Isn't Family Guy The Worst?
 

Let me start this off by saying I didn’t always hate Family Guy. Hell there are still plenty of episodes that I really enjoy, but in recent years Family Guy has turned into the most offensively terrible piece of programming to ever fucking air on American television.

Let’s pretend Family Guy is a race horse, and Seth McFarlane is its rich, cold-hearted owner. Somewhere around 2010 McFarlane looked at his former prize stallion and realized its best days were behind it and it was time to hang it up. But, being the sick bastard that he is, he decides to put a bullet in one of its legs and then forces it to run just for laughs to see how long it can go before it just keels over and dies. That’s Family Guy, a former prize stallion pathetically limping its way to a slow, painful, and universally humiliating death.

I don’t even know where to start so I’ll just go by category:

1) Writing: Never really the show’s strong point, but what passes for a script on that show now is an insult to anyone who has ever pursued the art of writing comedy or anything beyond an instruction manual really. First off, the dialogue is so fucking straight forward and one-dimensional that it almost hurts to listen to. For a show that more or less functions on being socially ‘relatable’ none of the conversations sound even somewhat believable. In recent episodes very heavy social issues are frequently reduced down to the most banal non-opinions you can imagine, all while Peter (the fucking protagonist of this shit stain on animation) just makes un-funny and unrelated quips seemingly for the sole purpose of making the viewer forget how painful what they are watching really is. The ‘writers’ of Family Guy also seem to have not gotten the memo that breaking the fourth wall is beyond trite, and have now made it one of the trademarks of the show. I get it, sometimes it’s cool to poke fun at yourself. But when all you do is acknowledge how bad your own work is, doesn’t a little part of you start to yearn for something more? Probably not, especially when Fox keeps throwing you millions of dollars for what is essentially complete and total tripe. Where the show really breaks any illusion of believability is when it tries to go for the heart-strings. All too often the ‘minds’ behind Family Guy seem to think that after 20-odd minutes of horrifyingly bad ‘plot’, dialogue, and unbelievable/inconsistent characters I am ready to swallow some half-assed heart-felt conclusion and feel even an iota of care for these shittastic characters and their poorly constructed plights. When I watch The Simpsons, somewhere in there I can believe that this is a family that cares about one-another and the heart-felt moments actually manage to gain a little weight, even more so in King of The Hill, Futurama, and Bob’s Burgers. In Family Guy, these scenes of emotional appeal almost feel like a fucking insult. Seriously? After a 5 minute fight with a man in a chicken costume, or a 3-minute scene of vomiting you expect me to wipe away a fucking tear for any of the wooden characters in this show? Get a grip.

2) Voice Acting: Other than the characters voiced by Seth McFarlane, not one voice on this show inspires the kind of hilarity that those in any of the other animated shows mentioned above do. Frankly, most of them are horrible. There is one voice actor in particular, usually used for one-off characters in cut-aways whose consistently wooden performances make me cringe almost every time. He’s clearly trying to play the believable straight-man, but he just comes out sounding more wooden than a fucking petrified forest. Even worse on the background character front are any minorities, particularly any black characters. Cleveland is fine I suppose, but every other black side-character literally sounds like Isaac Hayes from the fucking ‘Shaft’ theme song. It’s not believable and above-all, its just kind of offensive. It painfully illuminates how limited the Family Guy crew’s world view is and robs such jokes of any modicum of comic potential. As for the main characters… I just don’t even know what to say. It’s like when someone shows you something awful and asks for your feedback, but you know this is basically the best they can do and as such can’t give them any advice. Seth Green, Mila Kunis, and Patrick Warburton seem like cool people, but their line delivery is beyond half-hearted. Adam West is the best voice actor in the show other than Seth McFarlane, and that should tell you everything you need to know.

3) Animation: Family Guy has always had an amateurish quality (or lack thereof) about it. But where it contributed to the fun of the early seasons, as the show went on it’s crappiness just became an accessory to the show’s all-around suckiness. It’s not that the drawings or character designs are bad per-se as much as it is that it all feels sort of soulless and flat. This has only gotten worse as the show has transitioned into HD. wWhere outside backdrops were already kind of uninteresting (compare them to The Simpsons where just about any exterior scene can be paused to reveal a great gag) they have now become outright empty. The incorporation of computer animation into the show seems to be an accessory to further laziness on the part of the animation staff rather than a tool to expedite the addition of more gags and greater detail. Where the Simpsons took full advantage of the HD leap, Family Guy just became flatter, duller, and more or less completely soulless. The motion in Family Guy’s animation, for lack of a better term, just fucking fails to ‘nail it’ about 90% of the time. Every time I watch an episode of the Simpsons, I see something and think “I need a gif of that”. I never think that when I watch Family Guy, and that’s because the animation is just plain flat. You don’t get the impression anyone put much time into the small details, and even worse I suspect these people lack the artistic sensibility to even know how. I’m not an artist so I can’t get into technicalities here, all I know is that everything in this show screams ‘nothing special,’ and that that is a problem.

