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Jack B Nimble posted:FWIW he hasn't written Family Guy for some time now, not sure how long but he's content to mostly just show up as another VA as a combination paycheck and continuing fan service. Yeah and the guys still working on the show are still making the same decisions (maybe they've gotten worse? I can't say for sure) and possibly they were hired by Seth MacFarlane back in the day.
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May 31, 2022 22:35
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Look, it's not really that hard to figure out — the people who make Family Guy hate life, other people and themselves. It wasn't always that way, but it sure as hell is now and has been for a long time.
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May 31, 2022 22:45
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Family Guy is just a spiteful, hateful, offensive show on nearly every level and the fact it's still on air is even more baffling to me than the Simpsons still being alive.
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May 31, 2022 22:47
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I honestly wished it never was revived. That was hell of a monkey's paw wish.
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May 31, 2022 22:51
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I think you can pinpoint the exact moment it really began its fall from grace in the episode where Peter tells Brian that Quagmire hates him. It comes out of nowhere, it doesn't have a punchline, and it marks the point where Quagmire gets Flanderised and just becomes constantly irritated by everyone around him, followed eventually by basically the entirety of the cast. And it's not that Quagmire is wrong about what he says, but it feels like the writers hate what they've written Brian into being, and rather than fix it they decide to vent their frustrations on screen, then continue writing Brian that way, and do basically the exact same thing with everyone else as well - turn them into complete irritants, openly mock them as such, then just keep cranking the dial.
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May 31, 2022 22:54
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Doctor_Fruitbat posted:I think you can pinpoint the exact moment it really began its fall from grace in the episode where Peter tells Brian that Quagmire hates him. It comes out of nowhere, it doesn't have a punchline, and it marks the point where Quagmire gets Flanderised and just becomes constantly irritated by everyone around him, followed eventually by basically the entirety of the cast. I think I actually prefer Brian that way compared to the Macfarlane's Self-Insert Mouthpiece Character he started out as.
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May 31, 2022 22:59
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Also, having Quagmire, the actual literal sexual predator, whose entire joke and punchline is that he is a sexual predator, be the one to give Brian the This Is Why Everyone Hates You speech was...well, I kept waiting for a punchline that never came. Whenever Family Guy tries to branch out and get sincere it never actually feels sincere but rather the build up to a joke that isn't actually there
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May 31, 2022 23:08
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You can even see it in the animation. How many "jokes" on Family Guy are delivered by a character staring off into the distance, eyes half-closed, expressionless? It's not just a depressing show, it's a depressed show.
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May 31, 2022 23:18
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drat, now I'm curious what Family Guy thinks Rick and Morty borrowed from them
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May 31, 2022 23:23
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Splint Chesthair posted:You can even see it in the animation. How many "jokes" on Family Guy are delivered by a character staring off into the distance, eyes half-closed, expressionless? It's not just a depressing show, it's a depressed show. I honestly wonder if anyone working on the show even enjoys their work.
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May 31, 2022 23:37
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SlothfulCobra posted:Yeah and the guys still working on the show are still making the same decisions (maybe they've gotten worse? I can't say for sure) and possibly they were hired by Seth MacFarlane back in the day. This a good point I don't mean to exonerate Seth McFarlane exactly, but so many discussions of long running animated sitcoms like Simpsons and Family Guy are about their decline and fall, so pointing out that the original show creator became much more hands off seemed worth mentioning. But you're absolutely right, I don't think the writing they've done is some radical departure from his own work, and couldn't even tell you where the transition is. The point about Quagmire is good, I'd also say that the over use of inserted disconnected gags did a lot to turn the show into a meaningless mishmash of context less cutaways and over the seasons that kind of poisons the show. But really, the writers seem to have consciously hit on "every character is bad".
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May 31, 2022 23:40
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Just popping in to say that American Dad is good and has managed to remain good for many years. Writers are important to cartoons, never forget that. It's totally possible for a long running animated show to continue to be good, just make sure to hire people who know what jokes are and how to tell them.
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May 31, 2022 23:40
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj5YCEfG8Zc This is from 2018. I watched this as it was aired and just felt confused and sad about the whole thing.
