Family Guy

What a great episode. When the Griffins are singing "Come All Ye Faithful" I actually felt GOOD. Not a usual feeling in this show (although the "penis" carved in the prison ceiling mitigated that some).

I love the Happy Asking Panda. I love the bit about Dancing With The Stars. I love the M&M Advent Calendar (leading to Peter getting shot by an M&M). And I love Stewie's story about how he bought the Malibu Barbie phone case. It was just a fine and funny episode that I greatly enjoyed. And the bit with Quagmire having all day to listen to Brian's rant about Christmas Carols was sublime too. Quagmire calling Brian on his crap will never get old.

I loved it. ****1/2.

I think both of those stories were disturbing, but Stewie and Lois's crossed the line into reprehensible. What kills me is that it falls into a trap the first two seasons did 20 years ago. It exists solely for shock value,. There isn't actually anything remotely funny about it. And that kills me that the writers don't understand that about comedy even after all these years. It's such a disturbing and upsetting premise it gives me dark thoughts about the morality of the writers, and what they think about when they aren't writing. Are their kids safe at home with them? I truly wonder. Frankly, the Fox Network deserves some blame here too. It not a question of being permissive enough to let them get away with it. It's a question of being wise enough to understand this is a comedy dead-end. But Fox execs have NEVER been good judges of comedy. It's on brand for the Fox censors and editors to fail their jobs the one time we actually needed them.

Most of my reviews wind up recaps of the episode I just saw, and I can't bring myself to do that. That would suggest this was a normal episode that I can pretend didn't totally upset me. Even for the crappier episodes of Family Guy, I see some value. This might be the first episode since "Excellence in Broadcasting", and only the second one since the show came back from cancelation, that I will simply never watch again. 0.

I don't feel like they said anything new with the Lois and Quagmire stuff. It was a nice psychological admission that Lois wanted Glen to try something so she could shoot him down and feel both desirable and morally superior. But everything else was just blah.

I think if you described the pizza plot's premise to someone, you'd get a far bigger laugh than the subplot actually delivered (pun intended). Other than Meg saying she wanted to shove the body in the sewer to keep Pennywise off her jock, nothing occurred funnier than the sentence "Peter and the kids cover up the death of a deliveryman in their house so Lois won't find out they ordered pizza." You describe the scenario and you laugh. You sit down and watch it, and it's just okay.

Meh week. The Simpsons handily won the night of Fox toons. **1/2.

Huh. New character. Brick Baker won't be replacing Doug's place of importance on the show anytime soon.

Frankly, I found the idea that Peter sued his neighbor without even meeting him ridiculous. Far more ridiculous than it being his lawyer.

Also, I have always considered "Family Guy" one of the worst names for a popular TV show ever. Only Arrested Development is worse. It's a name the show should be ashamed of. It pisses me off instead that they have been putting it in the end of random episode titles since the show came back. This was probably the worst example of that ever. Awful episode title, and maybe the worst the show has done since Season 1.

I love the guy from Brooklyn doing the play-by-play to the Surfin' Bird musical.

I loved Chris cheering at the excited energy Peter brought into the room.

Man, I forgot Tom Everett Scott existed. That bit answered the question of what would happen if that untrue mean-spirited joke about Ron Livingston being forgettable were an actual thing for another actor. Tom Everett Scott qualifies. I don't even remember what he looks like.

Local commercials always getting cut off at the end drives me nuts. It's amazing. All of the commercials are awful and I'm still always frustrated when they get cut off. Why is that? What is this deeply held belief in my psyche that everything on TV deserves a sense of completion, no matter what it is? It's very weird and human at the same time.

I love Lois making fun of the woman at the market who called Peter for her real estate business. That was super embarrassing.

I like hearing Sam Elliot say the words "fish whiz".

It was a pretty good episode. As far as winning the night of Fox toons goes, it surprises me that on the night The Simpsons delivered perhaps the greatest Martin Prince episode EVER, that they were not only slightly edged out by Bob's Burgers, but a Bob's Burgers that contained a poopy story from Linda. Weird night. ***.

I've never even heard of Succession and Big Little Lies.

Didn't understand the purpose of the Seth Green footage unless it was simply to remind us he's unfunny and unsuccessful.

It's true. Game of Thrones was only beloved for 6 and a half seasons. It then went downhill QUICK and became legitimately despised.

Come to think of it, the final battle with the White Walkers WAS kind of dark and hard to see.

Funny shot at Amazon Prime.

I don't much like Family Guy's trilogy episodes. Unless they're Viewer Mail. Bring back Viewer Mail.

Not a great night of Fox toons. Bob's Burgers won it with a night that was merely passable. **.

You wanna do a Bob's Burgers? Lead with that next time!

