South Park and Family Guy- Does anybody else find it hypocritical......

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RaBekah

New member
......That South Park, with the Imaginationland storyline, is using pop culture references as much as Family Guy, or even more, despite ripping on them for doing the same thing? Sure, they might defend it with the whole "we're doing it within the context of a plot", but to me it's no different.

Like when Cartman was frozen in ice: they did a shot-for-shot parody of the Buck Rogers opening with Cartman in Gil Gerard's place, which is the sort of thing Family Guy would do, but somehow they get a free pass.

I say, a pop-culture reference is a pop-culture reference, no matter how it's used. Maybe Family Guy uses them too often, but it's not like it's the only thing it has in its arsenal.
 
I think it's really just the shear number of pop culture references that Family Guy uses that pissed Matt and Trey off. Using just one in an episode isn't really a big deal.
 
Matt and Trey were not criticizing the fact that Family Guy references pop culture. What they were criticizing was the constant barrage of gags in Family Guy that have nothing to do with the story, pop culture related or not.
 
Who cares as long as it's funny. I get more laughs out of Family Guy than I do with South Park these days. Parker and Stone just need to get over themselves. It's hilarious how many things they feel they're "above" doing.
 
Well this is actually the kind of dual perspective I thought they were going for in "Cartoon Wars": The Kyle/Stan perspective who didn't really care as long as it was funny, and the Cartman perspective who didn't like it because the humor was too random.

I don't think they were really outright attacking the show, just having fun with valid criticisms of the show's formula.
 
I don't recall them criticizing Family Guy's use of pop culture references. Their key criticism was that they throw in jokes that have nothing to do with the plot.
 
I totally agree. Consider the fact that Kyle and Stan are really more the alter egos of Parker and Stone than Cartman and terrorists are. It's plain that the show's creators still appreciate other funny shows. South Park is usually pretty brutal to the real-world subjects it deals with. A few insightful jabs coming from less sympathetic characters while the more likable characters still praise the show is a sign of affection more than anything.

Plus, doesn't anyone remember how, in Cartoon Wars, that one passerby said (paraphrase), "I know Family Guy is just joke after joke, but at least it doesn't get all preachy and get its head up its own ass like some shows." That was pretty clearly Parker and Stone throwing a good-natured jab at themselves to demonstrate they weren't trying to make themselves out as any better than Family Guy.
 
I don't have a problem with it, for the reasons everyone has outlined in previous posts. That, and the writing on South Park is about 50 times better than on Family Guy.

I do think that they could cut back a bit on the parodies, however. It's easy to overuse them and let them prop up lazy writing. I don't think that's happened yet on South Park, but it could.
 
It should be said, though, that according to the commentary for Cartoon Wars, they do hate Family Guy: "We do hate it. We do hate Family Guy. And we totally understand that people love it, that's why we put it in the show, we understand that it speaks to some people and it can just be a simple laugh and that's great, and we certainly don't think it should be taken off the air or anything like that; we just don't respect it in terms of writing." On the other hand, they respect The Simpsons.
 
Now that is pretty much a very civil thing to say. Not, "the show annoys the crap out of us, so lets slaughter the heck out of it." They understand that others like it and respectfully say they just don't like it themselves.

Unlike the Simpsons writers, that is. They seem to be very bitter and crap out an endless barrage of "OMG! Family Guy steals from us because we have a family, and they have a family. Even though the baby is a different gender." All because they're bitter that they forgot what made the Simpsons so great, and alienated their fans with really bad jokes and writing, and most of those alienated fans flocked to FG.

And then the Simpsons goes ahead and rips off Family guy themselves. They took many jokes from them in the last few seasons, and managed to make them unfunny. I.E. that episode where Homer pretends to be Fonz and smacks the Jukebox, causing the glass to shatter.
 
...and his hand to bleed horribly, so badly he passes out. And don't forget the Treehouse episode where Homer becomes the Grim Reaper. It wasn't funny at all, and Family Guy did it first.
 
I think the heart of Matt and Trey's beef with Family Guy was in what Cartman said to Kyle. Cartman (meaning South Park as a series) hates being compared to Family Guy because their jokes are nothing alike and "Cartman"'s are more thought out and relevant to the situation. Like SirLemming said, they don't respect Family Guy because they think it's lazy writing. Despite the parodies and references in South Park, they haven't come off as using humor the way Family Guy does.
 
It's the random "cutaway" gags, not the pop culture stuff. Cartman said it best when he was like "When I make jokes, they are relevent to a plot and story, not just one random, interchangable joke after another!!!!!"
 
FG uses professional actors, and SP uses mainly Matt and Trey and show staff, so the FG voices are bound to be better.

As for animation, SP strives for a deliberatly crude look, but even then has been doing some interesting work, especially in more recent episodes.

FG's animation has always been pretty crappy. I swear, half the time they're not paying the slighest bit of attention to their backgrounds. CHoppy figure movement in the foreground, nothing in the background.
 
How, exactly, is FG's animation choppy. Was there an episode that was particularly bad or something? Also, FG hasn't really changed its animation style since 1997, other than deepening the colors a bit more and including the occasional 3-D scenes. Meanwhile, SP has definetly revamped their animation since '97 with far better frame rates to improve each character's movements and making a much better looking appearence as a whole. The only bad thing with FG's animation is that it may be a bit outdated, being 10 y/o.
 
In the same commentary they claim that the Simpsons staff hates Family Guy more than Trey & Matt do, even though they don't want to admit it. That's why they and the staff of King of the Hill sent them flowers and told them "you're doing God's work", which consequently inspired Trey & Matt to include Simpsons and KOTH references in part II.
 
The Simpsons staff has a beef with everybody. I remember they were snotting all over the place about how "Dinosaurs" (the Henson productions Anamatronic sitcom) was a ripoff of theirs, when in all honestly, I think Dinosaurs went a lot farther than the Simpsons in making socila statements. They took large hits at religion and politics. And while South Park went under fire with making fun of scientology, Dinosaurs just flew under the radar making fun of the Dianetics books. (It's in the commentary in the episode where Sideshow Bob marries Selma. Dinosaurs came back at them somehow, but I forget how)

Other than the fact FG and Dinosaurs feature a family with a moronic father, they can't possibly be considered ripoffs. You might as well say Simpsons is a ripoff of the Flintstones in that aspect. It isn't.

Personally, I think it hillarious that the Simpson people just have been swindling jokes from Family Guy and making nonstop jokes they're "ripping them off." Still sounds like Jealousy to me.
 
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