Futurama thread I started. (not related other than the name)
I’m always getting odd looks whenever the topic of Family Guy comes up at school. From what I have found, most college students just absolutely love Family Guy. But I don’t get it. Sure, I laughed my ass off the first time I saw the the first three seasons. It was wonderful. But, I can’t watch them again. It has no “bamb” anymore. Now, a show I can watch over and over again is Futurama. The stores are well written, characters well rounded, and the funny parts are actually apart of the plot. They aren’t scattered tidbits of dumb sidejokes that don’t go together. I can watch this show, no matter how many times I’ve seen the episode, and I still laugh.
So why is it that I get so many negative responses when I tell people I like Futurama almost infinitely more than I like Family Guy. Am I a lone wolf? Do I walk the path that no one takes?
I enjoy Family Guy (but can’t rewatch for same reasons), but I will stop what I’m doing if I notice Futurama is on.
Futurama is just so much more sharp with its humor. I can still laugh at all the episodes even after seeing dozens of times.
You’re right. Futurama has replay value and never got the chance to go down the toilet. I like to think of it as the successor to the Simpsons. It took a while, but I have officially seen every episode too many times. It was hipper with my crowd, but we were pretty nerdy collectively. Maybe that’s it.
Family Guy is ‘hip’ I guess, safe fodder for the college crowd. The random gag three times in one scene gimmick really didn’t take off until it was renewed from cancellation. There doesn’t even have to be a plot anymore. I just couldn’t watch it after the 3rd episode.
Metalocalypse is IMO the best thing on adult swim these days, though I don’t have the patience to catch it live anymore.
I far prefer Futurama to Family Guy,* American Dad* and King of the Hill.Futurama’s humor casts a wide net and the variety is what makes it watchable over and over again. The other three go for the cheap laughs by relying too much on sexual and bodily function gags. That gets old very fast, IMHO.
Never miond variety in jokes, Futurama is simply smarter. It plays with joke conventions in ways that outsmart the viewer and when it’s at its best it showcases both artistic merits (Fry’s 100th cup of coffee) and depth.
To me, Family Guy can be funny. But it’s never funny and intelligent like Futurama is.
*Family Guy[i/] and Futurama simply draw from different cultural pools. FG’s referential humour requires knowledge of TV of the last thirty years, while Futurama culls from that and the computer culture of the last thirty years. Futurama is certainly the more intelligent show, though which is funnier is a personal choice. Stewie and Fry could change places and fit comfortably in each others’ universes (might be funny to see Stewie displacing Cubert as Farnsworth’s heir), but while the Futurama supporting cast is rich and layered, many of the FG secondaries are pretty bland. Are Meg and Chris and Lois anything but one-note stereotypes, existing only to react to Peter? Meg especially is useless; gags have been based on how useless she is. Of the seven main cast members of Futurama, is there anyone matching her for pointlessness? Amy… maybe.
Futurama is a better, richer show. That doesn’t make it a more popular one, of course.
I’d agree that Futurama has a more engaging cast and at least to me, funnier. I watched Family guy a few times when it first aired, laughed a little and forgot about it almost as soon as the show was over. A lot of people I know tell me its hilarious, but it never seemed that funny to me. So recently I rented a season of it at the PX to see if maybe I was missing something. (I can’t remember which season, 2nd or 3rd maybe…I know it had the episode where Quagmire is boinkin’ the black dude’s wife). While I got a few chuckles out of it, it wasn’t really that funny to me. Again, almost as soon as any episode was over I literally forgot what the heck it was about.
In a way it reminds me of Ren and Stimpy. When it was the big thing in cartoons a lot people told me towatch it because it was so f’ing funny. I tried it, laughed a little but soon the gross out jokes got repetitive and old and i quickly forgot about it. I’m not saying FG is exactly like Ren and Stimpy, just that they both seem to rely on a certain kind of humor. R&S was gross out, FG referential humor. To me, it just seemed to get old fast. But then again, I’m old. I might not be the target audience.
Golf is funnier than Family Guy.
The Weather Channel is funnier than Family Guy.
I have an extensive knowledge of American TV over the past forty years, and I still don’t think Family Guy is funny.
Furturama and King of the Hill are both great, smart shows.
Personally, I’ll have to disagree on King of the Hill, with the stereotyped characters. Also, it seemed for a while there that every episode involved Hank’s inability to deal with some unexpected Lib’rul incursion into his beloved Arlen. It was like the show wasn’t really about Texans, but about how normal people (by Mike Judge’s standards) should react to Californians and their hippie ways.
For an animated show that is arguably the most “realistic” in the Fox lineup, King of the Hill’s characters seem incredibly static. Peggy’s always been a insufferable know-it-all, Dale’s always a conspiracy nut, Bill’s always been a pathetic loser and Bobby’s always the fat lazy kid. Joseph went through puberty, but that’s about it.
The simple truth is the writing on FG is about an order of magnitude less funny, insightful and smart than the writing in Futurama. FG’s a collection of gags created by young hacks on their way to becoming old hacks. Futurama has actual writers who think about the characters, the story and the society they’re set in, and American society. No contest, baby.
Family Guy is an absolutely incredible show if you’re just seeing seasons 1-3 the first time. It cannot be overstated how hilarious it is during that period. After two or three viewings of each episode, though, you never need to see them again. My favorite Family Guy episode could come on TV right now, and I’d change the channel.
Futurama, however, inherited The Simpsons’ infinite replayablity. It may not be as hilarious the first time you see it as Family Guy, but you could watch the show so many times that every single moment is engraved into your brain, and it would still be funny.
It is a little sad that I can’t go back and watch those first few seasons of Family Guy completely fresh.
Family Guy isn’t all that funny, mostly because Seth McFarland never knows when a joke can end. What’s funny in a two-second image stops being funny after being drawn out to 30 seconds. If McFarland concentrated on more jokes instead of filling time forever whenever he gets one, it could be a good show.
Family Guy, at its absolute best, makes me laugh harder than pretty much anything else. Futurama is formally much more sophisticated and clever, with a warmth that Family Guy has never had and that The Simpsons lost roughly a decade ago. They’re both great shows in their way, and I enjoy watching them both, and look forward to Futurama’s return.
BTW, I must say I disagree about Family Guy’s rewatchability: the shows are so densely packed with gags that I can see an episode for the half-dozenth time and still be surprised by something I’d forgotten.
Also BTW: King of the Hill is great too. But the best show on [adult swim] right now is The Venture Brothers, not Metalocalypse.
I’m in the ‘Futurama is funnier’ camp as well. I like Family Guy, but it just isn’t as interesting to me as Futurama.
Part of the problem for me is that the characters in Family Guy are so unlikable that I can only watch it in small increments before getting annoyed (though Stewie and Brian keep me watching longer).
I’ll have to disagree on this. While King of teh Hill is not in my top three favorite animated shows I give it credit for breaking the cartoon mold. Characters age and actually grow and change.
For example with Dale, he was forced to see that the Governemnet isn’t always wrong, the secret affair behind his back ended and he and his wife got back together. His son has grown into a teenager.
Bobby had a relationship which ended after a few seasons. It isn’t always laugh out loud funny but it is actually pretty clever and thoughtful. Even Hank has had a few changes. When he learns something it stays learned. Story events actually have an effect on the characters. That isn’t so bad.
