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Family Guy: Padre de Familia

By fred | November 19, 2007

(S06E06) So this episode was a very “special” episode because as it turns out, there is a writers’ strike going on at the moment. Yeah, shocking, I know, but it’ll made the news at some point, I guess.

Anyways, creator Seth MacFarlane is striking and as such he could not finish working on this episode, polishing it and making sure everything was as he wanted it to be. And while he said Fox has the legal right to go and air the episode anyways, he also whished they would not do what he referred to as a “a colossal dick move“. But they did, obviously.

Now was this episode actually any different, because of this, when you watched it ? Honestly, I don’t know. I know I didn’t like this episode, and I thought it wasn’t very funny or as good as the show usually is or can be, but was that because MacFarlane didn’t get to finish it as usual, or not ?

I’m not sure it was. Probably if he had a chance to put his hands on it before it was sent to the network and tweak it a bit, a few jokes that didn’t really work may have been cut out, etc but in the end I don’t think the episode would have been much better. I might be wrong, of course, but I feel that the problem was way too deep into how the whole thing had been written to actually be magically fixed by some last minute tweaking.

Maybe it was because of the attack South Park did against the show, maybe Cartman had absolutely nothing to do with it, but this episode was not like the usual episodes of Family Guy. It’s not the first time this season they try to do such a thing, and this time did not do any better than the last time.

South Park an have an episode constructed with single story, a story with an embedded message that will be delivered throughout the episode, they can do it and make it hilarious all along the way, they can do it and make us laugh out loud every single second of the episode. It’ll be great, hilarious, and meaningful. They just can.

Family Guy on the other hand, cannot. Again this week they tried to have one main story that was more than just an excuse to deliver cut-away jokes and funny situations, regardless of a greater meaning. Again this week there was one single story that was dragged over the full episode, and more than that this whole thing had a meaning, there was a message to get out of it.

But then again, they’re not good at that. And that’s ok, I’m not saying this as a bad thing. Not every show has to be the same or do things one way to work and be good, or funny. To each show its own tone and way to do things. But this time again instead of keep within their own territory they ventured outside and tried to do what they’re not good at, and it should be no surprise the end result wasn’t good.

Sure, a few jokes worked, like the Superman bit, and I liked the beginning with the vets of future wars and the uninjured ones. Most of that first part worked just fine, but then it broke. When Peter’s actions started to have an over-patriotic 9/11 message, when the predictable thing that he himself was in fact an illegal immigrant (beyond all logic) came in play, then it didn’t work anymore.

It didn’t, and it was just not really funny. Even the cut-away jokes seemed too forced to be actually good, and soon enough it started to feel like the whole immigrant plot was only kept there because they had to, in order to deliver their message, despite the fact that they lost every idea they had to actually make something funny out of it. They can try by bashing Meg some more, but even that felt flat.

And when Peter went on about what should and should not be in this great country, it was more boring than anything. In South Park such speeches had a legitimacy because of how it was done, how the show was constructed, and who the characters were. But those words put in Cartman’s mouth for example, would not have worked. And here with Peter, it wasn’t working either. It’s like being taught, in serious manner, about responsibilities or the importance of following safety rules while working in a nuclear power plant by Homer Simpson, only without the funny.

It wasn’t all bad, a liked some of the jokes – even some with a deeper meaning than just make you laugh, “You don’t see Nike, or Microsoft, or General Motors, or Ford, or Boeing, or Coca-Cola, or Kelloggs profiting from non-American labor. – Oh, ohoh! It’s funny because they all do! Oh, ohoh…” – but all in all this wasn’t a really good episode, it was disappointing and not that funny.

Posted in Reviews
Shows: Family Guy