Family Guy: Five Great Fake Ads

By erika on 5/30/10 2:34pm
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Oh summer, how boring you are, with nothing to offer on television but reruns.  For some reason I'm stuck in the rerun doldrums early this year.  Last night I found myself trolling around YouTube looking for a clip of the Family Guy "ad" for Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man.

1. WACKY WAVING INFLATABLE ARM FLAILING TUBE MAN!



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"Something, Something, Something, Dark Side"

By erika on 5/25/10 2:04pm
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I'm going to go on record right up front by saying that "Blue Harvest" remains my absolute least favorite episode.  (Or special episode, or mini-movie, or whatever you want to call it.)  

Any given episode of Venture Brothers has at least one Star Wars reference, and I remember listening to a podcast (was it an episode of "The Sound of Young America"?) where the creators talked about the art and science of making a Star Wars joke.  They pretty explicitly called out Family Guy, saying "You can't just say "STAR WARS!" and call it a Star Wars joke."


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Family Guy Episode "The Splendid Source"

By erika on 5/17/10 11:58am
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This is one of the few Family Guy episodes without any secondary or sub-plots, and it did adequately well for itself for the first two acts.  Unfortunately the plot collapsed in the third act, and the episode as a whole compares unfavorably with similar episodes on other shows.  But overall, it was certainly watchable enough.


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"Quagmire's Dad"

By erika on 5/10/10 1:01pm
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If I ever had any doubt that "Family Guy" is pandering to the frat boy crowd, "Quagmire's Dad" quashed those doubts.  In a nutshell, Quagmire's dad turns into a woman, and everyone is disgusted.  Because that kind of thing is SO SICK AND WRONG, amirite?  Well, it is if you're a narrow-minded frat boy.  And if you are, then you will have thought this Sunday's episode was a laff riot.


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"Brian and Stewie"

By erika on 5/5/10 3:29pm
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This was a special full hour episode with two parts: an unusual "locked room" story with Brian and Stewie, and a collection of the show's musical numbers.  Ostensibly this was done to celebrate the show's 150th episode, although Wikipedia labels this as the show's 147th episode.  That's confusing.  There was also a tie-in to a "Fox Rocks" theme night, but since I watch everything on Hulu I wasn't aware of this until I read about it later.  (This does explain the Simpsons' "Tik Tok" intro, which I thought was as delightful as it was unexpected.)


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"Brian and Stewie"

By MichaelP03 on 5/4/10 5:13pm
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Brian and StewieBrian and Stewie

"Brian and Stewie" is that rarest of Family Guy episodes, where cheap humor and tired gags are replaced by witty dialog and a legitimately interesting story. Given how formulaic the series has become in recent times, "Brian and Stewie" may not return Family Guy to its days of glory, but it's a relief to see that Seth MacFarlane can still write genuinely good television on occasion, and leave us with an offering that remains in memory long beyond the credits. And for good reasons, to boot. 

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"April In Quahog"

By erika on 4/12/10 1:59pm
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Almost fifteen years ago, I was involved in a small and relatively close-knit USENET community.  For April Fool's, I cooked up a "hilarious" plan with the person I was most closely aligned with.  She and I would pretend to have a big knock-down blow-out argument right out in public.  A real knuckle-duster.  Wouldn't that be funny!  

After the first few volleys of posts back and forth, everyone was horrified.  Some people were so upset by the fighting that they were literally sitting at their computers in tears.  

Then it really began to spiral out of control.  People started picking sides, and getting nasty with each other.  It soon devolved into an all-out war, with at least one very prominent person openly saying "I never liked her anyway."  


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The Cleveland Show

By erika on 4/6/10 4:13pm
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Since we didn't get a new episode of Family Guy this week, I decided to poke around through Hulu's archives and give The Cleveland Show a try.  I hadn't watched it before because I frankly wasn't interested.  And having watched some episodes?  I'm going to have to stand by that initial knee-jerk reaction.

The biggest hurdle for me is that The Cleveland Show is a spin-off based on the Family Guy character that I find the most boring.  Cleveland Brown has had a few good lines over the years.  ("Hey baby, how would you like to go black and then make a difficult decision regarding whether or not to go back?")  But "a few good lines" is great for a secondary character.  Not so great if you put that character in the spotlight.


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"Brian Griffin's House of Payne"

By erika on 3/29/10 2:04pm
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We continue with the yo-yo ride of this season, from the last episode's terrible randomness to this week's surprisingly tight pacing.  This episode had two storylines, for the most part, and it stuck to them.  Although the episode started out with a Simpsons-style digression that leads eventually to the even that kicks off the main plot.  I hate that.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this episode is that it paired an extremely intellectual and nuanced plot with a straight-up gross-out plot.  Call this the "something for everyone" episode.


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"Peter-Assment"

By erika on 3/23/10 3:41pm
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This is probably one of the most "meh" episodes of Family Guy I've seen in years.  Let me put it to you this way: about halfway through the episode, my wandering attention spied a stack of mail nearby.  I spent the second half of the episode half watching as I sorted my mail and paid all my bills.  So there's that.

"Peter-assment" is also one of the most egregious examples of the show's "throw it to the wall and see what sticks" ethos at its worst.  The storyline is only barely coherent, and is frequently overwhelmed by the cut-away jokes, the random asides, and bizarre touches like the scene where Peter, drinking heavily in a bar, hallucinates (?) that actor Robert Mitchum is speaking to him from the bar's television.


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