I liked it. Meg was acting crazy at the beginning of the episode, and it's neat there turned out to be a reason for it. Seymour not existing was a great twist, but even funnier was him being a real guy at the end running a Family Guy VR simulation. Really creative stuff.

The car chases were phenomenal too. Excellent animation there.

I also laughed at the "Who Else But Quagmire?" Guy at the funeral. The idea of Quagmire's subplot was really a bit genius. If I had a case of hiccups that never went away I'd prefer to be dead too. They're merely an annoyance when I have them, but if they were unending, they'd actually be torturous. Just like that old Simpsons cutaway: "Hic. Kill me. Hic."

Tight episode. Both Family Guy and The Simpsons were good tonight, but I'm giving a slight edge to The Simpsons, and declaring it the winner of Fox Toons. ****.

If people don't object to that, I think they should.

If you ask me, the premise is absolutely everything wrong with Family Guy. It's a serious subject matter that hits Lois only because the show hasn't done a Lois episode in awhile. It could have hit any of the other Griffins and nothing would have changed. It speaks to lazy writing, and frankly boring characters that a specific plot like this can randomly hit the mom of a sitcom and nobody blinks an eye. The indignity and humiliation of Lois dunking Stewie in the toilet to get the pill bothers me for that reason.

Family Guy's animation has improved since it came back. Its musical numbers are top-notch. Its observational humor and comic timing has never been better. But the characterization and bland storytelling is nearly as bad as when the show was absolutely terrible in its first two seasons. And this is not something the show has shown much interest in improving. And while Family Guy is delivering great voice performances and funny jokes, it's utterly failing the characters and any sort of credible storytelling. I don't know what the answer is. But MY personal answer is to complain about it. It's not okay. The show is so lazily written they couldn't even have Lois hurt her own back. They had to make her seem like the worst person ever to steal the pills from Brian. I don't think this show really understands how damaging it is to both their characters and any credibility the show ever tries to have by doing things like this.

I'm ragging this episode very hard. (And sort of ignoring the boring ping-pong subplot). Was there anything I actually liked? The runner of Lois repeatedly calling Stewie's name in the cage while he ignores her was absolutely perfect and sort of felt like just desserts for Stewie. I liked that scene very much and it made me genuinely laugh.

I don't know, Family Guy. I don't know how a show can be on the air for 20 years and still have trouble coming up with plausible plots and likable / interesting characters. Both of those things are not as hard as Family Guy is always making them seem. At all.

Bad night for Fox toons. The Great North won it with the only really good episode of the night. Bob's Burgers was middling, and this show and The Simpsons were outright terrible (although The Simpsons was much worse). *1/2.

Well, Family Guy easily won the week of Fox toons, simply because it was the only one with a decent episode.

Modern Lois episodes tend to be great and twisted at the same time. I like a lot of the female observations (done by male writers like Danny Smith, but still). The idea that Lois uses new nicknames to assert dominance is great, as is the idea that she does it to Stewie too.

My favorite Stewie bit was at the end where Alana says she never liked the baby. He says it's because he was always on to her. I laughed when she insisted that wasn't it. I bet after hearing that Stewie wished she was one of those people who couldn't understand him.

I think the most twisted and subversive thing in the episode is literally Peter and Lois' reunion at the end. What I like about it is it's the show pointing out its biggest flaw, in that Peter does unforgivable things that a real woman would leave him for, that Lois forgives at the end with an "Oh, Peter!". The specific subtext of that happening here sort of tells me they are aware of that problem, and even if they can't bring themselves to fix that aspect of the show, they at least aren't happy about it either. It's literally the thing about the show that pisses me off the most, and I like that the show sort of did a Mea Culpa there.

Pretty funny episode. ***1/2.

That was probably the saddest and most accurate slam at Pixar ever: "Pixar: We're no longer a guaranteed home run!"

I was amazed that did that exact same gag with Jamie getting electrified on the telephone wires on tonight's Simpsons episode with Mr. Burns. What a freaky coincidence.

It was fine. I think Bob's Burgers won the night of Fox Toons though. ***.

When I read the episode synopsis, I believed the show had run out of ideas. And no lie, the first half of the episode was terrible. The horse prom thing is one of the unfunniest bits the show has done in years, and it was not only really long, but it was repeated twice. About the best thing I can say for it is that unlike Conway Twitty, it's not likely to become a recurring joke. But it was almost as obnoxious as Conway Twitty.

Halfway through the ep, I starting liking some of it. The idea that Frasier cures insomnia is great. The return of Bears Scares was funny too.

