Toon Zone Talkback - "Family Guy Volume Seven": Who Says Seven is a Lucky Number?

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c.malacina

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This is the talkback thread for "Family Guy Volume Seven": Who Says Seven is a Lucky Number?.
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Honestly, at this point, I'm more inclined to just pick and choose which episodes I want to buy via iTunes. At least then, I don't have to pay for episodes I don't want.
 
That is a good point. I bought the last set for the Stewie Kills Lois/Lois Kills Stewie arc and a couple other eps., but I was highly disappointed with it. You only got two discs full of episodes and one spare on the third bonus disc. Why can't they just release the whole season at one time, instead of half of one season?
 
I was a little harsher on the set than I expected to be. It's just that Family Gay and The Juice is Loose are two of my least favorite episodes of anything. Take them out and the set is much easier to recommend.
 
They haven't done a full season in a volume since vol 2..I don't think there going back to full seasons anytime soon.

I'd only recommend doing that if you like edited episodes..but it is more cost effective though.
 
I don't blame you. Family Gay was unnecessarily explicit and disgusting (Parents Television Council is petitioning this episode to the FCC, BTW) and The Juice Is Loose just didn't have the story to make a 22 minute episode. Unlike the last set, there is not a single episode that I must have, and it would be easier to just have a compilation of the funniest scenes, such as the bullfrog sequence you mentioned. That is the best thing about the show these days, the quick jokes like that, but they can't seem to write a full episode that way.
 
This review expresses perfectly why I don't watch Family Guy anymore.

A Conway Twitty cutaway gag that lasts nearly THREE MINUTES?! Now I'm really glad I quit.
 
While I thought that gag was two minutes longer than it needed to be, I'd rather watch that bit again than the one in 'Family Gay' where the horse is licking a sleeping Peter, which ties with the 'Mary Poppins' gag from the previous season as the sickest joke ever produced by this show.
 
I sure hope Family Guy does not go on for decades like the Simpsons have. If Family Guy is bad now, wait till it overstays its welcome, which may be closer than you think. I'm not a fan of Family Guy because I hate the characters, their voices and their stupid escapades. That's just my opinion.
 
Ain't that the truth. Almost every episode of Family Guy has at least one or two gut-bustingly hilarious jokes. The only problem is you have to slodge through so much crap before you get to them.
 
Meh, now that I think about it, I'm starting to gradually get sick of the show (post cancellation episodes that is). It's like the same thing every episode: crappy, stiff animation and 90% cutaway gags.
Remember the old episodes where there was an actual plot the entire episode and limited cutaway gags? And maybe the occasional moral learned at the end? The animation wasn't perfect, but at least it tried to maintain some level of fluidity. And most of the characters were likeable.

Bah, if this upcoming season of FG uses the same tired formula (the first one, not the latter), I'm just ditching the show.
 
You might as well ditch it now because this is the direction Seth and his crew have decided they want the show to go in. In fact, in one of the commentaries on the volume 7 DVD Seth addresses this very subject, saying he doesn't understand why people are defensive about the first 3 seasons and why they slam the recent episodes in comparison. According to his commentary, Seth isn't very fond of the pre-cancellation episodes, citing story and animation problems and (I believe) he states that he doesn't find the first 3 seasons particularly funny.

In fact, Seth goes as far as stating his belief that the fans who prefer the pre-cancellation episodes are just aggravated that the show they stuck with back when it wasn't popular and FOX didn't care about it (the show they fought to save) has now become something different then they remember. Apparently it's a sense of misplaced entitlement or something. I dunno, I really enjoy the first 3 seasons, but I like the more recent stuff more.
 
I'm actually with you (and Seth, I suppose) there, to an extent. What was so amazing about the first three seasons? I've watched some of the older episodes, and it's the same show with darker colors and more (failed) attempts at sentimentality.
 
Yeah, I have to say that these recent Family Guy episodes just aren't working for me. The first 3 pre-cancellation seasons weren't all gold, but the good ones worked. The post-cancellation FG episodes, on the other hand, are just shock for shock's sake alone, verbatim regurgitation of scenes from movies and other TV shows (as if the fact that FG characters are doing them somehow makes them funnier), and there have been so many instances of characters acting completely out of character for the sake of a joke that it's too numerous to list. All character development has been abandoned in favor of shock or gross-out humor and gags, and most of the characters have completely lost any shred of likeability that they had. On top of this, the newest episodes (IMO) have no replay value; once I've seen the new episode once, I'm done with it. Family Guy has become a skitcom, rather than a sitcom, and I could deal with that if the show were at least funny, but the latest episodes have not been funny. I can see where they were trying to be funny, but the FG writers have had more misses than hits lately.

I'm dangerously close to abandoning FG altogether and not even watching the show when it resumes in the fall. It's gone that far South for me. No offense to any FG fans, though. If the current formula works for you, then by all means keep watching, but personally, I'm about done.
 
They aren't the goldmines of carefully crafted writing and characterization that some people make them out to be, but they're different in a way that I think is good. They're more subdued and structured, which in my opinion makes the moments of randomness really shine. When you just heap joke upon joke it can have kind of a tiring effect on the audience and the comedy loses its "punch". In my opinion.

It saddens me to hear that Seth MacFarlane honestly thinks this is the direction to go in. Not that I'm saddened because he's "lost his way", but it just sounds like he's on a different comedic wavelength now and the show isn't going to be worth watching for much longer. Part of me hoped that he was just too busy to notice how the style of the show was changing, or simply didn't want to interfere with what the writing team was doing.

By the way, I thought the thing with Peter picking up the toad was brilliant. Timing makes all the difference, and that was an extremely well-timed bit. Too bad they can't all be that way.
 
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