This new season is vey funny. Some of the running jokes are a little stale, but the one liners and flashbacks the show is known for have been awesome. I love Family Guy for being one of the few shows that really makes me laugh.

So far this season, Family Guy has been kinda meh. But I loled pretty hard at IT'S PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME! I'm kinda retarded.

Also, has anyone else noticed that American Dad has been consistently good this season? PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME! aside, American Dad has been funnier than Family Guy.

I find it hard to get into American Dad because all the characters are so annoying and all the jokes are just caricature-based anti-republican jokes that I've already heard from the Daily Show twenty times except told funnier.

At least they hardly show the fish anymore. But I wish they'd get rid of that freaking alien. I can't stand a single scene that focuses on him.

I don't find American Dad very funny, but Family Guy has also bottomed out some. I get the feeling that MacFarlane has stretched himself too thin to be able to have good quality control. Along with the shows, he makes nice coin doing college tours...the students selected him for Wash U's student speaker for Spring 2005 (after Mo Rocca in Fall 2004) and I know they had at least 10 grand in the kitty for the Spring speaker...

I find American Dad to rely too heavily on shock value and risque racist jokes, with not enough original humor or good clean fun tossed in.

However, as for Family Guy, I've loved this ever since I've seen their first episode. I'll admit, the second season really sucked (at least for me) and the third season was decent. But, if you've watched any of the fourth season so far, it's been some of the most hilarious Family Guy I've yet to watch. Just watch the episode where Brian goes back to college.

Just to be clear, you're referring to the content of the first DVD volume as 'Season 1' and the second DVD volume as 'Season 2'? (The first season was technically only the first seven episodes, but I think of it as being the first 28 just like you seem to).

Yeah, I agree...Family Guy sort of weakened leading up to the end of it's initial run. Now it's not as consistant as it was at first, but it's peaks are just as high if not higher.

The Church of Fonzie really cracked me up. I'm starting to get back into the humor of Family Guy. I want to see the more recent episodes on reruns...

I definitely agree that Family Guy has already begun its descent into the pattern of "outrageous!" jokes with no bite whatsoever.

But what really grinds my gears (heh) is the show's insistence on stealing Simpsons plotlines and gimmicks.

Just off the top of my head:
-GAG: FG's "Disney Stock Ride" a complete ripoff of The Simpsons' "Enron Ride"
-OK, I've been drinking, and I can't think of any more right now. But I assure you, there's a whole bunch of 'em.

I realize I sound like Comic Book Guy, but what ya gonna do?

I don't know...Simpsons has had almost 400 episodes. I'm not completely sure how you could do an animated comedy and NOT end up incidentally copying the Simpsons.

I'm also pretty sure McFarlane hasn't seen every episode of the Simpsons.

It's like on South Park. The creators keep coming up with ideas then get pissed and have to change them when somebody tells them that the same thing was done on the Simpsons. So they did an episode where Butters kept having his evil plans foiled because 'The Simpsons did it'.

In some unimportant sense, Family Guy may be like the Simpsons, but the humor on each show is different enough that Family Guy doesn't really rip off the Simpsons.

Well, the structures of the show are similar, but the humor as you said is extremely different.

They're both animated shows on Fox on Sunday night, and both families are composed of a fat crass father, a sensible mother, a son, a daughter, and a baby.

But those are all the shows have in common.

Was I the only one who thought the season finale of Family Guy (slipping the Stewie DVD in as a finale) was a pretty lame stunt? After hyping the DVD as something you'd NEVER see on TV, they show it in lieu of a real finale?

I'm convinced that Seth MacFarlane is stretched too thin, between Family Guy and American Dad. It's too bad...I used to really like Family Guy.

quote:

Was I the only one who thought the season finale of Family Guy (slipping the Stewie DVD in as a finale) was a pretty lame stunt? After hyping the DVD as something you'd NEVER see on TV, they show it in lieu of a real finale?

