"Family Guy" - What Works and What Doesn't

[highlife1]

Great post, OP.

To me, while Family Guy is an entirely different show that it was in the beginning, I think the change was necessary in order to appease the new audience the show keeps bringing in. The loose continuity in the show is bothersome, but continuity has never been the show's strong point (Meg being a complete friendless loser one episode and then having a group of friends the next for example).

As for the characters, Stewie's transformation, IMO, was needed because it would just get old after awhile. This Stewie is just as funny. Meg definitively needs work besides just making her the show's punching bag because that schtick has gotten old and I feel like they're wasting Mila Kunis's time with a direction-less character.

[godz68impala]

I remember hearing that she only goes in for four hours every three months or so for her lines.

[Mr Hot Guy]

To repeat what Jazman said, the reason Family Guy is popular now, because it probably attracted an entire new fanbase that replaced the old fans of pre-cancelation Family Guy.
For me, I still find some humor in the show, despite how horrible the plots or the cutscenes get, I still find some humor in the show. Though ever since I watched the South Park episode, "Cartoon Wars" the show's faults have gotten harder to ignore.

But recently, I've been enjoying American Dad a lot more. No cutscenes left room for actual plots and gags related to the story.

[x-CuteBub-x]

The only negative things that come to mind about the newer FG episodes are the Meg bashing(although some funny scenes have come about this) and the longer cutaway gags. Some work and some don't. For example, the episode where Chris and the video store clerk talk about scenes from movies. If the gag had been cut in half the time, it would have been better. Instead, it just kept going on and on with no end in sight. And when it did end, you're just left with that "Well, that was...interesting." feeling.

Aside from that though, I still like the Season 4-onwards episodes of FG. Like one poster said, every episode has had a least one joke that made me laugh out loud. Even if the episode wasn't that good, I was still able to get some enjoyment out of it. Very few shows can do that with me.

As for plot, well, FG was never one for big plot continuity. It's not Venture Bros. or Futurama, and it probably won't be. And I'm fine with that. I do agree that seasons 1-3 were more plot-oriented than season 4-onward. Part of the reason is due to the fact that Seth is also working on American Dad(that and some of the old FG writers work on the show). That show is more plot-oriented than FG and it works. You don't want the show to be a clone of FG. American Dad is basically Seth MacFarlane's Futurama.

So, while post-cancellation Family Guy is different from previous seasons, I still think its a good show that consistently makes me laugh. That's good enough for me.

[Putti P]

I've said it many times before. The best part of pre-revival FG is that the cutaways would be less frequent and much, much faster. Almost all never lasted beyond 15-20 seconds, and it worked. The plots were also much more focused, and so was the parody and the randomness. Now it's just plot point, cutaway, dialouge, cutaway, plot point, cutaway, rinse, repeat. There's no extremely fast cutaways or just off-the-wall randomness (that's actually funny) anymore. Basically, it all came down to the pacing, which is horrid nowadays.

The other significant bit was its charm, and that had a lot to do with the characterization, as J.B. said, it's incredibly far from three-dimensional in these new episodes. At one point I thought it was the nostalgia, but I popped in a disc and was constantly cracking up, much more than post-revival episodes. Of course, much of that charm seems to exist in American Dad, and seeing how pre-revival FG writers dominate the staff, it's not shocking...

[Difdi]

I agree with pretty much everything that J. B. Warner said. He pretty much hit the nail on the head. Sure, I still watch the show, and the episodes still do a decent job of entertaining, but I just have too many problems with it to fully enjoy it.

What annoys me the most is how incredibly unlikeable the characters have gotten since the show returned. I'd be able to handle the increasingly lazy plots and numerous, mostly unfunny cutaways if the writers would just stay true to the frikkin' characters. They've all turned into complete jerks with hardly any redeeming qualities anymore, even (perhaps especially) the "nice" characters like Lois and Brian. They'll start out normal, then turn on a dime and do something incredibly mean and out-of-character for the sake of a cheap laugh, and then go back to their normal selves. I feel like I don't even know who the characters are anymore; heck, the only one I even like anymore is Meg, and that's just because I feel so sorry for her all the time.

It's the main flaw in the show right now; I don't care about the characters at all anymore. They don't even care about each other. Now, I know Family Guy has never cared much for character development or "touching family moments," but at least seasons 1-3 had enough of those things to make the characters feel like a real family and be likeable.

When have we had any of that since the show returned from cancellation? I think the sweetest moment between the characters since season four onward was the Back to the Future parody episode, and that was only because they were doing a spoof on the "sweet" scene from the movie itself. When the most touching scene in your show is only there for a joke, that's a problem.

Continuity has never been really important to me with comedy shows, but they shouldn't make the characters so drastically different from scene to scene just for the "lolz" of it. Personalities didn't need to be destroyed just to "appeal to a new generation of fans." I wish the writers would realize that.

