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The Worst Family Guy Episode Ever

Discussion in 'Shows' started by TheVoid, Mar 21, 2018.

  1. TheVoid

    TheVoid Well-Known Member

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    A couple of days ago Family Guy (a show that has long since run it's course and that many people agree is now pretty consistently bad) released an episode that even fans of the show are unwilling to defend. Many people are labelling it as either the most boring episode of Family Guy ever, or the absolute low point of the show (which is saying quite a lot).

    https://www.reddit.com/r/familyguy/comments/85frzx/march_18th_2018_the_worst_episode_of_family_guy/

    The episode is pretentious and incredibly boring. It can't be defended on the basis of trying something different, since a Hey Arnold episode used the same premise (Helga In The Chair) and the show itself already tried something similar with an earlier episode (Brian and Stewie). The episode is, essentially, Seth Macfarlane monologuing for almost the entire runtime, often using an incredibly annoying voice because part of the episodes 'deconstruction' of Stewie involves the reveal that 'gasp' the American baby doesn't actually have a natural British accent.

    People generally agree that the low point of the episode was when Stewie rambles on for about 5 minutes about the past of the psychiatrist (a character we've never seen before, and will never see again).

    The worst part of Family Guy has always been it's tendency to come across as being laughably out of touch with the common person (check out Brian's unrealistic large furnished apartment in the slum when he gets kicked out of the Griffin's house over a racist tweet) and incredibly blind/deaf when it comes to social issues (the infamous 'lightning rod' speech telling abuse victim to allow themselves to be abused). This episode combines both of Family Guy's main failings, and taints the episode with two more sins. It's incredibly pretentious, and it is arguably the most boring episode of any show that has ever been released.

    Even Space Ghost's slightly controversial Fire Ant episode wasn't as boring as this, mostly because the opening before the purposefully boring fire ant following scene was packed with great jokes, and the punchline at the end of the episode after the ten-minute sequence was phenomenal.

    Thoughts?
     
  2. Uncle Frank

    Uncle Frank Occasionally slips through the cracks

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    Family Guy is just a poor man's The Simpsons. And just like The Simpsons it doesn't know when to fucking stop. But of course FOX will keep it going until it stops making enough revenue.
     
  3. TheVoid

    TheVoid Well-Known Member

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    That's a very original observation that hasn't been stated plenty of times throughout the internet, you should be proud of yourself.

    Anyways, American Dad was taken off of Fox and it seems to be doing alright. Although, I don't think that Family Guy could make the same transition. I could be wrong though, but Family Guy is perhaps the second most expensive cartoon to animate, and I don't think any network other than Fox would pay the bill for a show that so many people hate with a passion. Fox seems to exist solely on the controversies it's shows generate.

    Also, the most that you can really say about The Simpsons at this point is that newer episodes are a bit boring and that the show has been on for far too long. Both fair points, but like I always tell people, I've made it a habit to show some of my friends clips from newer Simpsons episodes. My friends usually laugh, then say something like "Why can't newer episodes be this funny?" Without realizing that I've shown them a clip from the newest season.

    My theory is that at this point so many kids have grown up hearing "The Simpsons isn't as good as it used to be," that they treat it as a dogma. Whenever the show gets brought up they say it, whenever they watch a re-run they say it. At this point, I think it's become more of a robotic expression that they don't think about anymore than an honest opinion.

    Anyways, The Simpsons at it's worst has never, ever, been as bad as this. This new Family Guy episode has (in my opinion) lowered the bar for mainstream adult animation. It's the lowest point in the show's history, and everybody involved in the creation of this episode needs to feel at least a little bit ashamed.
     
  4. One Too Many

    One Too Many Sexual Orientation: Heavy Metal

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    I haven seen the newer seasons of Archer but if there’re anything like the previous few I think they’re comparable
     
  5. Pibot

    Pibot The autist formerly known as Pikonic

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    Family guy tries to be heavy and heart reaching and fails because it’s Family Guy.
    Family Guy is shock humor for the lowest common denominator of Americans and it really should leave heavy stuff out of its show. Having a hi-larious episode where Peter thinks the doctor is raping him and another more serious episode where a character has a sister in an abusive relationship don’t mix. There’s reasons to watch Family Guy and making you think or making you cry aren’t them.

