I don’t know how else to phrase this but hear me out

Is Family Guy funny? 98% of the time, no. There are a couple genuinely funny bits tossed in here and there but the average episode of Family Guy is some weird, uninteresting plot that keeps getting interrupted every 2 minutes with some cutaway gag that usually involves some form of bigotry/violence against a minority group or a crude joke no one over the age of 15 finds funny. Sometimes there will be a sort of funny gag about how your local pizza place makes the worst “salad” or that one bit about Pat Tillman which was really funny, but I can’t imagine anyone older than the age of 16 saying “yeah, time to turn on the TV and watch Family Guy!”

Literally who is the target audience for this? This show has been going on for nearly a quarter century now and stopped being good after like three years and yet it still keeps getting renewed. I don’t know anyone who watches it. I couldn’t even imagine what a Family Guy fan would even look like. Like, if I walked in on someone sitting on the couch at their house and they were unironically tuned into Family Guy, I’d be thinking “holy shit is this guy for real?”. But apparently, considering how much air time and ratings this show gets, there are millions of people out there watching what’s basically the equivalent of a dollar store joke book written by your racist uncle that nobody wants to invite to thanksgiving. Everyone knows about it, it’s not funny, nobody yet also millions watch it? I can make Family Guy references and people get what I’m talking about because we’ve all fucking seen it and nobody likes it. It’s just this white noise TV show that you just use to fill space. It might as well just a blank screen that read [Insert TV program here] because it just feels like filler. You can just put Family Guy in literally anything and it somehow just… fits? It’s the TV show that you put on when no one actually wants to watch it. Remember like 6 years ago when “they added Peter Griffin to Fortnite” was a dumb meme? It was a dumb meme, and then they made it real because after it was funny, then it became real and now it’s just like. Yep. They got Peter Griffin in Fortnite"

Family Guy isn’t funny, but it’s deeply funny in the metasense because of it’s omnipresence and renown, clear attempt at humor, yet complete lack of anything approaching substance to say nor any coherent overarching message. Forget the average Family Guy viewer, who writes this shit. I genuinely can’t imagine anyone who makes this show actually wants to write more Family guy, they just do it because they’re Family Guy writers and that’s what pays the bills. Didn’t we have a post here like 3 days ago saying that Patrick Warburton and his mom really want to quit the show? It’s even more incongruous because there’s even a handful of times where they TRY to have some kind of moving message or deeper themes, like the one episode where Brian and Stewie are trapped in the bank vault all night and Brian opens up about his suicidality and alcoholism and there’s either very few or no cutaway gags. But of course, it’s Family Guy so they can’t actually do something interesting or good without fucking it up so of course they write in a joke about how “haha brian has to like stewie’s poop off his ass”

I don’t know how to put it into words other than I’m laughing at a clown that isn’t funny. It’s trying to be funny, it isn’t, and THAT’S what’s funny. Come to think of it, that’s basically what I’ve always thought about Big Chungus and why I ran that as a pfp/username here for like 3 years. It’s the comedic equivalent to “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”. “This is not a joke”, yet it clearly presents as one

As a result, all I can do whenever I see Peter Griffin in literally anything is just laugh because it’s just not funny. I can make myself cackle by doing a bad Peter Griffin impression saying “Hey Lois” because shitposting about Family Guy is just what the fucking writing staff of that show does

  • itappearsthat [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    57·
    2 months ago

    I couldn’t even imagine what a Family Guy fan would even look like.

    I legitimately met one at a wedding last year. He was one of the groomsmen. Tall extremely normie looking white dude. We did the whole intro thing and the conversation died incredibly hard so in desperation I pulled the “what do you like to do outside of work” question and he thought about it for a minute and then said “watch family guy, mostly” I was fuckin floored lmao

  • IvysaurEnglish
    42·
    2 months ago

    The show is often painfully mean and in all of the wrong ways to all of the wrong people and that is what kills it for me. There’s probably some funny writing somewhere here and there but it is extremely “aggrieved white guy” energy at all times. If you go back to a lot of the episodes of Johnny Bravo Macfarlane worked on you can see it there, too; it’s very off-putting. I am also not really that plugged in to modern memetic culture or anything, I understand what you’re getting at because I did get a kick out of a lot of the steamed hams stuff when that was a thing but T-posing Peter and et cetera has never done it for me, I don’t get it. I’m getting too old for this crap.

