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

robot chicken has some of the best jokes and skits i have ever seen. it also has some of the most stupid and obnoxious things i have ever seen as well. it only last 10 minutes so the hit to miss ratio works out pretty well and it is a successful show. family guy runs for what 24 minutes on average? they can not let a joke die nor do they chose to.

McFarlane can say what he wants about fans of precancelation shows having a sense of entitlement and not liking the new direction and there is truth to that. the other part of it is that it is not the show we fought for, and we do not like the 6 jokes they have been using for the last 2 years. precancelation the cutaways were had to do with the plot or were related to the story a little bit, and the really random ones were great because they were random. random is not random or spontaneous if you know the unexpected is coming everytime.

what has turned me off to the point where i am close to not watching anymore is the constant repetition and regurgatation of jokes i did not think were that funny to begin with. he is trying to make family guy robot chicken and there is not enough material to do that. so we get at least an extra 5 minutes of one of their new wrapper same crap joke.
though maybe that is their plan, bore us to death with the same theme of either gay stewie, meg bashing, or word pronounciation jokes so that the "random" cutaways are a breath of fresh air. the problem is the cutaways are becoming more and more like the petarded show.

the characters and their traits do not matter anymore, they have literally killed off some of my favorite jokes (barber shop guys, i really liked them), and McCFarlane loves it. i love robot chicken it is a great show. family guy is not robot chicken no matter how hard seth tries to change that.
 
Don't expect it to be as good as the first one. I think the only reason the first one worked so well is that it snuck up on us, we weren't expecting them to do a full blown Star Wars parody. Now that we know a second one is coming, and more importantly, the more Seth and Co. know how successful the first one was, I'd be really surprised if Something, Something, Something Dark Side was half as good as Blue Harvest. Call me a skeptic, but I really think they are going to blow it this time.
 
I'm sure Seth was really saying on the commentary that he doesn't understand why the first 3 seasons are looked at as "perfect" by fans, when they clearly had their flaws, and nobody sees flaws more than the person who created the series.
 
My problems with this set are:


  1. The case is crap. Shoving 3 discs into one normal case is not a good idea, and the arms on the center piece are fragile. I anticipate only a few more uses before they break. I also miss the summaries that the last sets had, because then I can look up what the episode is about.
  2. No Christian Bale gag. I thought it was hilarious, but it's not on this set.
  3. This may just be my horrid luck, but I've already returned one set for skipping and this one I have now has audio matching issues on the second disc. I have to actually stop the disc and restart to get the audio to match.
  4. The menus. While bright and cheery, sometimes I have trouble seeing which option I am on.
I guess my complaints are more about the set than the content. I like most of the episodes and their added material. I'm a little disappointed that Seth didn't do all of the commentaries, though.
 
Can of worms but- you do see the logic fault, right? Complaining about the long term fans wanting to keep it as their hidden special toy is one thing. But I don't think you can argue that the fans who were behind the show being brought back in the first place don't deserve at least a minor sense of entitlement. By that logic, you'd think they were just a charity that goes from show to cancelled show trying to revive it. If fans put in the time and money to give something a second chance and find they're not the biggest fans of changes you make, telling them to go suck a lemon is a very rude response to them getting you back into a job.
 
I can *kind of* understand where Seth is coming from. He sees a lot wrong with the first 3 seasons, where Fox had a tighter stranglehold on what they could do. The only reason those three seasons were the way they were was because Fox's censors would tell them 'no' whenever they wanted to do something really outrageous.

I'm almost positive that if McFarlane had been given free reign from the get go, the series would have just as all out as it was post-cancellation, not that it would be a good thing for some of us, mind you.

Sometimes being told 'no, you can't' is a good thing because it forces you to really be creative on how you tell a story. That just isn't there in the current day Family Guy. A good part of it can still be hilarious, but Seth & crew aren't being challenged to make it as great as it could be, because now, outside of something like the Simpsons joke from 'Movin' Out (Brian's Song)', nobody's telling them 'You can't do this, change it'.
 
I don't want to put words in Seth's mouth, but I think sometimes adversity brings out the best in artists. The first 3 seasons were a constant struggle to keep the show from getting cancelled. Artistic freedom is a great thing, and I would love to be in a position where I could put almost whatever I want on the air without worrying about paying the bills; but it might be easy to relax a little too much when you're in that situation. All of those story and animation issues may be symptomatic of a more creatively stimulating time period for the showrunners.


And then there was the Adult Party Cartoon. :ack: That's the point being made, I believe.
 
