whipper to stop, and him feeling bad? Where’re the laughs here, again?

The main thing I got out of the show, and AMERICAN DAD following it, is that Seth McFarlane seems to have some big women issues. I know making sexist jokes and what-not can be funny, but really, it started to all pile up a bit. First, in bed, Peter tries sweet-talking his wife and ends up calling here a “foul disease-carrying streetwalking whore sex.” Wait, wait, bear with me—then a HONEYMOONERS joke ends in the expected “to the moon, Alice!” bit with Alice taking a punch in the face from Ralph. Then there’s a scabby whore in Peter’s hotel room. Maybe if any of these jokes were funny, I wouldn’t have had time to let my mind wander to wondering about such things.

The random pop culture jokes continue. A TWO AND A HALF MEN clip on TV includes two men, plus one guy who’s been cut in half. Get it? I was waiting for a DEVELOPMENT to get thrown in the clink—get it? Seth, my man, you had three years off. This is what we get when you and your writing staff are energized?

There was a “CADDYSHACK novel” joke that made me smile, and a crudely animated G.I. JOE lecturing kids about drugs did the same—I tell you, you throw enough out there and eventually something sticks, however briefly—but more often than not, I sat there dumbfounded. What did the gene-spliced Peter with a moose head mean? It certainly can’t have been meant to be funny. Same with the old man with the walker at a high school dance. Um, what? The rapid-fire non-sequitors just left me cold. I really did try to give this show the benefit of my considerable doubt, but… really, people found this funny? I’m no comedy snob—I like dumb humor. So please, tell me what I’m missing here.

Did it get better as the show went on? Nope. Even Stewie seemed dull to me, and he’s been the only funny part of this show in the past (him crocheting “Die Lois” in bed with tiny bifocals was cute, I’ll give this show that).

Then… the “broadside of the barn” jokes really rolled out. See, a print of Mel Gibson’s THE PASSION sequel (when you heard them reference a PASSION sequel, seriously, how many of you saw a Chris Tucker and Jesus joke coming? How could you not?) is found, Peter steals it, allowing for the show to offer up jokes about Mel Gibson owning Nazi paraphernalia. Cle-ver. Along the way, some odd commentary about an Asian reporter not being allowed in a NY hotel, NORTH BY NORTHWEST and BLUES BROTHERS parodies (ask your parents, kids!) and more that starts to become too painful to recount.

And that, in short, is what you get with the return of FAMILY GUY. This is the show that FG fans have been waiting for for three years. I’d love to say I’m just trying to be controversial and elicit more angry e-mails, but no, I really did think it was that stupid. Still, I said I’d be fair, so I should find something positive to say about it. Got it—it was far superior to AMERICAN DAD, which followed it.

AMERICAN DAD

I watched the AMERICAN DAD pilot months before its post-Super Bowl debut. Funny that Fox was crowing about its ratings following that game, like it performed well and wasn’t just that TVs everywhere were left on Fox after the game ended because people were drunk or partying and just didn’t bother to change the channel. But we’ll see soon if those initial high ratings were any indication that Fox has another “hit” on its hands. Hopefully high ratings determine the show’s survival rate, since obviously critical acclaim and awards have nothing to do with a show’s success. Then again, Fox devalues 6 million viewers even in these days of hundreds of channels, so who knows?

At any rate, AMERICAN DAD was, at first glance, typically desperate for laughs, with its fish that talked for no discernable reason other than to be “wacky,” and its gun-loving, Red State dad making, one presumes, some sort of commentary about the current leaders in the White House. Mostly, it just tried to sit back and be self-satisfied with its “cleverness” at giving the grey alien in the house a voice like Paul Lynde’s. Frankly, the pilot left me pretty disgusted, and since this is the show for which ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT saw its little-advertised but highly creative and damned funny season cut short, well, it has a lot to prove.

About ten minutes in, I started tuning out a bit. Is this a proper way to review a show? No, but I did what I could. Don’t get me wrong, I still watched it all the way through. But with jokes like a banished female real estate agent sent to Guantanamo Bay to hang with Iraqi POWs who say “tonight we will cut off her lovely hands,” I couldn’t help staring through the TV and thinking about the way I could see my bored reflection in the TV on darker scenes.

AMERICAN DAD is the story of Stan the CIA Agent, who uses his authority to have the CIA deal with his personal life. He also likes to keep his wife in her place. (When she says she wants a job, he can’t imagine she’s not happy since “you clean, you cook and once a week we lie together in sexual congress.”) Later in the show, he mulls over assassinating his wife in order to keep her from finding happiness as a real estate agent. But I’m jumping ahead—I didn’t get to the part where Stan asks a man who used to work in real estate if he’s gay, and the man said “I used to be, but when I got out of real estate, my sodomy cleared up like that.” And then he goes on to talk about how great vagina is? Risque humor or angry-at-women, angry-at-gays comedy? You be the judge.

Later on, a co-worker with a working wife drops his pants and shows the mannequin-like spot where his genitalia used to be. Then Stan threatens a teenage girl with a punch in the face. An Asian kid is expected to have a videocamera because he’s, like, Asian. I’m sure the black man eating watermelon will be a deleted scene on the top-selling DVD. Too much? Not really—this show’s level of jokes seems to have been written by the guy who put together those old “Polish/Italian” joke books. Aren’t there any new stereotypes to try to make jokes about? What did we do to deserve this show? This’ll teach 6 million of us to embrace clever comedy.

There are bum fights, a Donald Trump appearance (someone says “you’re fired" and The Donald shows up. Is this funny to you? I could see these jokes coming as though I’d seen the show before.) and the Paul Lynde alien being arbitrary and unfunny. Which is the order of the day on Sundays at 9, it seems.

If Seth McFarlane’s magnum opus is FAMILY GUY, well, this is his proof that he only had that show in him, and tonight’s FG episode proved again that he doesn’t even have that. Can’t we reward mediocrity and derivative humor with the fate it deserves, the fate that met FAMILY GUY three years ago? The lesson here is that big, broad jokes that really don’t make anyone laugh—be honest, did you actually laugh at either of these shows—are the order of the day, and that if you try to overachieve, you will be smacked down for it. Arrested development indeed.

The Aftermath

As the hour wound down, the sounds of laughter in my house… well, there were no sounds of laughter from 9-10 PM on Fox. Mostly just sorrowful sighs and groans that I was sacrificing a night for this tripe. I can only hope Mitch Hurwitz wasn’t watching this to see why his show was prematurely yanked.

After all this, what did I learn? These things: