Why I Hate Family Guy: Part 1

(Part 2 here and Part 3 here)

I've bitched about Twilight. Complained about Underbelly. Analysed Stargate Universe. Torn The Cleveland Show to shreds before a single episode aired. Now, it's time for a rant that I've had brewing for a very long time: my rant against Family Guy.

Why do I hate Family Guy? It's difficult to know where to begin, but let's start by looking at this clip from season four (don't let the date fool you, it's quite typical of the show):

Incredibly, this video has over five million views on YouTube (at the time of writing). But anyway, here's another clip where the humour is derived from drug use, this time from season seven of The Simpsons:

Both shows identify the humour in the situation (that people act bizarrely and do annoying things under the influence of drugs), but while The Simpsons saved the best joke for last (the fact that Burns was so drugged up he was willing to commit murder), the Family Guy clip doesn't really have a punchline, does it? Instead, it goes for the old and tired gag of getting Peter naked. Yup, nothing funnier than a naked fat guy, right?

See folks, this is my main gripe about Family Guy - for a comedy show, it doesn't seem to know how to tell a joke. A joke should be build up your expectations, then defy them. Take any newspaper comic, for example. Look at this classic Calvin and Hobbes strip:



You see how it works? The first three panels build up the expectation (that we're in space) and the final panel reveals it's all a fantasy of Calvin's. Family Guy ignores this, it's so excited about the gag that it blurts it out right away (PETER'S ON DRUGS LOL!) , leaving a minute or so for us to sit around and watch essentially the same joke, with no punchline at the end. (For further examples of this lazy writing see here and here, as you can see, this is merely the tip of the iceberg).

Now, a punchline should be the strongest part of your gag. That's why it's called a punch-line. You deliver it and run. You do not hang around and repeat the punchline for the next minute. Essentially: leave with the audience laughing! Am I wrong in thinking this is how a joke should be structured?

Apparently so. Whenever I criticise the humour in Family Guy I'm shot down by people who yell "WHO CARES SEAN IT'S FUNNY LOL!" Now, I realise humour can be very subjective, but if you find Family Guy funny you are categorically wrong. Far too often Family Guy goes for:

• Shock humour (violence, rape, vomit or other bodily fluids)
• Pop-culture references (the freakin' Star Wars specials being the worst example)

Now, admittedly, there is humour to be found in shock value, but in the internet age it's getting a lot harder to shock your audience. Like it or not, people are desensitised to much of the bad stuff in the world. So what do the Family Guy writers do? Make a rape joke. A rape joke, for Christ's sake. I wouldn't have minded if it was just dark humour ("What do nine out of ten people enjoy?" "Gang rape!") because at least a joke like that is subverting my expectations. Again, there's no punchline in the gag, just: 1. Naked fat man (again, naked fat people are funny, right?). 2. Woman rapes a man. Whoa, hold on to your sides to stop them from splitting!

I'm not objecting to dark humour or shock value, just how Family Guy tries to do it. For example, if you take the joke, "What's the difference between a Ferrari and 1000 dead babies? A Ferrari's not in my garage", the Family Guy writers would probably put that on screen as, "Why do I have 1000 dead babies in my garage? BECAUSE DEAD BABIES ARE FUNNY LOL!" Then Peter would get naked for some reason.

And, of course, we have the pop-culture references. Now, I enjoy references to books, films, art, video games, politics etc. in works of fiction, but if you're going to do it, there has to be a point to it. Have a look at this clip from The Simpsons, parodying 2001: A Space Odyssey:

Now look at this clip from Family Guy, parodying Dukes of Hazzard:

I swear, I'm not even trying to come up with examples that end with the gag "Peter naked", it seems that every single Family Guy video on YouTube ends this way. But anyway, see the difference here? Much of the humour in the Simpsons clip comes from Homer eating in zero gravity, the ants talking amongst themselves and Buzz Aldrin's comment, not explicit references to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Family Guy, on the other hand, just has Stewie say, "That's more disgusting than when Peter went through that Daisy Dukes phase", then show us Peter in women's clothing (cross-dressing jokes? Seriously?). What is the humour in this joke? Is it parodying a scene in Dukes of Hazzard? A cliche of the show, a plot hole even? Nope, it's just name dropping. I haven't seen a single episode of Dukes of Hazzard, but even if I'd seen all 145 episodes plus the movie, I sincerely doubt I would have enjoyed that clip any more.

Oy vey. We're over eight hundred words and I've barely scratched the surface. Coming up in Part 2: the characters.

© 2011 by Sean "The Free Man"