I didn't think Family Gay was that bad. I didn't think it was funny (Family Guy isn't funny anymore.) but it wasn't horrible. =/

Still, I'm not enjoying Family Guy all of that much anymore. I wouldn't buy a Family Guy DVD even if I was rich and had nothing better to buy. Even the older episodes can barely make me laugh anymore.

Not a single episode from this DVD made me laugh at all. It's all just recycled jokes that weren't even funny in the first place. (Conway Twitty? Come on. Not funny at all.) and the jokes that are new aren't funny either.

I'm really wishing that the new Futurama season comes and steals the spot-light. Futurama is the funniest show I have ever seen, and I think that it deserves way more praise than Family Guy. But I'm not going to pull this off topic... Sorry.
 
Personally, I found the older episodes to be funny in a clever sort of way, while more recent episodes just seem to have low standard humor. I do agree about the animation mistakes though, the coloring in the original seasons was pretty terrible, but it's not like the animation now is stellar.

To be fair, seasons 3 and 4 were the best in my view. I kind of wish they could return to the middle ground they were at instead of one extreme over the other.
 
A lot of fans found the Futurama DTVs to be pretty bland compared to the original series. I think when a show is off the air for a long period of time and you try to regroup the writers and restart the show, you run into yourself trying to "replicate" the original rather than continue on like any show does season to season. Hence why Family Guy and Futurama revivals seem like something is missing from the original's charm.

And don't even get me started on Adult Party Cartoon.
 
I have seen the movies, and that is my opinion as well.

However, I have also seen somewhere where the writers admitted that the movies where far from their best and that they're going to try to make the new episodes as funny as the old ones.

So I do have a bit of hope after seeing that.
 
That and people change over time. It's a rarity for people to have the exact same tastes after a year or so, so people can't expect exactly what they remember.
 
I've never thought the first 3 seasons were perfect. I thought the first season was pretty lackluster, and the second one was pretty good, but the only one I really liked was the third season. It seemed to be a perfect balance of what they're doing now and what they were doing before they were canceled.

I mean, Family Guy still makes me laugh, but there are no episodes that really stick out for me anymore. It's all pretty similar.
 
I saw some reruns from season 4 for the first time recently, and I was thinking how great it would've been if they had really kept it right about there. It was definitely leaning in this new direction, but the execution was a lot more precise.
 
it is a bit off topic but the first 20 minutes of each of the futurama movies have me in stitches. they still have the comedy style from the old EPs, the problem comes when they have to stretch the plot and emotions over really a 45 minute span. especially when the writers seem to be at their best when developing stories over really 13 - 16 minutes time spans with jokes sprinkled in to not strain the plot in 1 episode. i have high hopes for new futurama episodes.

as for family guy i definately understand why seth gets frustrated by fans challenging him to recapture his first seasons. the older episodes would get tedious in that they did repeat plot ideas and were forced to write for meg. something they are not good at so they bash her now instead (probably in retalliaton for some of their more hated episodes).

i get that and understand it but i wish their cutaways were at least more geared toward a solid plot. i get that they will never do that because they just hate that structure and they are making millions doing their stuff now. still their jokes work best when they are more like quick jabs that flow with the story, not the 2 minute skits they do for robot chicken.

like seth says he is making money and does not want to change. in the meantime he has created a new set of characters i despise, and follows it up with a handful of "jokes" regurgatated every episode, with plots that are comical versions of how he thinks and how he wants you to act. i will tune in for the occassional show that has an interesting premise but my expectations have been shattered, and i will start treating it as the juvinial humor it has become.
 
Would you care to elaborate?

I honestly beg to differ. One example that springs immediately to mind is the song that didn't make into the "Lois Kills Stewie" episode. There has actually been a bunch of DVD exclusive stuff that make me wonder why it was edited out in the first place.

But that's just me.
 
My issue with the post cancellation episodes is that it seems like the writers forgot they were writing Characters. The Characters we have now are shallow husks of what they were early on. Around season 5, and a good bit of 4, it seemed like we had an all new cast that were just Absurd and over the top exaggerations of what they were before.

I remember when Peter was an incredibly inept, but caring father. Now, he's an Idiot with very little personality.
I remember when Meg was just unpopular. Now she's some sort of Abomination that's even hated by her own parents.
I remember when Stewie was a murderous Sociopath. Now he's a walking talking gay joke.
Lois used to be a decent Parent, but that wasn't shocking enough.

And season seven just continues with these bland and uninspired characterizations.
 
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