• LeylaLove [she/her, love/loves]
    ·
    edit-2
    6 months ago

    If there's one thing I respect about Family Guy over South Park, it's how much more it leans into what it is. Family Guy is a stupid and edgy show with stupid and edgy jokes, but has never lied about it. It was pretty much the OG shock humor adult cartoon. Even with Family Guy's horrible and offensive jokes, the show at least makes it clear that the joke is more the shock of what they're saying and not necessarily what they're saying. The episode where Quagmire's dad comes out as trans is a great example of this. Quagmire's Dad's dialogue is actually good, but the rest of the episode is awful because it just wants to be shocking. It's all a build-up to Brian telling Quagmire that he fucked his dad, it's all tasteless but it doesn't try to be anything else. In comparison, something like South Park would be so up its own ass about how righteous their messaging is that the jokes feel even more offensive. I think this split is also why Family Guy has a surprisingly large portion of the fan base that are PoC, including an international fan base. While I pretty much only see white Americans say good things about South Park. Family Guy at the end of the day is just shock humor, and bigotry is shocking. Family Guy is crude, and ultimately every bit of humor that I don't like, but it does fully lean into how Family Guy is worthless outside of being entertained for 30 minutes.

    Unrelated, but think it's really cool that he's consistently stood by his writers and artists, even when it was threatening to kill off Family Guy before it was a definitive part of American TV. The show was cancelled like 4 times before 2010, there's an alternate universe where Seth MacFarlane isn't a mega successful writer because Fox blacklisted him for standing with the workers. It's one thing to stand with the union, it's another when you have absolutely everything to lose by doing so. He's a lib overall, but whenever the opportunities arise, he seems to do the right thing without fail and I respect that. Also, American Dad somehow still manages to be extremely funny. The Ollie North clip lives in my head rent free

    • Crowtee_Robot [he/him]
      ·
      6 months ago

      American Dad is one of my favorite shows. I hear the song every time North is mentioned anywhere!