Posted Mar 12th 2007 8:00AM by Brett Love
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, FOX, Family Guy, Animation
(S05E13) Ya know, no matter what part political affiliation you claim, I think we can all agree that Bill Clinton lends himself well to comedy. There's just enough hillbilly in his character to make him easy to laugh at.
Family Guy certainly isn't the first show to take a run at Clinton, and they've now featured the former president four or five times, but there's plenty of room at that party.
That's getting ahead of the game though. Before we could get to the Peter and Bill hijinks, there was the loosely relevant opening at the Quahog Marine Center. While it was a long way to go to get to the main plot, there were a lot of funny bits in that opening. Herbert at the fondle tank, Stewie's stripper line, and Seamus saving Peter from the octopus were all good bits. I especially liked the Wacky Wall Walker finish to that.
Continue reading Family Guy: Bill and Peter's Bogus Journey
Posted Mar 5th 2007 7:55AM by Brett Love
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, FOX, Family Guy, Animation
(S05E12) Looking back on this one, as an admitted Stewie fan, I'm surprised that I liked it as much as I did. For the most part, my favorite
Family Guy episodes are those where Stewie gets his own feature plot. He was relegated to Meg or Chris background status here, but the episode was still one of the best of the season.
Chalk a lot of that up to giving Quagmire a chance to shine. He's a great character, so it's nice to get to see him used a little more on occasion. If the experiment with Stewie and Brian's talk show,
Up Late, goes well, I wouldn't mind seeing Quagmire get his own show. Maybe something along the lines of
Midnight Q from "PTV." He did have the line of the night with his "...contents of your panties may have shifted..." bit after missing the flight.
Continue reading Family Guy: Airport '07
Posted Mar 4th 2007 8:07PM by Brad Linder
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, FOX, Family Guy, Animation, Web
Brian and Stewie Griffin's talk show
Up Late is on the air... if you consider
MySpace to be the air.
Up Late with Stewie and Brian is an online-only spinoff of
Family Guy, featuring everybody's favorite animated characters who wouldn't be able to talk in a live-action version of the TV show.
The first 10-minute episode includes an interview with Rob Corddry, who conveniently has a new TV show (
The Winner) to hawk. And the show just happens to be on Fox, the same network as
Family Guy. By some strange coincidence, Fox also owns MySpace. What are the odds? Did I mention that
The Winner is produced by
Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane and writer Ricky Blitt?
Continue reading Family guy starts web-only episodes - VIDEO
Posted Feb 19th 2007 7:30AM by Brett Love
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, FOX, Family Guy, Animation
(S05E11) The title of this episode led me to expect something much different than what we ended up seeing. The reference to The
Life Aquatic made me think that this episode would find the Griffin's on some sort of adventure. No such luck there, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. I think that idea could have made for a funny episode, but this one worked out ok.
It was something of the opposite of "Peter's Two Dads." Where that one excelled with the structure of the story, this one wasn't as strong. But the collection of cutaways presented with this episode was far superior. Of course, given that I only liked one of them last week, that's a pretty low bar. We'll save those for last though, and get to the meat of the episode. As is often the case, we had a Peter story balanced with a Stewie story.
Continue reading Family Guy: The Tan Aquatic With Steve Zissou
Posted Feb 12th 2007 7:30AM by Brett Love
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, FOX, Family Guy, Animation
(S05E10) When I checked the schedule and saw the title of this episode was "Peter's Two Dads" I was a little torn. First, the Peter-centric episodes generally have a much higher chance of going off the rails. On the other hand, the possibility that it would be a play on the 80's sit-com
My Two Dads, which starred Greg Evigan, Paul Reiser, and Staci Keanan, was intriguing.
Unfortunately (probably only for me), that idea never materialized, and the episode that we did see still left me with something of a mixed reaction. On the good side, it was well constructed, and I give a lot of points to the writers for a well thought out plot. Chris got a bit of the short shrift, but using Meg's birthday as the setting for offing Francis was a good choice. It involved her in what was otherwise a mostly Peter affair.