[Yael]

I'm gonna agree with most of what's been said. A big issue for me is how lazy the writing has gotten, especially their attitude to going to cutaways. The one with the joke about Japanese women loving tiny things was a good joke in of itself. But how do they set it up? Peter is watching TV and we hear the announcer say "We now return to Japanese Women Think Tiny Versions Of Things Are Really Cute". It's basically the problem South Park attacked them for- the cutaways are basically a ton of random jokes that they don't even really try to justify. Another good one- "Peter, this is strange" "No more strange than when Darth Vader was a meter maid" ....What? When the show first started, the cutaways were great. It was amazing to see a show so openly take a swing at the rest of TV and added a nice surrealist edge because before you learned the formula you didn't see it coming. Now...the cutaways are "Hey, you grew up with and remember this, right? So laugh!" It's rare that we get an inspired cutaway like the Star Wars/Curb Your Enthusiasm one.

[somevelvetmorning]

The pre-cancellation Family Guy was a domestic sitcom. A somewhat zany, irreverent sitcom, but a domcom none the less. The post-cancellation Family Guy is not so a sitcom as it is a sketch comedy show, full of random cutaways, very little plot and plot development, and many of it's central characters acting completely out of character for the sake of a cheap laugh. I completely agree with what MagicBox said about the characters becoming less likable in the later episodes. Brian and Lois used to be the intellectual and moral centers of the show, but now they could go from light to dark at any given moment (even if it means acting completely out of character) for the sake of a joke. Lois in particular has become meaner and sluttier with each new episode. Lois used to be one of Meg's few constant allies, now she is just as nasty to her daughter as the rest of the world has become. And the Meg bashing is nothing more than the result of inferior writing; the writers are clueless when it comes to writing for teenage girls (although, they do an OK job when it comes to writing for Hayley on American Dad!, assuming that these are the same writers, of course), and so they treat Meg like scum because that's easier for them than trying to develop her as a character. Peter likewise has become nastier and more self-centered in the post-cancellation episodes.

Also, the cutaway gags have become much more random. More often than not, the cutaway gag will have little or nothing to do with the plots, or will barely involve the Griffins themselves. It almost seems as if Seth MacFarlane really wants to work on a sketch comedy show, with no main cast and just a selection of funny scenes, like Seth Green's Robot Chicken. Perhaps Seth's next project should be something like that instead of The Cleveland Show.

[Maryam K]

My honest opinion, it's not worth it. Family Guy has found their new audience, all the while making sure that everyone knows the contempt and disdain they have for their audience.

They've found their mass appeal, thanks to the mythos of being "the canceled show that they brought back", which got everyone talking, and now they're the most overrated part of pop culture....the part of pop culture that lampoons pop culture.

Seth even said it in interviews past "If nothing else, the gags will always save you". There you have it. What else needs to be said?

[p10]

What works and what doesn't? Well, I don't know if I can list them all in one post, but let's give it a shot.


DOESN'T WORK: Ending a scene with a cutaway.
Now, I'm going to start by saying that in a show like this, there are no hard and fast rules. (Unlike, say, The Office, which must always retain its credibility as a documentary.) It's a show that is at its best when it plays with conventions and does stuff that's completely off the wall. So sometimes, something will work even if it shouldn't, and mileage varies depending on how funny the gag itself is.

That being said, 95% of the time, when they end a scene with a cutaway, it hurts the episode. I'm not going to make the claim that the pre-hiatus episodes never EVER did this, but it's clear they did it less often. Ending a scene with a cutaway -- as opposed to starting a scene, cutting away, and then returning to the scene -- is dangerous. It breaks the flow of the episode, and you have to be really careful where you do it.

The new episodes strike me as the writers not being careful at all. They just put anything they think is funny into the episode without considering whether or not it belongs in that episode. And ending scenes with cutaways is one device they use far more often than they should. Every time they do it, it damages the episode's structure, and so when it gets to the point where nearly every scene ends with a cutaway instead of a real transition of some sort, it results in a half hour that has a few funny moments (hopefully) but is not at all memorable. Also, comedically, it's becoming very predictable.


WORKS: Self-referential humor.
Certainly Family Guy has never been a stranger to self-referential humor, but in this era, at the height of their popularity and profitability, it's good to see that they're taking the opportunity to poke fun at themselves in ways they couldn't necessarily poke fun at themselves before. It's a wise move to make fun of cutaways (like in whatever episode had the "Hitler on a unicycle" bit) or just the silly plots in general (like in Lois Kills Stewie or the season finale). For a show like this not to take such opportunities would just be wrong.

Of course, let's just hope they don't become The Simpsons and turn these self-referential gags into the typical way to resolve any plot or excuse any joke.