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May 31, 2022 23:43
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Happy Landfill posted:drat, now I'm curious what Family Guy thinks Rick and Morty borrowed from them The art style, maybe?
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May 31, 2022 23:49
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Splint Chesthair posted:You can even see it in the animation. How many "jokes" on Family Guy are delivered by a character staring off into the distance, eyes half-closed, expressionless? It's not just a depressing show, it's a depressed show. You described , Chris
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Jun 1, 2022 00:03
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Vandar posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj5YCEfG8Zc Remember when they showed three uninterrupted minutes of Tecmo Bowl, or played an entire four minute music video without commentary?
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Jun 1, 2022 00:08
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for the longest time i thought american dad was just more family guy, but i guess not so much https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPqwy6gv0KQ
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Jun 1, 2022 00:12
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Oxxidation posted:for the longest time i thought american dad was just more family guy, but i guess not so much A topic recently covered pretty well in GBS: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4000706&perpage=40&noseen=1
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Jun 1, 2022 00:21
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When they get aware from Quagmire being a sex creep and instead focus on his complete lack of tech knowledge or even what tech is is when I laugh. Him finding out about internet porn was a good gag even if it led into the story of him meeting him but a woman that takes it way too far. When he learns about Tinder and is being told how to use it hit WAY too close to home for me. Everything else not so much but that stuff... ouch. I can also mention I gave up on Family Guy and would just see newer stuff randomly on Adult Swim or whatever whenever they did the season where they either tried being serious with no comedy or just straight pitch black comedy that didn't land. The episodes about Quagmire's sister being abused and Joe's son coming home AWOL from Iraq were the one two punch that made me "nope" out.
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Jun 1, 2022 00:23
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It’s been at least 5 years since I was up to date on Family Guy but I have rewatched the Cleveland show every 6 months since it was first on, I just think it’s the funniest shot ever and it cracks me up just as much on my 10th viewing as it did on my first. American Dad is also really good, but I think it takes until S4-5 to really come into itself. The Cleveland Show is exactly tuned into itself from the jump and just has 3 solid seasons.
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Jun 1, 2022 00:29
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American Dad has no right being as good as it is honestly.Bust Rodd posted:It’s been at least 5 years since I was up to date on Family Guy but I have rewatched the Cleveland show every 6 months since it was first on, I just think it’s the funniest shot ever and it cracks me up just as much on my 10th viewing as it did on my first. American Dad is also really good, but I think it takes until S4-5 to really come into itself. The Cleveland Show is exactly tuned into itself from the jump and just has 3 solid seasons. The Cleveland Show is shockingly solid too. I still think it's weird that Cleveland of all characters is the one that ended up with the spinoff though.
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Jun 1, 2022 00:32
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Vandar posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj5YCEfG8Zc Honestly this gag isn't even THAT bad, I mean it is, but the fact that they put in the effort to animate a whole different style for the joke is actually good. Ya know what really kills this for me? Cleveland going "have you ever heard of Leeroy Jenkins" and then Peter going "nope. now let's do a really long complicated plan" before actually starting the joke Like... come on. They do this all the time with jokes now. They say what the joke is and then do the joke. Cut out those things, do a quick planning bit and then just have Cleveland yell Leeroy Jenkins and cut to the game footage. And cut the game footage in half. Cut the whole joke in half. Why does every joke in Family Guy have to take so long. It's hard to salvage such a weak reference in 2022 but put a LITTLE more effort in
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Jun 1, 2022 00:35
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Macaluso posted:Honestly this gag isn't even THAT bad, I mean it is, but the fact that they put in the effort to animate a whole different style for the joke is actually good. Ya know what really kills this for me? The comedy equivalent of triple spacing your essay in Size 24 font. My completely baseless speculation is that it's a directive for X minutes of age-appropriate nostalgic references for the target market, or a complete lack of faith in their own ability to fill their airtime.