  • ElGosso [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    35·
    2 months ago

    Not-pipe-ism is definitely a big mainstay of meme culture in general. Steamed Hams leaps to mind - the meme isn’t about the jokes in the skit, it’s literally just the fact that it exists, which is why all the memes are about transforming it into other shit. Like there’s nothing funny about Soviet surrealist animation, so when someone turned Steamed Hams into an homage to it the homage itself wasn’t actually funny, but the fact that somebody made it is deeply hilarious.

    I dunno, it feels like some Signs and Simulacra shit. I’m too stupid to really grasp it, but maybe someone else in here can expand on it.

  • SSJ2Marx@hexbear.netEnglish
    31·
    2 months ago

    The Simpsons is like the less edgy version of this, South Park the slightly more edgy version, and Spongebob Squarepants the kid-friendly version. And I have a gut feeling that in ten years’ time people will be asking “who are the millions of people still watching Rick and Morty?”, which will mark its ascent into the pantheon of American cartoons that can literally never be cancelled.

    • IvysaurEnglish
      14·
      2 months ago

      I think old Simpsons is still very good, and Spongebob seasons 1-3 are genuinely really funny and cute cartoons to this day. There was a point about when the movie came out where it stopped being all that good I think but until that it is still fun viewing. Go back and watch them sometime!

      • SSJ2Marx@hexbear.netEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        Agreed, I would say that having a good first few seasons is a necessary ingredient to create the “American Cartoon that Never Gets Cancelled” that we see in my examples. Early Spongebob holds up the best out of the four because it’s timeless, while Family Guy/South Park/The Simpsons are all pretty heavily rooted in the era they were created in, but all of them were definitely beloved by their original audience in their original context.

    • taiphlosionEnglish
      2·
      2 months ago

      SpongeBob seasons 1-4 are goated. They changed the animation style and flanderized all the characters, got rid of all the good writers. I can’t go that long without making a SpongeBob reference or joke because it’s just so on point every time lmao.

      • SSJ2Marx@hexbear.netEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        Totally agree. I’ve watched a few episodes of NewBob with my younger siblings and it’s painfully bad, but there’s a reason why spongebob memes are all from those first few seasons and are still so prevalent.

  • RiderExMachina@lemmy.mlEnglish
    30·
    2 months ago

    It’s a “background noise” sitcom that isn’t constrained by cast salaries or real life. What I mean by that is that with a regular 4 camera sitcom, you have to have all the camera people, mic people, set and props people, who all make sure the scene is reset for each take. Every actor in the scene needs to be present, and if one flubs their line, they all have to restart and do it again. A five minute scene can take several hours.

    For animated shows, it’s usually recorded one by one in a booth. If the actor flubs a line, they just re-record the line. Even if a character is onscreen for a majority of the episode, dubbing their lines for the entire episode would take no more than an hour.

    In true Capitalist fashion, it’s a known product that is cheap and easy to make, and people will just consume it for the background noise and easy watching.

  • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    24·
    2 months ago

    Has the worst opening theme ever too. All in The Family parody that turns into the Simpsons circus couch gag and has the big show stopper gang vocals on the line ‘on which we used to rely’, the least iconic line to bring the whole thing into a showtune with. But Seth McFarlane is the straightest dude with the gayest tastes, so it follows.

    • SteamedHamberder [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      11·
      2 months ago

      I’m convinced that there are only three Straight men genuinely obsessed with musical theater and they are Seth Macfarlane, Donald Trump, and Mel Brooks.

      • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        14·
        2 months ago

        Matt Stone and Trey Parker have 2 award winning musicals under their belts, let’s not forget them. I think Mel Brooks is just one of the last dudes alive who remembers musical theater being more popular than cinema

  • Sons_of_Ferrix@hexbear.netEnglish
    20·
    2 months ago

    What’s a bit weird about this post is you say you have never met a Family Guy fan, struggle to imagine one, but reference like four episodes of the show, only one of which I’ve vaguely recognize. Maybe it’s just via cultural osmosis but you seem to be more knowledgeable about it than most.