    Matt Groening can do these types of things because Simpsons and Futurama because their characters have a personality that requires more than 1 word to describe and the humor isn’t offensive for the sake of being offensive. The episode Lisa’s Substitute wouldn’t work if you swap out the Simpsons for the Griffins. People still talk about Jurassic Bark being the saddest thing ever and we didn’t know this dog before the episode. Jurassic Bark aired 16 years ago. Brian died, like 4 years ago, and nobody talked about it a month after it happened.

    Seth wants to make political statements and deep thoughts, but he also wants to make a show to appeal to every dumb American, but you can’t have both, which is what he wants.
    It’s why American Dad is better than Family Guy, because it at least came close to that happy medium.
     
    Last edited: Mar 26, 2018
  6. Kong

    Kong SCION OF LEGEND

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    tbh this is why you should just watch chinese cartoons and not this western shit
     
  7. Descent

    Descent Well-Known Member

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    HOW!? Barely anything moves in any given scene and when something does it looks like it's just a few frames a second. Family Guy is one of the most lifelessly animated cartoons I've ever seen that wasn't from Dingo pictures.
     
  8. TheVoid

    TheVoid Well-Known Member

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    Every main voice actor gets paid more than $250k per episode.
     
  9. ToroidalBoat

    ToroidalBoat ¿qué?

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    It's the animation equivalent of those comics Bill Watterson called "xeroxed talking heads."

    America really loves to overpay celebrities.
     
    Last edited: Mar 26, 2018
  10. TheVoid

    TheVoid Well-Known Member

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    It's more like the people who make films/comics/music/etc have so little faith in their creations that they believe that the only way that people would buy their stuff is if there is a marketable name or an exceptionally talented individual involved, and they'll pay whatever ridiculous price that the person asks for to get them involved.

    Remember how in the early 1960s Laurence Olivier was paid 50k per day (or something like that, I can't remember the exact amount) to act in a terrible Korean movie because he knew that the movie was terrible and wouldn't have done it otherwise. Of course, that kind of backfired on them because Laurence would talk about how terrible it was every chance he got, and they spent almost their entire budget on paying him and couldn't actually release the film. It ended up getting released in the 80s.
     
  11. ShipperOfHeart

    ShipperOfHeart Well-Known Member

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    Family Guy can never do a serious topic. They treat men getting abused/raped/etc as hilarious and comedy (See: Peter-aasment and any jokes that ends in Peter getting raped, such as in Dial Meg for Murder), but even women being abused isn't treated right (See: Meg.) Even when they brought back Quagmire's abused sister, they held an intervention for her to get away from him rather than hold one for the abuser and tell him to get help. Joe also says he cannot arrest the abuser unless the sister makes a charge-even if there's hard evidence, but can arrest someone just for making a threat.
    That's because for Lisa's substitute, they built up that most adults in town do not care, and Lisa finally found a role model, but was crushed when he had to leave, and he left her a note to remind her about who she is- Family Guy would make it all a joke- like making the train the sub was on horribly crash and burn, or reveal he didn't actually care and gives every kid that note. As for Futurama, Fry was shown to have a bad life in the past (neglecting parents, cheating girlfriend, etc), and just that one episode with flashbacks of Skinner were enough- the one thing Fry had from his past he truly loved (and loved him back) was gone. It's like the episode that showed Yancy truly missed and loved his brother, naming his son "Phillip", and that his mom dreamed of Fry returning after he vanished- even though she was neglectful, she really loved her son. Family Guy had almost 15 years to build up Brian as likable, but just made him very unlikable and preachy- and people knew it was a ratings trap- since synopsis included Brian in later episodes. The episode also treated his death like nothing, getting a dog just 3 months after he died (when they say thats not the best option) and having only Stewie really miss Brian. Family Guy does not handle death of characters tastefully (see Peter's dad, Mort's Wife, and everyone else they killed off)

    Considering Seth voices almost half the main cast, that doesn't leave a lot of people.
     