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Jun 1, 2022 00:47
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drrockso20 posted:Reminds me of the similarly hostile and mean cracks they used to occasionally make towards Robot Chicken even though it's created by one of their main VA's That always struck me as Seth (MacFarlane) just loving with Seth (Green) in that way where if you're really close with someone, you know you can gently caress with them in that way. And Seth (Green) got his shots back in, too. The Bob's Burgers stuff seems like it comes from a place of genuine anger. Shindragon posted:I honestly wished it never was revived. It was good for like one season after it came back, then it started falling off hhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaard. At this point, I think Seth (MacFarlane) has probably hated it for longer than he ever liked it. The Star Wars episodes were still pretty good, though. It's kinda sad what FG has become, because I think at one time it was probably really important to Seth. I mean, look at this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caR_5BgEgv8 He was trying to get this idea off the ground in some way or another for a really long time. And it had a lot of spark to it, even then.
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Jun 1, 2022 00:55
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Vandar posted:American Dad has no right being as good as it is honestly. Family Guy did a couple gags where they went into why Cleveland got it(and then a bunch of really mean and unfunny gags mocking the Cleveland Show getting canned), Quagmire being unsuitable is obvious, and Joe would have been good for one except American Dad exists, personally I'd say if they decided to try again with a spinoff they should give it to Meg, not like Family Guy does much with her Macaluso posted:Honestly this gag isn't even THAT bad, I mean it is, but the fact that they put in the effort to animate a whole different style for the joke is actually good. Ya know what really kills this for me? Probably the same reason why The Simpsons used that one really long couch gag a couple times(or indeed long couch gags in general), they couldn't figure out how to stretch out the episode long enough organically so they just do that to kill time
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Jun 1, 2022 01:06
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MJeff posted:That always struck me as Seth (MacFarlane) just loving with Seth (Green) in that way where if you're really close with someone, you know you can gently caress with them in that way. And Seth (Green) got his shots back in, too. The Bob's Burgers stuff seems like it comes from a place of genuine anger. Yeah it's really a shame to see considering that it started life as an actual cartoon. Also funny to realize Brian was originally a Joe Friday impression that he couldn't really keep up even for seven minutes
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Jun 1, 2022 01:09
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drrockso20 posted:Family Guy did a couple gags where they went into why Cleveland got it(and then a bunch of really mean and unfunny gags mocking the Cleveland Show getting canned), Quagmire being unsuitable is obvious, and Joe would have been good for one except American Dad exists, personally I'd say if they decided to try again with a spinoff they should give it to Meg, not like Family Guy does much with her I saw that and it was like. Cleveland Show was funnier than Family Guy had been for a full decade at that point, talk about throwing stones from a glass house. Why'd it get canceled anyway, did it just do bad ratings?
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Jun 1, 2022 01:09
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MJeff posted:That always struck me as Seth (MacFarlane) just loving with Seth (Green) in that way where if you're really close with someone, you know you can gently caress with them in that way. And Seth (Green) got his shots back in, too. The Bob's Burgers stuff seems like it comes from a place of genuine anger. Another thing to consider is just how young Seth was when he finally got Family Guy off the ground, he was only 24 when Fox gave it the greenlight Also when you look at the credits for the first couple of seasons of Family Guy a lot of Seth's old Hanna-Barbera buddies pop up as the director or writer for episodes, indeed I think that's part of what give the first couple seasons of Family Guy their charm, as the show is basically what you get when you take the What A Cartoon! Show/Oh Yeah! Cartoons sort of show and then loosen up a lot on the restrictions those had regarding "Adult" things like cursing, violence, and sexuality
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Jun 1, 2022 01:16
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MJeff posted:I saw that and it was like. Cleveland Show was funnier than Family Guy had been for a full decade at that point, talk about throwing stones from a glass house. From what I've heard the ratings were okay when it was given a decent time slot but it suffered the problem a lot of Fox's B & C tier animated sitcoms did of often getting put into the slots that would get preempted by sports or news which hurt it's ratings, also apparently some demographics concerns regarding how they had wanted the show to attract more of a Black audience to Fox but it ended up with an audience mostly the same as Family Guy and American Dad's
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Jun 1, 2022 01:20
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MJeff posted:
