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Family Guy

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Family Guy has run its course. It's time to end it@netflixr99d

Family Guy has been one of my favorite animated series of all time, traveling well beyond The Simpsons and South Park and only getting beaten out by Rick and Morty off the top of my head.

A friend recently put the latest season of Family Guy on our private server and initially I was thinking about how much I love that show and was excited to get into it again so I sat down thinking I was in for a treat. Man oh man was I let down.

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There are a bunch of reasons why I think this show simply isn't funny anymore but a lot of it likely had to do with fatigue and the fact that after 23 years of doing this, you would have to imagine that they have done basically everything that they possibly can with these characters. South Park has gone through the same thing, unfortunately, and the introduction of new characters rarely works and with Family Guy I don't think they really even try to do this.

For one thing, Family Guy seems to have run out of things to pick on and often will resort to political hits and since the creators of the show are clearly of one particular political persuasion, they only go after one side almost exclusively.

[src](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/G_ovuWrJN7U/maxresdefault.jpg)

If the person is conservative, Family Guy is going to try to tear them a new one by creating a grossly exaggerated version of that person using one or two traits about them to try to paint a worse opinion of them in the public eye than is really deserved. This isn't comedy, this is activism. For me, I don't really care what a particular show's political leanings are, but when they do this all the time it gets old, it gets predictable, and as soon as I see a real-world person in the cast temporarily, I don't need to really guess what the end result is going to be, it is pretty obvious.

The next thing that isn't funny is that the various characters attributes have already been explore probably well beyond what is actually possible. Everything about Meg, Brian, Stewie, Lois, Quagmire, Peter, Chris, Cleveland, and Joe has already been put on display at one point or another and I honestly believe that re-hashing these already very explored aspects of their personalities would be preferable than attempting to create new ones. We have explored,in 23 years, an exhaustive list of possible scenarios for the characters and it just isn't funny anymore to present Peter as a lazy incompetent boob anymore.

[src](https://static0.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/untitled-design-8-1.jpg)

Another thing that has sort of killed the humor in Family Guy the PC nature of the entertainment world today. The exploration of black stereotypes with Cleveland used to be a lot of fun and the "blackuweather forecast" was always funny.

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Now, because of I suppose potential Twitter backlash, Family Guy steers clear of any potentially controversial takes on society and instead just "plays it safe." Well, for me and a lot of people "safe" is boring.

Yesterday I watched 3 episodes of the Family Guy latest season and didn't so much as smile through all of it. It simply has lost its edge and no longer appeals to me. I have no intention of watching the rest of the season because while Family Guy has been immune to this in the past, generally speaking any series will put what they consider to be their strongest episodes at the beginning and the end of a season. If this the best the season has to offer, I definitely am not going to be interested in the rest.

South Park is kind of suffering from the same fatigue even though they truly don't seem to give a rip about being PC at all. It is just a question of there not really being any more avenues to explore with the same characters and it is actually quite amazing that they made it this far.

the consensus is that Family Guy no longer delivers the sharp, unpredictable comedy that once defined it.

Yep, I agree with this wholeheartedly.

Here you can see the steady decline in viewer numbers over time and while a lot of this can be attributed to the fact that almost no one watches network TV anymore, if we were to dig into the number of streaming viewers you would probably see a similar decline.

It's not culturally relevant anymore and they seem to be afraid to tackle anything that would be controversial without taking the pre-determined California-approved viewpoint on whatever it is that they are talking about.

I'm sure the writers are tired as well because it must be difficult to come up scripts for shows that are not really about anything in particular, for over 2 decades.

I predict a cancellation of the show entirely in the next couple of years. It will likely happen without me even noticing it as well.

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2 more reviews

›Family Guy is slipping: Are they tired of doing this and no longer care?@netflixr788d
I've been an avid fan of Family Guy for 15 years or so and for a long while there, I thought it was one of the best animated shows on television. I would get annoyed here and there when they would inject the episodes with McFarlane's own political interests but for the most part they pick on all sides and don't make any episodes too preachy. I've been cool with that.

I kind of like the way that they have a show that is all about cutaways that wouldn't make sense or really even be possible in most other series, animated or otherwise. Some have complained about this in the past, but to me that is what makes the show unique.

I've followed the show for 15 years and for the most part feel as though they are wonderfully done outside of the early years where the animation wasn't really that great but lately, it seems as though they are perhaps throwing in the proverbial towel as far as even trying to have exceptional content is concerned. This is best exhibited in the most recent episodes (or most recent that became available to me anyway) that were in season 22, episodes 14 and 15.

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This episode was about Hollywood coming to town to film a movie about Chris Christie - who is a conservative politician from New Jersey. When the topic was first stated in the episode I thought it was going to be a hit piece on politics but thankfully they shied away from that. Instead it was about the outrage that Peter and Brian felt about a hunky guy being cast in the role of a fat guy.