Continue reading Family Guy: Peter's Two Dads
Posted Feb 5th 2007 5:32PM by Julia Ward
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, FOX, The Simpsons, Family Guy, Animation
Back in July,
Richard gave you the scoop on comedian Brian Froud's theater show
Swiss Family Guy Robinson. Froud's one-man act is essentially a staged mash-up of Johann Rudolf Wyss' 1812 novel and Seth MacFarlane's animated series. Froud's show was a hit at Toronto's Fringe Festival, but his chances of ever staging the show again are slim to none.
Fox has slapped Froud with a cease-and-desist order for unauthorized use of
Family Guy characters.
Continue reading Fox issues cease-and-desist order to Swiss Family Guy Robinson
Posted Feb 3rd 2007 8:02AM by Adam Finley
Filed under: FOX, Family Guy, Animation
I don't know why, but my last two requests for readers to purchase toys for me have not resulted in hundreds of you scurrying to your wallets to buy said products. Was it something I said? Is it because I stood your sisters up at prom? You try buying two hundred and thirty-eight corsages and renting all those limos. It's not easy.
Anyway, here goes request number three: I want this freakin' sweet Family Guy pinball game. Oh, sweet crunchy Jesus, I do so want that pinball game. The pinball game includes figures of all six of the Griffin family members, a Stewie Griffin mini-pinball game, a Pawtucket Patriot Ale can with a little Brian figure on top, and all new voices recorded just for the game by series creator and voice actor Seth MacFarlane. Also, this pinball machine will make the owner the envy of all men, and the object of desire for all women.
[via Planet Family Guy]
Posted Jan 30th 2007 8:58AM by Brett Love
Filed under: Industry, Family Guy, Veronica Mars, Ugly Betty, Ratings
Nielsen Media Research is making a change to their television ratings. In the past, children of a Nielsen family that were away at college were not factored into the numbers. After doing some research, sponsored by Turner, WB, CBS, MTV, Fox, and ESPN, those college kids will now count in the regular Nielsen ratings.
The
NY Times article (possible login) points to
America's Next Top Model, Family Guy, Ugly Betty, and [adult swim] as programming that should see a boost in their ratings. Disturbingly, it also mentions that in a test done last November the most popular show among college men was
Drawn Together. The audience for the Comedy Central cartoon jumped from 272,000 to 435,000. What are they teaching our youth on these campuses?
This certainly isn't the final answer in the ratings question. There are still plenty of problems and issues with the system, but it is a positive change. Especially so if it gives a much needed boost to the struggling
Veronica Mars numbers.
Posted Jan 29th 2007 6:59AM by Brett Love
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, FOX, Family Guy, Animation
(S05E09) For the first time in a month and a half, we finally have a new
Family Guy. I'm not sure I understand the thought process behind the programming at Fox, but the bright side is it means we'll have plenty of new episodes for the second half of the season.
The
FG team went back to familiar territory this week, bringing us another "Road to..." episode. If you close your eyes really tight, you can almost see the eventual special edition DVD commercial. Like "Road to Rhode Island" and "Road to Europe" before it, this one was split into two separate stories that had virtually nothing to do with each other. And also like those that came before, I preferred the Stewie and Brian story.
Continue reading Family Guy: Road to Rupert
Posted Jan 5th 2007 4:03PM by Adam Finley
Filed under: FOX, Family Guy, Animation
Two and a half months ago, when negotiations between 20th Century Fox and Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane reached a standstill, the writers for the series were told not to report to work. According to Variety, the suits at 20th Century Fox didn't want to stop production midway because a deal was never solidified, despite the fact MacFarlane's contract wasn't up for several months.
Continue reading Production begins on sixth season of Family Guy
Posted Dec 18th 2006 8:09AM by Brett Love
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, FOX, Family Guy, Animation
(S05E08) December is a tough month for TV. "Barely Legal" is the only new
Family Guy episode for the month, as they are off again next Sunday. But hey, if you are only going to do one episode in a month, might as well make it a good one. And this one was.