    Someone In A Tree likes this.
  12. TheVoid

    TheVoid Well-Known Member

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    Well, honestly, many animated shows have a voice actor who voices a ton of characters. Harry Shearer and Dan voice a lot of characters on The Simpsons for instance. It isn't too unusual that Seth Macfarlane voices a lot of characters on Family Guy.

    Plus, Family Guy has Seth Green, Patrick Warburton and Mila Kunis and a couple other voice actors playing re-occuring characters. As far as a voice cast goes, even with Seth voicing a lot of characters, it's pretty packed.
     
    Harrison Gentleman likes this.
  13. ShipperOfHeart

    ShipperOfHeart Well-Known Member

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    Well true- but most Simpsons episodes are not just one person voicing other characters, essentially talking to themself. Seth makes up almost half the Griffin family and half of Peter's friend group (which can be said for Dan and voicing Homer and Barney- but the main friend group seems to be Homer, Carl, and Lenny). For example, Julie Kavner voices Marge's side of the family- but there has not been an episode where only Marge, her sisters, and mom were the sole characters. As the episode mentioned in the start of the forum says, it is essentially Seth talking to himself (sure there was a Guest Star voice, but we won't see him again) and Brian shows up last minute in the end for a joke. Then there was Brian and Stewie, which was just Seth doing two voices having a conversation. We see clips like that in Simpsons, like Homer and his dad, but they aren't the only ones in the episode. As Wikipedia puts it, he is the only one whose voice is in every episode- in Simpsons, every main cast member gets a voice in somewhere. Out of the top 4 main "background" voices for Family Guy, three are writers on the show (Warburton is not listed as a main cast member, he is listed under reoccurring cast)
     
  14. ToroidalBoat

    ToroidalBoat ¿qué?

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  15. Someone In A Tree

    Someone In A Tree Well-Known Member

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    I haven't regularly watched Family Guy in several years. Coincidentally, one of the episodes that turned me away was when Brian and Stewie are trapped in a bank vault and the show painfully attempts to get the viewer to care about these characters. The show is just not multifaceted enough to pull it off and every attempt to do so is embarrassing. It would be like having Bugs Bunny talk about being molested as a child.
     
  16. NAITCHA BAH

    NAITCHA BAH 16-time World Champion

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    Fucking this. If a show has gone on more than eight seasons, chances are that It's probably crap. I assumed everyone knew this.
     
  17. Uncle Frank

    Uncle Frank Occasionally slips through the cracks

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    Seinfeld, Doctor Who, Always Sunny, Red Dwarf and South Park have disproven that.
     
  18. ToroidalBoat

    ToroidalBoat ¿qué?

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    Simpsons arguably made it to season 10 while still being good, but the quality began to decline in season 9, especially with The Principal and the Pauper (the "Armin Tamzarian" episode).
     
    Last edited: May 26, 2018
  19. NAITCHA BAH

    NAITCHA BAH 16-time World Champion

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    Fixed it for ya. And Season 11 of Sunny was kind of crap. This last season was good because they're getting ready for the next season to be the last one.
     
  20. Ore Rosechu

    Ore Rosechu Rockin' da house

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    Eh to be honest Family Guy was never good, not even in the olden days when it wasn't trying to be edgelord shit and telling morals it wasn't good at.

    Personally my last straw with it was the Quagmire's Dad episode

    No Seth, you don't get to brag about how you have the "Most sympathetic trans story in television" (something he actually did) when you literally have your author avatar character compare transpeople to sex offenders in said episode

    You fixed it pretty accurately. If we're talking New Who it basically died a very painful death as soon as Peter Capaldi showed up. It wasn't his fault he was a decent doctor, this is just when the writers decided they no longer gave a shit.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 26, 2024 at 6:31 PM