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‘Family Guy’ irreverent, politically
incorrect, hilarious
by Jimmy J. Pack Jr.
When Matt Groening took his comic strip characters, The
Simpsons, and turned them into a weekly-animated TV show for the FOX network
almost 20 years ago, he had no clue how long the show would run or how
much audiences would love every episode. The Simpsons have been a Sunday
night staple for the network and a meter for popular culture, or rather,
a meter for the decline of popular culture ever since.
So, it’s no surprise that when FOX took Seth MacFarlane’s
animated television series, The Family Guy, off the air in late 1999,
that the network suffered a deluge of mail (some of which contained boxes
of diapers) from angry viewers demanding the show be returned.
The Family Guy returned to FOX in early 2005 and hasn’t
lost any of its sick appeal.
The Family Guy centers on a Rhode Island family, the Griffins,
and their daily life. It’s an animated sit-com for adults only (despite
the fact that much of the humor is nonetheless based on comments made
by 15-year-old boys bored in their crowded high school lunchrooms.
This show is not so easy to pin down. While it is often
compared to The Simpsons because of its commentary on pop-culture, that
is where the similarities end. The patriarch of the family, Peter Griffin,
is, as MacFarlane describes him, “your typical loud, stupid fat
guy.” To be more precise, Peter Griffin has the IQ of driveway gravel.
His wife, Lois, is the glue of the family, trying to keep her head on
while her family continuously breaks down. And it’s not easy when
her infant son, Stewie, has been trying to kill her since birth. (In one
episode we see a flashback of Stewie being born. After he is birthed,
the doctor also finds a map of Europe marked for attack. In another episode,
Stewie admits to leaving a time bomb in Lois after he was born.)
Then there are the two teenagers — Meg, an awkward,
tomboy who is constantly mocked and criticized by her peers and family,
and Chris, a nose-picking junior high schooler who is tormented by an
evil monkey living in his closet.
Let’s not forget the family dog, Brian. He enjoys
martinis, exotic women and jazz. He’s the family member with the
brains.
And while all the main characters are quirky enough to make
any episode funny, it’s the lack of reverence for anything that
makes this show so funny, so all you politically correct TV watchers read
closely — STAY AWAY. Not since Sanford and Son, Good Times and All
in the Family have so many taboos been broken. MacFarlane goes well below
the belt to drum up laughs — pedophilia, incest, race, religion,
you name it, The Family Guy has mocked it. The family guy shows no sympathy
for anyone or anything.
But MacFarlane also wants you to know he’s not just
having a laugh out of stupidity or for the sake of being mean; the man
does have a brain. The show is peppered with musical references spanning
decades, from classic show tunes and vaudeville songs to one-hit wonders
in the 1970s and 1980s.
The Family Guy is not a Simpsons rip-off. It’s its
own show, full of humor designed to make you feel guilty for sharing.
But the guilt you feel is worth it when you’ve had a really bad
day.
Tube into The Family Guy on FOX, Sunday nights at 9 p.m.
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