It seemed like more of a cohesive story than we have seen in a while as the whole family was tied in to the same storyline. Not only that, but it was a Meg story. She's been almost absent from the show so far this season, so it was a nice change of pace to move the focus away from Peter and Stewie.
Continue reading Family Guy: Barely Legal
Posted Dec 15th 2006 9:01AM by Julia Ward
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Other Comedy Shows, FOX, Industry, OpEd, House, The Simpsons, Family Guy
Thanks to the godless triple threat of
Family Guy,
The Simpsons and
House, Fox has unseated NBC as the "most anti-religious network" in America according to the
Parents Television Council. Way to go, Fox. UPN came in second with ABC picking up the bronze. This
announcement came along with the Council's release of
Faith in a Box 2005-2006, an annual report on how religion is portrayed in prime time.
As you might imagine, it's not a pretty picture in the Council's eyes. Religious themes are coming up less often, and when they do, they're given a negative spin. PTC president Brent Bozell had this to say: "After Mel Gibson's film,
The Passion of the Christ, there was a lot of talk that Hollywood finally had found religion. But with television, sadly, this wasn't true. In fact, it was the opposite."
Continue reading Fox most 'anti-religious' network
Posted Dec 8th 2006 9:31AM by Julia Ward
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Other Comedy Shows, Industry, Battlestar Galactica, Gilmore Girls, Lost, Family Guy, Animation, The Office, Celebrities
This may come as a shock to you, readers, but the writers of scripted television programs hate reality TV. And, do you know what they hate even more than reality TV? Network censors. If you've been watching
Studio 60, you already know this. Those standards and practices people are such prudish little worrywarts - cowering in their offices, praying the FCC won't smack the network's hand for using the word "butt" in primetime.
This past Wednesday,
television's top showrunners got together for a
Hollywood Radio and Television Society luncheon where they got to grouse collectively about the twin evils of Mark Burnett and broadcast standards. Chiming in were
Family Guy's Seth MacFarlane,
The Office's Greg Daniels,
Lost's Damon Lindelof,
Gilmore Girls' Amy Sherman-Palladino and
Battlestar Galactica's Ron Moore (pictured) among others. The discussion was facilitated by Jimmy Kimmel. How much would you have loved to be in that room? How much would I love to be working for any single person in that room - really, any of them?
Continue reading Radio and Television Society takes on censorship and reality TV
Posted Dec 7th 2006 12:27PM by Julia Ward
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Other Comedy Shows, Industry, CSI: Miami, Desperate Housewives, Family Guy, Animation, Celebrities, South Park
Non-profit advocacy group
People for the American Way are hosting a
ten-day charity auction that includes some mighty tempting television-related items. If you've got the cash, TV-loving friends and an altruistic spirit, consider your holiday shopping complete. Up for grabs are set visits to
Desperate Housewives and
CSI: Miami, tours of
South Park Studios and the Playboy Mansion, signed scripts from
Family Guy and
Oz, signed books by Al Franken and James Carville, lunch with Elvira at the Magic Castle and an invite to a table read with the cast of
Family Guy.
How did a Washington-based advocacy group get so connected to the Left Coast? One of the organization's founders is none other than Norman Lear, the man who created
The Jeffersons,
Good Times,
Maude and
All in the Family.
Continue reading People for the American Way auctions off TV goodies
Posted Nov 27th 2006 8:04AM by Brett Love
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, FOX, Family Guy, Animation
(S05E07) Again this week things are split up into
Family Guy and
The Brian and Stewie Show. I don't mind the split stories as the Stewie and Brian stuff is usually my favorite anyway. It is about time for a big family outing or something to get them all back together though. I'm still calling this an up and down season overall, but this episode was one of the upswings. There were some truly great moments, and both of the stories were good, with one small exception. But we'll get to that later.
Continue reading Family Guy: Chick Cancer
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