The Larry and Steve stuff genuinely fascinates me. Seth really does seem to love animation, it's just that when your show is petty and mean for 15+ years trying to make a light-hearted ribbing and another show that's currently airing doesn't land. It becomes indistinguishable from all the times they have genuinely used their show to call something poo poo. The Bob's Burgers and Rick and Morty quips have the making of jokes but they are delivered in the same tone they use when they point out something is derivative garbage. This show just doesn't really do light-hearted ribbing. Edit: To be clear, this isn't really Seth's fault. It's obvious he hasn't written for the show for a long time. Early Family Guy still holds up pretty well, I think Happy Landfill fucked around with this message at 01:43 on Jun 1, 2022 |
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Jun 1, 2022 01:22
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MJeff posted:I saw that and it was like. Cleveland Show was funnier than Family Guy had been for a full decade at that point, talk about throwing stones from a glass house. It looks like just declining ratings. Compared to what was airing alongside it, it preformed fairly abysmally. It performed about as well or only a little better as Allen Gregory in the same year. As for why it did so poorly, it's a mystery but theoretically it was the third of three Seth McFarlane animated series running in the same block and it was a major departure from both Family Guy and American Dad in its own way. So there was no appeal to people who were sick of McFarlane's animation fro mthe get go, no appeal to people who preferred the meanness or referential humor of Family Guy, not as much appeal to the burgeoning outsider humor of American Dad (who ended up getting canceled about a year later and moving to TBS to its success), and leaving it with a fraction of a fraction of an audience that wouldn't be able to support it on a major network. Also it got 4 seasons, not 3 for a total of 88 episodes. Not a terrible performance all things considered.
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Jun 1, 2022 01:36
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American Dad is fantastic, and I think the show just has so much energy and joy to it. The characters enjoy things. They're often capable, not just worthless losers. The base premise set itself up to be fertile ground for stories, and it set out to make its characters really weird to set up stories, and there's a lot of action that makes use of the medium as opposed to just being talking heads. It even makes fun of the concept of randomly calling out things to poo poo on them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZCmbJwyttk Happy Landfill posted:Also, having Quagmire, the actual literal sexual predator, whose entire joke and punchline is that he is a sexual predator, be the one to give Brian the This Is Why Everyone Hates You speech was...well, I kept waiting for a punchline that never came. I think at some point Quagmire quit being a sexual predator and instead took up being a lonely old man with nothing in his life but his cats, which I guess the main reason he hates Brian is because he's a cat person. Which doesn't really feel so much like trying to find something better to do with the character as it is I think there's a lot of older, lonelier writers on the show than there were 15 years ago.
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Jun 1, 2022 01:44
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SlothfulCobra posted:I think at some point Quagmire quit being a sexual predator and instead took up being a lonely old man with nothing in his life but his cats, which I guess the main reason he hates Brian is because he's a cat person.
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Jun 1, 2022 01:52
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I remember how rough American Dad was at first. The first season was uh.. pretty bad. Once they embraced Roger's personas and made Stan less of a jerk rear end (granted he still is but does love his family) it became really good. That and Steve's singing.
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Jun 1, 2022 01:56
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I'll admit I couldn't make it past the first season. It just seemed like the McFarlane Show Extruder-mo-tron had rotated 30 degrees and shat out another cast. Everyone loves it though so I guess it is I who am out of touch.
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Jun 1, 2022 01:59
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXqAYR8u_Iw
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Jun 1, 2022 02:10
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUvHDFzk7E0 This song gets stuck in my head alot. A sight for sore eyes to the blind would be awful MAJEEEEESTICCCCC...
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Jun 1, 2022 02:14
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It is deeply funny how dedicated to getting pissed off that people like American Dad some people in that GBS thread are.
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Jun 1, 2022 03:07
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IIRC, Quagmire stops being a sexual predator at roughly the same time his father transitions, although I’m not sure if the two events are expressly related in the show or if some new writers were like “we have got to get rid of this 1998 character and bring them up to speed”
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Jun 1, 2022 04:13
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Bust Rodd posted:IIRC, Quagmire stops being a sexual predator at roughly the same time his father transitions, although I’m not sure if the two events are expressly related in the show or if some new writers were like “we have got to get rid of this 1998 character and bring them up to speed” Was that the same episode where Brian has sex with his father? And there's something like an uninterrupted 5 minute sequence of Brian throwing up at the thought of having sex with someone who's trans? Chieves fucked around with this message at 04:48 on Jun 1, 2022 |
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Jun 1, 2022 04:46
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