4) Sheer Offensiveness: Now I am not usually the kind to get hung up on offensive content. An aspect of white male privilege is the ability to not be offended by most jokes, but god dammit Family Guy takes that idea and fucking revels in it. Seriously, if you ever need to illustrate White Male Privilege to someone, any episode of Family Guy from the last 3 years or so would be a pretty good place to start. Unfortunately, I don’t really know where to start when it comes to the multitude of levels on which Family Guy is just outright offensive. Now before you cry “FREE SPEECH” or “Have a sense of humor man,” let me transcribe an offending example of this show’s reckless mockery:

In a recent episode in which Joe’s son reappears after deserting the Iraq War (an all around terrible episode btw), Quagmire’s father, a post-op transgendered Woman suggests that the women at the table all go to the powder room to leave an awkward situation at the dinner table. Lois Griffin, the show’s female protagonist, replies to this with:

"You can use the yard".

What in the ever loving fuck is that. Seriously, comparing transgendered people to fucking animals? I could MAYBE excuse the joke if Lois Griffin were supposed to be looked down upon and laughed at as an out of date bigot, but this character is supposed to be liked and related to. That line partially justifies and encourages the vicious murders and attacks that transgendered individuals all around the world have to fear every day and I don’t think that’s funny at all.

This instance is a text book example of the carelessness with which Family Guy carries itself. For the sake of brevity in a post that’s already too long as it is, I’m only going to bring up one other example, and that is the episode in which Chris Griffin falls in love with an Autistic Girl who then winds up being abusive towards him.

The worst part about this episode is how it clearly goes out of its way to make sure you can’t call it offensive, i.e. “How is it offensive I he likes her, if she bullies him, etc. etc.” In other words, the writers of Family Guy basically thought it was a fun idea to troll autistic people. Like so many of Family Guy’s more tasteless moments, it’s like they refuse to commit to being offensive so that they can just play it off like they’re the good guys. Think when someone insults the fuck out of you for like 10 minutes and then pulls you in, gives you a nookie, and says “AH you know I love ya!”. NO matter what they may or may not have intended their words still sting and you don’t appreciate being made to feel like an idiot for being upset. That’s what’s ultimately so irritating about Family Guy’s pursuit of offensiveness. In the past Family Guy mostly seemed happy pushing societal buttons all in good fun, mocking things like religion, politicians, and some of society’s sillier taboos. No longer content with that, Family Guy has turned it’s intent towards mocking any and everything that does not embody their straight, white male point of view. Unlike South Park, which goes balls deep and in a way lessens its level of sheer offensiveness in the process, Family Guy’s half-hearted attempts to pull back at the end of episodes just adds insult to injury and makes the viewing experience all the more frustrating.

I fucking hate Family Guy, and to be quite frank I’m not to keen on the people its more recent episodes appeal to either. I can understand if you watch it just because it’s on, but if you are laughing at and agreeing with a good 80% of the content in this sorry excuse for comedy, I really can’t say I have any respect for you, which seems fair given that I can’t assume you have much respect for anyone else either.
:fuckyou:

Haha couldn't agree with you more Family Guy sucks.

The only funny parts in family guy are the conway twitty scenes.

i found it unwatchable and utterly annoying from the first time i set eyes (and ears) on it.

i've never managed to finish a single episode, even if i tried to figure out what its great fame was about.

so, everything you're saying, i agree (to my limited knowledge) except since forever.

maybe its essential characteristics just became more obvious to you as time passed.

^I was first exposed to Family Guy when I was about 11. My taste at that age was... less than discerning (although I did have a really heavy love for The Ramones)

I have hated it with full rage passion since it first aired.

Yeah, it sux big time.

