Family Guy’s eighth season premiered last night with one of its Brian/Stewie “Road To…” special musical episodes. In this case, the geek-favorite show might be even more inviting to comics fans, as the title was “Road to the Multiverse” and featured the pair visiting a variety of different worlds. On each, they experienced that universe’s version of the Griffin family.
My first thought was that the Family Guy multiverse is not entirely dissimilar to the one that we saw in Final Crisis. Random, identifiable sight gags that separate the universes in Family Guy aren’t unlike the ones used by Grant Morrison, who had “The Watchmen Superman,” “The Black Superman” and “The Vampire Superman” rounding out the Supermen of 52 worlds who appeared at the end of Final Crisis. In Family Guy, we’re treated to a world where dogs are in charge, a world where everyone has two heads and “The Robot Chicken Universe,” where Stewie taunts the inhabitants, “How does it feel to be on a real network for about thirty seconds?” before leaving.
While the dog-controlled universe (where Stewie the dog and Brian the human have already been on this trip before, and so they know what to do and how to resolve the episode) was good for a couple of chuckles, the world I wish they had visited—which unfortunately the show’s writers have apparently been denied access—is one where Family Guy is still funny.
September 28th, 2009 at 10:26 am
I had a good laugh over the feudal Japan one.
September 28th, 2009 at 11:03 am
The Disney one was pretty awesome. Ergo, you are wrong! So wrong!
September 28th, 2009 at 11:07 am
Oh, come on. Certainly you found some humor in the Disney-fied versions of the characters. Or did the well-drawn, well-animated characters just freak your mind?
September 28th, 2009 at 11:12 am
I’m not a huge fan of Family Guy, because their gags fall into one of four categories:
1) Inserting a pop culture joke into a conversation.
2) Inserting a character into a pop culture situation.
3) Extreme inappropriateness.
4) Extending a scene or shot long after it’s stopped being funny, somehow thereby increasing it’s funniness.
But these are the same gags it’s had from the very beginning, before it was canceled the first time. So what about Family Guy makes it less funny now than it was then?
September 28th, 2009 at 11:29 am
Feudal Japan and Disney were kind of clever. The rest not so much. The whole show has gotten really stale and the violence has stopped being cartoony and funny and is now cringe worthy over the top violence-for-violence-sake.
The Cleveland Show was terrible. I expected it to be really bad based on the previews. It was somehow worse than my low expectations.
September 28th, 2009 at 11:30 am
Wesley – I think the answer is, “They’ve been doing them for ten years now.”
Everyone else – I’ll concede that the Disney-style animation was pretty spiffy. But it loses points due to the extremely predictable anti-Semite joke at the end. Now, if you’d taken that out and Stewie and Brian spent a couple of episodes in that world getting Pleasantvilled? That could have been an arc worth watching.
September 28th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
I stopped watching Family Guy after I realized they didn’t know how to tell a joke and advance the story at the same time.
September 28th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
It was funnier when Futurama did it. Not to mention, that episode used the “alternate universe” scenario to explore Fry and Leela’s relationship, leading to some actual character development. Family Guy, as usual, just used it to make yet more tired pop culture jokes.
September 28th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
eh i liked it. it started off pretty slow but picked up by the end.
and yeah family guys is filled with pop culture jokes. but that’s how its always been.
if u don’t like it that kind of comedy then it’s probably not the show for you.
i stopped watching the simpsons cause it just didn’t click with me anymore. not that it’s horrible, just not my kind of funny.
September 28th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
“Now, if you’d taken that out and Stewie and Brian spent a couple of episodes in that world getting Pleasantvilled? That could have been an arc worth watching.”
I think you’re eating at the wrong trough.
Since when do you turn to Family Guy for multi-episode arcs? The episode was exactly the kind of humor that Family Guy has been selling for years. Do you have any fresh digs for the Simpsons? I haven’t heard in a while that it hasn’t been funny since ’95.
September 28th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
I’ve been avoiding Family Guy for a while now, since I don’t find it funny, well-written or enjoyable to watch. The gimmick of this episode convinced me to try it again. I remain completely unimpressed with this show.
Alexa: Well said, you hit the nail on the head of why Futurama is and always was a great show and Family Guy is not.
September 28th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
The Disney one was the best, looked incredible, shame no show would be willing to do that kind of art for each episode now.
September 28th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
I thought this was one of the best episodes in a long while. The Disney bit? Brilliant.
September 28th, 2009 at 9:40 pm
I love how people still adhere to the old “Walt Disney was a rabid anti-Semite” myth… are we talking about the same guy who was awarded the 1955 B’Nai Brith Man of the Year award?
I’m not saying the guy was a saint, but come on…
September 29th, 2009 at 5:36 am
Family Guy’s problem? Seth McFarlane is spread too thin with three shows, that he is contributing heavily too. FG was never the best of shows no matter how riotously funny an episode was. But sometimes the non sequiturs tend to drag on, and in some cases are in poor taste (and I am not easily offended.) Personally I’ll stick with the older seasons which were actually funny.
September 29th, 2009 at 7:33 am
For me, FG, much like the Simpsons, has indeed NOT changed or evolved over the last few years — that’s the problem for me. It’s a problem because the ground feels too well-trod at this point to be effectively funny still.
And for FG, the reliance on shock, pop-culture references and violence just feels way too stale nowadays.
September 29th, 2009 at 8:02 am
I keep watching with the faint hope that someday. . someday Peter will die horribly. Now I know this will probably never happen, but hope doth spring eternal.
That being said, usually I get at least one laugh, but this time I didn’t laugh once.
September 29th, 2009 at 8:56 am
What irked me about the episode is the central tenant of the first world visit. Do they really blame the church for the dark ages? Hello McFly! The Church saved many classical works from destruction during the fall of the Roman Empire (you know the thing that started the dark ages). If it wasn’t for the Church there would have been no Renaissance.
September 29th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
@Shawn – True enough, that’s not how the show customarily operates. But the precedent is there, now that they’ve subdivided the DTV movie into episodes (that’s now an arc), and so my view is that it can now be used in “special cases,” which I’d like to see. Unreasonable expectation? Yes. But I’ve lost interest in the show and was spitballing as to what might make me come back.
October 1st, 2009 at 7:00 pm
I don’t know that The Simpsons needs to “evolve” really. What, Bart in high school? Not interested. We’ve seen occasional glimpses at the future of the Simpson family. That’s always fun, but I’m glad we’ve never stayed there.
Anyhow, there were defintely a few lean years for The Simpsons a few years back, but I felt like that was before the movie came out. The movie was a blast, IMO, and I feel like once they got that out of the way the show got a lot better again. No, there really aren’t many new ideas left after 20 years, but when I see a new episode (I don’t always remember to watch these days) I still usually find plenty to laugh about. Plus it looks GREAT in HD!
Oh, was this thread about Family Guy?
May 2nd, 2010 at 7:56 am
can tell you love what you do with how you write. bookmarked for sure