Much of the humor about their jabs at Macfarlane’s characters comes from the fact that they’re perfectly rendered. Can’t say the same about Family Guy and vice-versa. Also that gag where Fudd kills Bugs would have been alot funnier if they actually looked like the Looney Tunes. Does anybody who what gives with FG’s inaccurate character reproductions? Is it a copyright issue? The FG style? Just plain ineptitude?
My guess is 95% copyright & 5% FG style.
Well then, can someone explain the legality of [url=http://www.salon.com/comics/boll/2003/01/23/boll/story.gif]this* - a political comic where a bunch of trademark cartoon characters are accurately rendered to disparage the very corporations that hold their copyrights? These are some big names - he couldn’t have possibly gotten permission to use them.
Parody is protected speech, so FG could perfectly render the stuff if they wanted to. However, just because it’s protected speech doesn’t mean that somene won’t try and sue you.
When ever TV shows will find a formula that works, that is find a show that will correctly represent general attitudes of the American public to produce a specific aesthetic effect on the public; they will milk that sucker for all its worth. Formula’s that work are hard to come by and Networks hate taking chances.
Why do you think we have countless romantic comedy movies coming out every month? Do you think the formula for each one is that different? It is all the same; Guy gets girl, guy looses girl, then guy gets girl in the end. Originality only works when something intensifies the expected experience without fundamentally altering it*. That is what we are seeing here with Family Guy and The Simpsons. Family Guy is just intensifying the effect of the Simpsons without fundamentally altering it. Is it plagiarism? No, it can not be, because if stealing the fundamentals of an ideal were plagiarism then everyone is a plagiarist including the Simpsons. New ideas usually just build on old ideas, they do not appear out of thin air.
The reality is that Family Guy has tapped into the same formula that the Simpsons has tapped into from the Flintstones (who knows were the Flintstones got it from.) Only Family Guy works the formula better than The Simpsons. It’s the same fundamental experience, just more intensified.
*This idea was stolen from Robert Warshow, who wrote about it in 1948.
My Bolding above ^
Flintstones were a ripoff of the Honeymooners, this has been generally accepted for decades. It is possible, possible mind you, that the Honeymooners were relatively original.
Jim
I would guess that Family Guy tries to keep its “guest characters” within the rough bounds of Seth MacFarlane’s drawing style. Both the Simpsons and Family Guy farm their animation out to Korean studios, so there is no difference in the level of drawing “talent” between the shows.
I disagree, of course all of this is subjective, but to me FG is a lot less cohesive and seems that the “formula” is used more as a staging ground for absurdist humor, sight gags, in-jokes and the like. FG may be funny but in a much more shallow way than the Simpsons.
But that is just my opinion. I am sure we could put to shame some of the Great Debate threads about Bush, aortion, religon, etc. with a Simpsons vs. Family Guy thread. 
Getting back to the real question at hand, I think it all depends upon whether or not Peter lets up when Homer screams “I’m a hemophiliac!”
Well yeah, if you have virtually no sitcoms preceding you.
My theory is that the fundamental ideas of what works are discovered within a short time of the birth of a new medium. The rest builds on the fundamentals.
ah but there were! they weren’t called that, but radio was full of family comedies in the 30’s and 40’s - most of the 50’s TV shows were just transplants from Radio!
But apparently from what I can gather, the Honeymooners were not a copy of a prior TV or Radio show or even a Vaudeville Act. That’s why it looks like the Honeymooners probably created a relatively new Meme for the relatively new media TV.
Disclaimer: I am not even really a fan of the show, but I appreciate its place in entertainment history.
Jim
The Honeymooners was originally a recurring sketch (one of many) on Jackie Gleason’s “Cavalcade of Stars,” which like many such early shows was basically a vaudeville revue with TV cameras.
I Love Lucy, which went on the air four years before the Honeymooners became a series, truly represents the template of the domestic sitcom.
The “I Love Lucy” show was based on a popular Radio program with Lucy called my Favorite Husband. The recurring sketch on “Cavalcade of Stars” was called the Honeymooners and I would include it as part of the series. It is different enough in style and type from Lucy that I would consider that it might be original. I have never heard of a similar recurring Vaudeville or Radio program like it.
Jim