There was some Simpsons where Bart was Cesaer or some such nonsense, and he looked in a book and it had things ending in -culous…and it showed a picture of Peter and said (something like…) “Plaigrisus”, then it showed Stan of American Dad and said “Plaigrisus Plagrisus”. I totally butchered that, maybe **Mobo[/B knows what I mean, but basically it was a polite jab at Seth and his shows.]
Yes Parker and Stone do hate Family Guy (“We just want a show where jokes have something to do with the plot”), and Seth pretty much brushed it off as “whatever” (“Ooh look at me, I need coherent jokes to make my show run, look at how special I am”).
The only thing that South Park is genius about (and they are GENIUS) is how they can weave a plot around some type of message, and they use the best ways. Episode to episode SP will always be more well written than FG will ever be, but FG will have the best “HA!” times where you just blurt out the laugh.
There was also an episode, one of the Treehouse ones I think, where Homer was being cloned over and over again and one of the clones was Peter Griffin.
South Park can be just as guilty as Family Guy of ramming the message down your throats. I don’t really see how it’s better written. I prefer frank discussion of a topic over ridiculously overblown metaphors any day. Plus, the style of animation is just irritating to me. That’s a personal preference though.
Now, I’ll grant you, I haven’t really sat down and watched an episode of South Park in quite some time, so it’s possible the quality has improved somewhat. It was very up and down in it’s early years.
Yeah, you did… The actual scene went more like this:
They’re in Italy, picking up an Italian sportscar for Mr Burns. It gets damaged, and when they stop into a small town to get it fixed, they discover Sideshow Bob is living there. At first, they get along fine, as Bob is trying to make a new life for himself that doesn’t involve killing Bart, but then the Simpsons buffoonery ends up revealing that Bob is wanted for attempted murder.
The police open a book of wanted Americans, and what they’re wanted for. Obviously it has Bob.
Under Peter it says ‘Plagiarismo’ (not the correct Italian for plagiarism, but obviously they wanted non-Italian speakers to get the joke), under Stan it’s Plagiarismo di Plagiarismo.
I’ve always liked FG, since the beginning, and I still do. It is not my beloved Simpsons, but it is better than anything else on, along with American Dad.
I like all the characters, although Chris isn’t too often funny to me. Brian is hilarious. But I love Lois because she gets just as gritty as Peter. She makes fun of Meg, she laughs at Peter’s nonsense, and even plays along when his nonsense is directed at her and is extremely dangerous or damaging. I just loves me some Lois.
For those that are noting mysogyny, is it possible that seeing violence against women on t.v. just makes you uncomfortable, so it sticks out for you? I think most of the violence is actualy male on male. The Peter vs. Chicken fights are many and long. And I know we say chicken, but that’s a rooster, right? I saw a flashback with him and his chicken wife, so I know that’s a rooster. And there’s my favorite fight of all. YouTube vidof it here.
True, both of those examples are involving animals, but still. They are male animals. And I am sure I usually see male on male violence in the show.
Recently, I bought a bootleg dancehall reggae cd from a street vendor. Got in the car, checkin’ out all the cool rhythms on the cd, and then, between dancehall songs; an interlude. An audio of the Stewie / Brian fight. Cracked me up. Even in Jamaica dancehalls, some dj takes a moment to pay tribute to the funny of Brian and Stewie.
Agreed. The last – maybe only – post-cancellation episode that ranked with the best of the first three years was PTV. Family Guy now is awkward, ugly and, above all, joyless – there’s no sense that anyone involved with the show is taking any kind of pleasure in producing it. To paraphrase Wilde, Seth MacFarlane produces Family Guy as though it were a painful duty.
In one interview, when asked about being mocked by the Simpsons, he replied, “If we complained about it, we’d be the biggest fucking hypocrites around. They have every right to slam us all they want.” One thing I will say for MacFarlane: he can dish it out AND take it.
So why is this guy supposedly an asshole? I hadn’t read too terribly much about him until this thread and it seems overall he’s ok. He takes criticism better than most, it seems.
Jeez, for a lurker, I am all up in this thread. I’ve been watching Family Guy by myself for so long I guess I got desperate for someone to discuss it with.
I don’t know, but 3 guesses that still leave open the possibility of him being an asshole:
He looks up to Matt and Trey and hopes they can be friends one day
He’s being diplomatic. After all, you go on talk shows to promote things-- wouldn’t want to alienate crossover South Park/Family Guy fans, aka potential Cleveland Show fans
He’s an asshole who takes criticism well
Shrug. All we can do is speculate. I doubt anyone here grew up with him.
Seth McFarlane seems to have a good sense of humor about himself. Here’s a link to a recent podcast with Adam Carolla (Warning: lengthy mp3 with adult language and content).
