What am I missing? (Family Guy)

Only the stupidest minority of people like things because they're told to like it.

Just because you don't find it funny doesn't mean that those who do enjoy the show only enjoy it because Seth told them they had to or they weren't cool.
 
Family Guy, IMO, is a so-so show. It might borrow some elements from The Simpsons, but it's not a rip-off, it's got it's own style. Some of the jokes are funny, but some are too vulgar or tasteless. I don't like Family Guy because it's too mean-spirited at times. Meg-bashing is funny for all of 5 seconds, but they overuse that too much. The characters are also unlikable, except Stewie and the dog, Brian.
I'll defend FG on this point though. I didn't really enjoy the "Cartoon Wars" episode of South Park because I though a two-part episode centered around their hatred for FG was juvenile. I'm sure the writers work hard on writing FG, even if it's not well-executed. Also, South Park and Family Guy will be compared, and that's not such a horrible insult as they make it out to be. One thing I don't like about South Park is, that Matt and Trey have such big egos. It can get annoying.

Plus, Seth McFarlane seems like a nice enough guy, despite all the bashing him and Family Guy have to endure.
 
I'll be the first to admit that I like Family Guy for its pop-culture related jokes,but that's not the only reason.

I like Family Guy because it's a breath of fresh air from the years of staleness of The Simpsons,so it's kind of a "rooting for the little guy" thing to me. Sure,they overdo some things (I'm as tired of Meg-bashing as anyone else here),but they had the common sense to kill off recurring gag characters like the vaudeville guys when people got tired of them,so you got to give them credit for that.
 
It's hit or miss, always has been really. But something did happen post revival, any rabid fan of the show (almost myself) will tell you that as well. I've always gone with the idea that the new writers are relying to much on the old, and not giving us anything original, that and they cram the episodes with as much shock value jokes as possible. Sometimes that's funny, but other times, it could be annoying, especially watching the older ones where it was not as deep in really shocking to the core jokes.

You're not missing anything, in fact, I know a few people who have tried multiple times to get into the series and just can't. Nothing wrong with that. When it crosses into bad is when people start picking on, or fights with fans, and name calling, and the ever famous "Simpsons Rip Off" arguments that do nothing but light fires under people who do like the show.
 
At its peak, Family Guy was an excellent source of humor, with numerous types of jokes. Consider two favorite scenes of mine from "The King is Dead":

Lois gets a call from someone asking if she would take over as play director. While she thinks it over, everyone in the room stares at her, anticipating her response. Then they cut to Tom & Diane on the news, ALSO watching to see her response. As soon as she says she'll do it, Tom says "This just in: Lois Griffin is named the new artistic director of the Quahog Players." And if that wasn't enough, a picture of Lois on the phone appears next to Tom, like they had cameras in her house and captured her reaction shot.

Consider another scene, this time in a cutaway, where we see Einstein working at a patent office. A man named Smith comes up and says he has what he calls "Smith's Theory of Relativity". Einstein knocks him out and steals his work. Now that joke would be funny on its own, but then he does the same thing to GOD in a later cutaway.

A lot of the humor is also derived from top notch comic timing, like in "Death Lives" when Peter is casually saying to Death how he'll get him cleaned up for his date. In mid-sentence he takes off Death's hood to reveal a hideous skull, to which Peter screams in horror. A couple seconds later he puts the hood back on and casually continues his interrupted sentence like nothing happened.

Like others have said, some of the humor also derives from the unexpected. Consider a cutaway in "Dammit Janet" when Peter is in the Outback and pokes a crocodile multiple times. The obvious outcome of that joke would be for the fed-up croc to snap at Peter. But it doesn't move. And out of nowhere, a koala flies at Peter's head.

Or in "Fifteen Minutes of Shame" when Peter says "HERE'S what I think of your contract!" The cliched thing to do would be for him to tear it up. But instead he simply hands it back to the exec and says "I think it's awful."

Then there are jokes about how stupid Peter is, but nevertheless provide some humor. Like in "Brian in Love" when, by simply hearing Lois say the word "bond", he says "Bond? JAMES Bond!" Or in "One if By Clam, Two if By Sea" when Peter is so clueless that he doesn't realize the person getting arrested on TV is him.

I could go on and on, but hopefully this gives an idea of why -I- like it, anyway.
 
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