DGX

Family Guy has been on its death bed ironically ever since it returned to Fox. During its fourth season, Seth pretty much recycled the same shit from seasons 1-3. It wasn't much longer until Seth started replacing humor with political bullshit. It doesn't help for me considering that a great deal of the political bullshit is liberal crap that I don't agree with, and even the few tidbits I'm cool with (safe-sex teaching in schools, gay marriage, etc.) just aren't funny. Why? Seth isn't trying to be funny, he's trying to send out a message.

When a comedy show produces an episode that isn't funny, it isn't always bad. Take Futurama for instance, the episode where Fry finds his fossilized dog. It had a fairly sad ending, but it was an awesome episode (well, really the rest of the episode was funny, but you get the point). You can deviate from the path for a brief moment, but you can't just derail the entire train and expect it to keep rolling. Well, Seth's train is off its track.

For instance, the newest episode, the first of season 7, starts off with boring jokes and observations that are just stupid. Right off the bat, they pull out some irrelevant fact about Laura Bush that I really can't imagine being funny. Basically, 17-year-old Laura Bush got into a car wreck and killed some guy. Peter was thusly dressed for a costume party as Laura Bush and Lois was dressed as the guy she hit and killed. Shortly after, someone comes dressed as an "aborted fetus", spouting stuff about abortion clinics, to which Brian replies "Have you ever had any sex that was voluntary?" (she replies that she hasn't).

Wow, so that's it, Seth? We're supposed to laugh at Laura Bush killing some dude when she was young, and laugh at some pro-life lady that hasn't had consensual sex? Considering that the only two alternatives to consensual sex are virginity and rape, which one are we supposed to laugh at?

This crap doesn't stop here, another "wonderful" example was in the episode "Lois Kills Stewie", where (1) Lois empties a machine gun into a portrait of Bush in the White House, and (2) Stewie ignites an American flag during the fight and they continue to fight with the burning flag in the background. Yet another episode has Peter changing an event in the past, which for some reason has changed the outcome of the 2000 election, which "solves all of our problems", then Death comes in and mentions that Cheney accidentally shot Karl Rove and Tucker Carlson.

What do we have now? First, rehash, then political messages, then just hatemongering in general against anyone and everyone that is somehow related to Bush or his administration, and the sides Seth doesn't agree with on any given political issue? Unless Seth is trolling America (he isn't), Family Guy has pretty much become a liberal indoctrination machine hellbent on preaching liberal views and hatred towards conservatives/Republicans to whoever watches the show. I don't want to seem like some whackjob when I say that, but really, when you see the episodes, it is hard to see it any other way. Half the times he doesn't even acknowledge the other side, and the other half he demonizes opposing views.

I'm waiting for Seth to make some snide remark about Tony Snow's death. For some reason, I just know it's coming.

Family Guy used to be funny. Even some of the rehashing wasn't entirely bad, it only showed a little lack of creativity. American Dad, which is also highly politicized (although ironically enough, not as much), is still fairly funny. It's ironic because Seth invisioned Stan to be a staunch, overbearing Republican father-figure who works for the CIA, which would give American Dad far more ground to work with political humor than Family Guy.

What I'm trying to say is that Seth really needs to lay off his little crusade against the eeeeevil Republican Empire and stop ruining a cartoon with a lot of potential. Seriously, none of this political message bullshit is funny, it just feels like I'm being preached to by some douchebag who thinks his views are the most perfect views in the universe.

Matt Groening (creator of The Simpsons and Futurama) has already walked this path before and has lost a great deal of my respect as well. Although Groening doesn't do it to the extent that Family Guy does, he does a great deal of America-bashing as well. Again, if it were funny, I'd be laughing, but they aren't trying to be funny, they are trying to make a statement. At this point, I'm actually glad they cancelled Futurama, because I'd hate to see such a great show reduced to "TODAY IS GEORGE W BUSH'S DEATH DATE, IN THE YEAR 3000 IT IS NOW A GLOBAL HOLIDAY LOLOLOL" and so on.

The biggest problem with political comedy is that you can only go so far before it leaves the humor boundary. The other problem is, quite simply, that depending on what you make fun of, your "humor" will only be well received by a portion of your total audience. Political humor is by far my least favorite type of humor, but even I know the difference between joking, preaching, and hatemongering.