The idea here was to make fun of inclusivity in television and film without coming right out and saying it, which is something that they are quite capable of doing on this show since Brian (the dog) is ultra-liberal and Stewie is conservative while the others are either idiots (Meg and Chris) or don't seem to care (Peter and Lois.)

It kind of irritated me that the actor was meant to be Brad Pitt, but not only was it not voiced by Brad Pitt but it was voiced by someone who doesn't even sound remotely like Pitt. The story goes like you would expect with Peter taking on the role in the film and being terrible at it but the main point of the episode was a montage about how difficult it is to film movies and TV and how it isn't as glamorous as people think.

That's all fine and dandy but the jokes just didn't land with me and I think I only chuckled once the entire time. It simply wasn't funny.

The latest episode called "Faith No More" is about how Brian and Stewie go back in time to eliminate religion from existence by finding Jesus and convincing him to pursue another path in life. Brian's motivations for this is because the woman he is dating is Evangelical and will not sleep with him before marriage.

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They eventually succeed and return to the present time to find out that Judaism is now the predominant religion which they are originally ok with, but quickly tire of and then go back in time to eliminate that and succeed. Now there is no religion in the modern times but God gets upset about this and punishes them both.

That's basically the jist of it but this one falls flat for other reasons and this one is more of a writing-on-the-wall sort of thing to me than the previous one where they were making fun of Hollywood and actors. Religion is something that Family Guy has poked fun at so often in the past that it is just really common now and honestly, I don't think there is very much more they can say that isn't simply a rehash of something they have already done.

It's stale is what I am saying.

Going 22 years in the same series is something that is pretty amazing but let's think for a second: When is the last time you went out of your way to watch The Simpsons or SouthPark? For me, this is almost never so perhaps viewer fatigue has already kicked in for most people and all of these are going to soon disappear as they get worse. SouthPark occasionally appeals to me but for the most part I don't bother to watch those either unless some major event happens in the world that I know they are going to pick up on. The Panderverse episode of SouthPark was amazing, but all the surrounding episodes just passed me by.

I think at the end of the day there are really only so many scenarios that you can possibly put characters in, even if it is a show like Family Guy that doesn't have a cohesive story that goes from one episode to the next.

Maybe it is time for them to hang it up. It's not like they haven't made enough money on this thing already. It is estimated that the existing episodes have a worth of around $2 billion, so if Seth and the other producers just wanted to call it quits, they wouldn't be in the poorhouse anytime soon. Then Seth could focus on making mostly terrible movies instead.

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›Family guy touches on border control issue@gooddream2579d
I love Family Guy. It is my go to "just before bedtime" show that i watch on a tiny screen while i am in bed. I am starting to get worried because I am getting close to the end of the available episodes and I don't really care for any of the other shows that are similar to FG.
[source](https://static.next-episode.net/tv-shows-images/huge/family-guy.jpg)
One of the main things that i enjoy about this show is that while they do touch base with controversial subject matter in relation to current political climate, they don't get preachy and don't appear to even have an opinion. I think this is very wise on their part because doing so would be a fantastic way to give what has become a very sensitive population a reason to boycott you.

Anyway, the episode I watched last was not necessarily about "The Wall" but it touched base on it and no, they did not have an opinion, didn't get preachy, and didn't try to change anyone's mind, but they did have one very small scene that was both funny and also kind of made you think about if what they were saying is true or not.
[source](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/tU6jTSd38xI/maxresdefault.jpg)
In the episode Chris meets a woman at a water park who it turns out is from Mexico and she gets deported half way through the episode. Peter, Lois, and Chris end up traveling down there to find her to bring her kids back to her.

It is kind of funny to me the way that Family Guy can get away with poking fun at Mexico being a "little less than desirable" place to live and no one even bats an eye. I am extremely happy that they don't because I am so fed up with everything becoming a SJW tirade of sorts. I am sure there is someone on Youtube complaining about it, I dunno. I'm not gonna look.

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/familyguy/images/6/6a/Eacx17_645_02_0001_hires2.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/300?cb=20170516225434 source

Toward the end of the episode after they have been robbed by the Mexican police and have run out of food and water, they are rescued by Conseula in her car.
[source](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ec/5a/11/ec5a1150ce9e8baede658a5cded4495c.jpg) *just in case you forgot who Consuela is*
The moment comes when Peter (it might have been Quagmire) says, "Consuela, can you sneak us back into America?" and she replies "Oh you already United State.... This Texas."

And Quagmire addresses the 4th wall by saying something along the lines of "What? We wandered across the border and didn't even know it, I mean politics aside we have to admit, this IS a problem" I thought it was tasteful, and didn't take sides and this is exactly the sort of thing I love about Family Guy. They didn't try to convince anyone of anything and at the same time it is humorous.

I was surprised to see it and in the end I don't really care enough to look to see if it is actually true because Family Guy is a cartoon... a very entertaining cartoon that I never tire of and am going to be very disappointed when I reach the end of the available episodes.

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