On a semi related note, I find myself begrudgingly enjoying American Dad from time to time (although its roughly just as deplorable as Family Guy)

Yeah, American Dad has some redeeming qualities.
Roger does it for me 'cause just his voice reminds me of Paul Lynde (ie: Uncle Arthur in 'Bewitched' from the 60's)

yes! its main redeeming quality is that the remote allows you to turn off the tv when that is showing, ha ha ha.

also, it gives you an excuse to shoot your tv if you're into that sort of thing.

"If you're into that sort of thing..."

sounds rather kinky..

i put a hammer through my tv screen once (it was hard like a rock! took a few swings!).

crt tvs were made with vacuum tubes so they imploded with a soft "whoosh" sound.

Glad you mentioned this. I always feel like a pussy when I'm the only one in the room going, "I'm not sure AIDS victims and their families are chuckling right now."

Show is and always was garbage.
All the jokes are just regurgitated references to other things in pop culture, art style is hideous to look at, character voices are all irritating. Redeeming qualities = zero.

Best animated comedy show currently going is Archer.

all this stuff is about degrading the audience and selling eyeballs.

yeah they're incredibly hard. there was this old guy living near my highschool with a yard full of dated electronics and i used to steal his computer monitors, i'd set them on fire and drop them off a bridge and the front part of it would barely be scratched

don't like Family guy and Seth erks me a little. can't say i haven't watched this show on a calm Sunday night on Adult Swim while zonning out. it ain't no godddamn Simpsons that's for sure.

American Dad is tolerable. esp the one with the murdering hot tub, but that's because it had a cool R&B tune .

I like Family Guy but I suppose that's because TV or most movies churn out the sort of culture I don't take seriously anyway. It's there and I enjoy it. I am deep, don't you know? So deep.

It's hard not to take it seriously when the show's prime directive is to be relatable to a certain breed of middle American idiot.
I've known plenty of generally well liked and influential idiots who often cite Family Guy when making bigoted jokes or generally mocking those who are already rather disenfranchised.

For a show with so much reach to be as reckless as it is qualifies as significant in my book.

i loved it when it first came on. ever since its been back from cancellation its been more and more horrible. it just seems like an excuse for seth mcfarlane to sing showtunes numbers which i cannot stand.

It's 2014, we're all aware of how bad Family Guy is.

On the other hand though, I'd rather watch it than new Simpsons episodes. Also I've never understood the people who hate Family Guy but champion American Dad. They're both terrible but American Dad has the added fallacy of being boring, at least the cutaways in Family Guy are occasionally funny despite their lack of context within the episode's plot.

when seth macfarlane dies, i'll laugh. in the same way as peter does that annoying laugh in the show at inappropriate moments.

seth tried to prove their was existential depth to his self aggrandizing racist pile of shit of a show with that episode in which brian shows off his gun and talks about his depression.

if seth shoots himself in the head, he still won't have found the dignity that has so far totally evaded his spoilt arrogant excruciatingly unfunny upper class ass in real life.

reality obviously hates us all, because seth was actually supposed to be on one of the planes that crashed into the world trade centre on 9/11, but missed his flight due to being too drunk to get out of bed!

this is a man who compared his attempts to get one of his animations accepted for an award to martin luther kings struggle for civil rights.

fuck you seth. i hope you do kill yourself because you're the most obnoxious piece of shit, and everyone around you just wants the money being associated with you can bring them.

you think you're better than the racist rednecks you constantly rip on, but at least those supposedly irredeemably racist, homophobic bigots have the decency to say "fuck off" to minorities they don't like, rather than what you do, which is so much worse. pretend to be on their side, then insult them with a viciousness and scorn that goes beyond what the majority of people that openly despise them would imagine doing. and you really are such a myopic piece of crap that you actually expect them to like you for this.

"i don't understand why the trans community has such a problem when i belittle and humiliate trans characters in the most disgusting way possible, yet slap on the most saccharine faux sincere message about tolerance and acceptance! why can't they just let me degrade them for fun and profit?!?!?! i voted democrat!"

anyway, yeah, fuck family guy. nastiness and bad jokes. and plagiarism!

and don't worry about everything i just said, because it was a big ironic joke! a parody of what someone who hates seth macfarlane would say! or was it? the point is you can never know for sure! that's how i get away with it and prove how smart i am! hehehe! i just made a hundred million dollars! i totally deserve it as someone with SO MUCH talent who was born into the upper class but makes shitty tv shows about what i think poorer people are like! yay me!

here's another joke that you can't possibly be offended by - seth macfarlane can't fight the depression anymore and shoots himself in the head, he slowly bleeds to death in a quasi conscious state until the immigrant house cleaner he hires and makes fun of finds his dead body the next day.

it's a hilarious joke isn't it? of course it's a joke and not something i would ever say in real life. and certainly not something i really hope actually happens! not at all!

i agree, Seth Macfartlin should die. he erks me like Little Red Riding Hood did when i was 3 years old......... that bitch gots to die a messily perverted death.