I mentioned when I heard about the Stewie plot I thought the show ran out of ideas, but there were two good jokes. One was when Brian was ranting at Stewie he didn't want to diminish how weird Stewie's grown-up thing was, and the other was when Stewie said the nurse he talked to had a low tolerance for nonsense.

I think the reason the plotline felt even less funny than it should have is that due to the news, the episode's attacks on transgender people and abortion feel much more mean-spirited than were probably intended. I've had to adjust my comedy too. I used to always describe David E Kelly's TV shows as televised abortions, and I did that recently on a site I frequent, realized the subtext to that joke is entirely different in the current climate, and edited my post. While Family Guy wants to be an ally to liberals (and it does) the truth is those kinds of jokes feel more like personal attacks than they would have even six months ago. I don't envy comedy writers, especially those on shows that push boundaries. The attacks marginalized groups are now under seem really to have rather suddenly been amped up in the past couple of months. I don't know how a cartoon that takes more than a year to make can possibly keep up with all that. Things be scary.

The female Ghostbusters slam however was NOT out of bounds. But it's been remarked before, and repeatedly, not only on this show, but elsewhere. It's gratuitous because it's old, not because it's punching down.

Can I just say that Wild West is a poor substitute for Adam West? Maybe he wouldn't be if they could get Sam Elliot to say all of the dirty and inappropriate things Adam used to say, but they clearly can't. Elliott seems to have far too much personal pride and dignity to be the mayor of Quahog. It's becoming a problem.

The episode started off very badly, but the second half was passable. But The Simpsons won the week of Fox toons (which it seems to be doing quite often lately). **1/2.

Preston has turned out to be an all right character. I like that he's on the spectrum.

The show's travelogues continue to be hilarious. Great takedown of Atlantic City. I also like that the suicide notes are preprinted in the motel rooms.

Clark's not working out. Now he's winning them over.

Solid week. But The Simpsons won the last week of Fox toons. Again. ****.

Out of The Silence Of The Lambs, American Beauty, and Forrest Gump, the Silence Of The Lambs parody here is the odd man out. Why? Because it's the only one of those that actually DESERVED to win an Oscar. I woulda gone with Shakespeare In Love, although I doubt too many 14 years olds have seen it. It's been pretty much forgotten in the meantime.

If Chris wasn't Buffalo Bill, I would have been pissed. Seth Green based his entire voice performance as Chris on Ted Levine from that film.

I love that Buffalo Bill has a Bush / Quayle 92 sign outside of his house. Not subtle. But when has this show ever been?

The best Family Guy American Beauty joke occurred before the show was for real canceled the last time. After Peter talks about a piece of trash blowing in the wind proving the world is so beautiful it makes him sick, God yells down from Heaven, "It's just some trash blowing in the wind! Do you have any idea how complex your circulatory system is?"

Yes, the show manages to point out every bit of unpleasant subtext of American Beauty. The amazing thing is it was always skeevy. We just put up with it because it was an art film. If MeToo had occurred during Shakespeare's time, Romeo and Juliet would be as equally forgotten as that movie was.

Same deal with Forrest Gump. Donna describing the movie as sugarcoating Southern racism is putting it mildly. Peter talks about how badly written the running scene at the end is, as well as how illogical him running out of the crutches as a kid was, but I would have liked the parody more if it took a few more shots at the film's actual quality than that. I firmly believe Forrest Gump is the worst film to ever win an Oscar. American Beauty was a GOOD film that in no way shape or form deserved an Oscar. I think Forrest Gump is the only Best Picture winning film I've seen that I think is outright terrible.

And no, guys in wheelchairs don't belong on fishing boats. How dumb were 1994 audiences?

It was all right, but I think it was a mistake to do a gimmick parody episode for the season premiere. Bob's Burgers slightly edged out The Great North to win the night of Fox toons. ***.

It was pretty great. I like the observation that late fees are the thing that killed Blockbuster. They tried to change that policy right before they went out of business but it was too late. Netflix (the DVD rental version) destroyed them for it.

I like that they couldn't get Holiday Road. Mayor West says that Lindsay Buckingham must have said no. That's all right. There are probably very few things in life a man named Lindsay has control over.

For the record, the pink Starbursts are the best. THOSE are the ones you hoard.

They did a great callback at the end for Peter's most memorable antics, but only Stewie is insightful enough to point out that none of those are actually good things.

Family Guy is right about something: Card games are terrible. They really are. I used to play them all the time, but almost none of them were any fun. They were done to pass the time. They have no entertainment or fun value whatsoever. And they are playing the exact same game in Hell because the Devil knows what he's doing.

I am from the Northeast. I see Red-hatted people the same as the Griffins do. They both confuse and frighten me.

Family Guy easily won the night of Fox Toons. ****1/2.

Simpsons won the night of Fox toons. By a lot. *.