I think what happened was that the stewie dvd probably didnt sell very many copies, so they thought they could disguise it as a three part episode and only a small minority would notice. But yes, very lame.

quote:

I'm convinced that Seth MacFarlane is stretched too thin, between Family Guy and American Dad. It's too bad...I used to really like Family Guy.

I totally agree, they should cancel american dad immediately so he can work on family guy more to bring it back up to the quality it once had.

The problem with American Dad is threefold.

-A completely unlikeable cast
-A theme that's only funny for so long
-Seth McFarlane's apparent contention that he can walk on comedic water

The characters range from detestable to unbearably annoying and pointless (Roger...UGGGGGHHHHH). And this is partly the fault of the premise. He isn't writing satire about conservatives, he's portraying all conservatives in a completely negative unsypmathetic light. So, if you're conservative you're alienated completely, and if you're liberal you feel like you're just having a caricature of your own opinion regurgitated back to you like a bird to it's babies.

Also, Seth McFarlane has decided that he's so good, all he needs to do is throw every joke he can think of into any episode without having any sort of cohesive theme or plot. He reasons 'Simpsons does it...why can't I do it?' Neglecting that the Simpsons characters are all very likeable (Even the ones that aren't), that Simpsons satire takes both sides of the argument seriously and fairly, and that try as he might he's just not the Simpsons.

I would also mention that at the beginning, Family Guy episodes had..yes, a cohesive plot, with cohesive themes, in addition to just a bunch of cutaway jokes. And the characters were much more likeable in the first season than they are now. Without the likeable characters and cohesive plots, the cutaway jokes can be seen for what they really are.

Everything you said is wrong. Roger's faggy Paul Lynde voice is hilarious and not annoying at all. Whatever dude keep making yourself sound stupid.

While I agree with Buck about Family Guy (I honestly don't care if there's a coherent plotline), I think a lot of the jokes this season weren't as funny as in the past.

I really don't get American Dad at all. I watched the first eight episodes, and I really didn't think it was funny. I found the fish to be really annoying, and I didn't think the Paul Lynde voice was funny when Paul Lynde was in his heyday. But I did like a few of the Roger jokes, so I guess I like Roger. I'll have to catch some of the most recent episodes when they rerun them.

For my money, Seasons 2-3 of Family Guy were great. The seasons since have been more hit and miss.

I take being called 'stupid' by a person who uses the word 'faggy' as high praise.

I can forgive the Paul Lynde voice. Existing only to make narcissistic commentary and contributing not a single funny thing to the plot is another. And Klaus? Bleck. There's no point to this character existing at all. All he does is..well, say stuff Quagmire would say.

I stand by all my comments about Family Guy. Norm McDonald's portrayal of Death was hilarious. The 'Endless string of unrelated, random pop culture references' we get now, is not.

No matter how pathetic you sound while trying to seem analytical, American Dad's jokes will continue to be hilarious.

quote:

No matter how pathetic you sound while trying to seem analytical, American Dad's jokes will continue to be hilarious.

C'mon now, Bob is at least trying to prove his point with plausible evidence. All you can say, Buck, is: "Everything you said is wrong," or "Whatever dude keep making yourself sound stupid."
No offense, but I'd rather side with the one who sounds like an actual high school graduate.

Here are a few quality American Dad jokes, or at least the one's in the commercials, since I'm not gonna actually watch the show:

Stan: "I don't need you anymore, per se."
Kid: "You don't need me?!?"
Stan: "PER SE...doesn't anyone appreciate latin anymore?"

(Stan and Francine are making out or something on a table)
Kid: "What are you doing?"
Stan: "Oh, I was just buffing this table with your mom."

The show just isn't very funny. I hate to break it to you, but it's the truth. Let's see: there's a dad, a mom, an older sister, a younger brother, a pet that has an unhealthy interest in the mom, and someone who makes frequent comments about socially relevant things in an odd voice.
Sound familiar? That's because there's already a much better show like this, it's called Family Guy.

Focusing on shit that is completely irrelevant and using a lot of words to do it is a great way to get your point across.