Believe the hype?
Going back and watching the previous seasons, I was reminded how instantly appealing -- and inevitably off-putting -- "Family Guy" can be. MacFarlane and his team never fail to generate a remarkable energy of ideas and gags; you can be irritated by how base the comedy is, but it moves fast with a giddy, bratty verve. The Griffins (dad Peter, mom Lois, son Chris, daughter Meg, baby Stewie and talking-dog Brian) each differ from their designated family-member archetype. There's nothing cuddly or lovable about the Griffins, and there's even clear animosity between some of them. (Particularly great is the realization between the dog and the baby that they're the sharpest tools in this particular shed -- and that they share no particular satisfaction in that discovery.)
Re-viewing the old episodes on DVD, I noticed how often I enjoyed these characters when they came on screen. They're drawn comically, and they're voiced humorously by MacFarlane and others, such as Seth Green and Mila Kunis. But as for the actual stories, my reaction arc was the same for every episode: amused, intrigued, underwhelmed, disappointed, kinda ready for it to be over. MacFarlane's writers unload their "shock" in the first act, and then instead of developing the satire, we get inundated with references -- movie quotes, bad TV parodies, kitsch cameos from Adam West. Like the recent years of "The Simpsons" -- when character development and clever storylines yielded to sophomoric physical humor and desperate randomness -- "Family Guy" isn't interested in saying much of anything. Even when they go for "edgy" commentary like on the unaired "When You Wish Upon a Weinstein," the supposed taboo-busting Jewish jokes aren't any funnier than the Optimus Prime gag they throw in for the hell of it.
This sort of weightless comedy is always blamed on "Seinfeld," but most people recognized that Jerry's show wasn't really about nothing -- it was a show about how the seemingly mundane minutiae of life actually defined and complicated everything we do. Conversely, "Family Guy" feels like the product of an empty life -- a community of individuals who get a perverse kick out of watching terrible television for how ironically "brilliant" its terribleness really is. Most guys grow out of this after college. (They wake up one more morning and discover what a dead end that endless loop of sarcastic comments and C-level Hollywood ephemera becomes.) But MacFarlane's show plays like a Never Never Land for undergraduates: Nobody grows old, and you can stay protected underneath its cozy skies of irony and condescension for as long as you'd like.
It's worth reading the whole thing, but the only thing I'd add that's more relevant to the current episodes is what we've been saying in the Family Guy threads: the swipes at other shows and celebrities have stopped being funny and are often hypocritical, the cutaways often run too long and can be downright awful (three minutes of Conway Twitty) and the stories being unappealing or uninteresting. It's a shame as I've come to like the show and watch it with the intent to enjoy it, but it's become very difficult to enjoy week-to-week.