American Daddy and Family Dude both suck seth's farts and 500,000 good episodes could never equal one Simpsons show. that's fo sho. no matter if the Simpsons suck now.

word. white boy!!!

even when they literally steal jokes from the simpsons, they still suck.

believe me, i've watched a lot of cartoons. family guy leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. i've tried very hard to laugh at what it does now, to identify whatever level of meta irony that it takes to make these jokes something other than nasty, vicious insults designed to degrade minorities in the most humiliating way possible - but i can't. also, the longer family guy goes on, the more it seems like they can't do ANY kind of humour anymore. there's nothing funny. as alan already said, the plot, voice acting etc. are all fucking atrocious - really really really poor. but they don't need to be great for a comedy show to work.

i can't laugh at anything that happens in family guy anymore. i love black humour more than most people, but every time family guy tries it it just doesn't work.

also, it's responsible for reviving some of the most crude and ugly racist stereotypes. a lot of the anti semitic 'jokes' in the show rely on stereotypes that i wasn't even aware of. there's probably a lot of people in this generation who have now been exposed to them thanks to seth macfarlane, who is the only person apart from the openly racist right wing that finds them funny. jews have big noses huh? that's great seth. go drink yourself to sleep again you pompous fucking dickweed.

who tha fuck has ever laughed at Family Guy?

we all watch it zoned out and bored like most americans or others. mindless entertainment, like a sucky book or watching paint dry. it's the great american past time now sans extra sans baseball. except (Family Guy and the like) they are all retarded new england cartooon characters. blah fuck

i tried to google this but the only thing that came up was this post this trivializes martin luther king's life and work in another moronic context


In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday, can we please get some black emoticons? I'm tired of using this 👳

i don't hate seth macfarlane of course. because he's a comedian which in our day and age essentially means saying the things people are ashamed to even think in the most public way possible, and then expecting people to idolise and pay you for it.

i literally think i hate every comedian. i've been enjoying the show broad city quite abit but the brilliant slavery joke in episode 1 made it pretty clear i don't wanna be their pal. in the show their conversation is overheard by a black woman at an awkward moment, but in reality they spent time writing that and thinking that it would just be hilarious if a black person was suddenly reminded of slavery when trying to do their job as a cashier, and then had to show it to comedy executives who also thought it was brilliant if it made the air

to top it all off, it's produced by feminist icon amy poehler, the heroine who has devoted her life to making sure women have the same opportunities as men to regularly insult native americans in front of a large tv audience and get filthy rich from it

i'm not perfect, or even a remotely decent person, and i am indeed ashamed of myself... the last part is what makes me at least slightly different from the christian deity known as satan (the only comedian who's ever actually been funny). wanting the adoration of the masses in exchange for being a shitbag who doesn't care about anyone but themselves is exactly what catholics think lucifer was kicked out of heaven for, and if the people who actually think the asshole pope is chosen by god think someone can actually be too arrogant for heaven then he must have been a pretty big asshole to get kicked out i think.

i'm literally thinking of starting a christian sect that believes everyone but comedians gets to go to heaven, if the bible actually said 'every popular english language comedian alive in 2014 will be subjected to eternal torment' then i would be in church RIGHT NOW EVEN THOUGH IT'S 10:31 PM ON THURSDAY



i was thinking of adding seth macfarlane's face to the cover of the album 'satan is real', but the idea of connecting the guy with art with produced for any reason besides self aggrandizing through denigration of others is too kind for comedians, also it would actually be funny, and including the most unfunny person in history in decent joke would be too charitable of me.

he definitely said it. google interviews with him cos im too lazy.

i understand the hate for stand up comedians. i have more respect for people who clean the streets than them.

anyone who isn't an idiot would realize this.

unfortunately the idiots that actually write these shows think that people can't look away from their genius so they decide to fulfill their 'responsibility' to comment on things that actually require thought, despite the fact that they're too in love with themselves to portray any other person as something other than trash to be mass ridiculed