Family Guy

Family Guy
File:FamGuy.png Family Guy title screen
Created by	Seth MacFarlane
Developed by	Seth MacFarlane David Zuckerman
Starring	Seth MacFarlane Alex Borstein Seth Green Mila Kunis
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	87
Production
Running time	20–23 minutes (Except for the DVD film : Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story) - 88 minutes
Original release
Network	FOX
Release	January 31, 1999 – February 14, 2002; May 1, 2005 – present

This article is about the television show. For the game based on the same show, see Family Guy (video game).

Family Guy is an American animated comedy created by Seth MacFarlane for FOX in 1999. The show was cancelled once in 2000 and again in 2002, but strong DVD sales and reruns on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim led FOX to resume production of the show in 2005 (see "Return to television" below). To date it is one of only a handful of shows in television history to be cancelled and later revived by the power of their fan bases, and one of the few shows to be brought back to air by the same network that cancelled it. (See also Cagney and Lacey and Doctor Who). The title character is Peter Griffin, an inept blue collar head of a lower-middle class family frequently beset by the consequences of his foolish antics. Family Guy's brand of humor is notable for the usually brief, frequently nonsensical cutaways (usually featuring oddball pop culture references) and flashbacks to various points in history, geography, and reality involving the characters and their outlandish actions (see "Structure and comedic approach" below).

Seth MacFarlane voices many of the characters (Peter, Brian, Stewie, Glenn Quagmire, Tom Tucker and others), and works as a gag writer on various episodes. Other voice actors include Mila Kunis (Meg), Seth Green (Chris), Alex Borstein (Lois, Tricia Takanawa, Loretta Brown), Mike Henry (Cleveland, Cleveland Jr, Performance Artist, Herbert and Greased-up Deaf Guy), and Patrick Warburton (Joe Swanson). Lacey Chabert provided the voice of Meg for the first production season (14 episodes); however, because of a contractual agreement (it is not clear whether it was at Chabert's, Fox's or the producers' request), she was never credited, and Fox has never officially admitted that she was ever the voice of Meg.

History

Main article: History of Family Guy

Family Guy's first and second seasons were made starting in 1999 after Larry shorts (its predecessor) caught the attention of the Fox Broadcasting Company. Its cancellation was announced, but then a shift in power at Fox and outcry from the fans led to a reversal of that decision and the making of a third season. After that, it was really cancelled. Reruns on Teletoon (and later Adult Swim) drove interest in the show up, and the DVD releases did quite well, selling over 2.2 million in a year and renewing network interest. Family Guy returned to production in 2004, making two more seasons (for a total of five) and a straight to DVD movie, Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story. A sixth season is in contract negotiations.

Characters

The Griffin family, from left to right: Brian, Lois, Peter, Stewie, Chris, Meg.

Main article: List of characters from Family Guy

The show revolves around the adventures of Peter Griffin, a bumbling but well-intentioned blue-collar worker. Peter is an Irish-American Catholic with a classic Rhode Island / Eastern Massachusetts accent (similar to a Boston accent). During the course of the series, he discovers he's part African-American and has been known to have Spanish, Scottish, Irish and German ancestors. He is known for his trademark laugh. His wife, Lois who has a similar accent with a mixed voice that sounds like a New England version of Edith Bunker, is a stay-at-home mom/piano teacher, and is a member of the Pewterschmidts, (a wealthy socialite family). Peter and Lois have three children: teenage daughter Meg Griffin, who is frequently the butt of jokes for her supposed ugliness; goofy, low-intelligence teenage son Chris Griffin, in many respects a younger version of his father; and diabolically evil infant son Stewie Griffin bent on world domination and the death of his mother. Stewie speaks fluently and eloquently, (with stereotypical British phrases) and even though the family can hear his ambitions of world domination and of Lois' demise, all but Brian (the intellectual talking pet dog) dismiss it as baby gibberish. Brian is the only family member who really understands Stewie, and does not treat him like an infant. Stewie also refers to his mother and father as "Lois" and "the fat man" respectively. Brian is anthropomorphized in that he walks on two legs, drinks Martinis, is romantically attracted to Lois, owns his own car (a Toyota Prius, circa 2004), engages in human conversation, though he is still considered a pet in many respects. Occasionally, Brian will act in a stereotypically canine manner, usually for comedic effect (such as his inability to stand up in the back of a car, chasing tennis balls and his fear of vacuum cleaners). On his pride, he does not, however, engage in overly submissive "domesticated" behavior.

Other recurring characters include the Griffin family's colorful neighbors: paraplegic police officer Joe Swanson, his perpetually pregnant wife Bonnie, and sex-crazed airline-pilot bachelor Glenn Quagmire who lusts after Lois and just about anything else female. (When sexually enticed, Quagmire exclaims, "Giggity-Giggity-Goo", and "All right!") Other characters include mild-mannered deli owner Cleveland Brown, his wife (ex-wife as of the fourth-season episode The Cleveland-Loretta Quagmire, which marks her last appearance) Loretta Brown and their hyperactive son, Cleveland Jr. (who hasn't appeared since Season 3 **except briefly in the funeral scene in 'Perfect Castaway'**), news anchors Tom Tucker and Diane Simmons along with "Asian Reporter Tricia Takanawa", and mentally ill celebrity mayor Adam West, voiced by the very same Adam West of the 60s TV series Batman.

Family Guy has not used an especially large cast of recurring minor characters (though this has changed to an extent in Season 4, with many one-shot characters from prior episodes reappearing in new episodes), and most of the episode plotlines center on the exploits of the Griffin family.

There are also several semi-regular characters who serve as running gags. Examples include the Evil Monkey in Chris' closet; Herbert, the creepy old man who enjoys "watching" Chris; the Greased-Up Deaf Guy; Ollie Williams, the weather forecaster, who shouts everything he says in his "BlaccuWeather" forecast and appears to be an "angry black man" version of Al Roker; Jake Tucker, anchorman Tom Tucker's son (who has an upside-down face, and no 'bottom' i.e. ass); and Peter's nemesis the Giant Chicken (who originally poked fun at a Burger King commercial), whose fights with Peter parody Hollywood action films and usually cause huge amounts of damage to the city. The incarnation of Death (originally voiced by Norm MacDonald but now by Adam Carolla) has also made a number of appearances. Template:Endspoiler

Episodes

Main article: List of Family Guy episodes

In keeping with the humorous tone of the series, most episode titles of Family Guy are parodies of popular television shows, movies and slogans. No media product or cultural norm is immune from parody.

For the first half of the first season, the writers tried to work the words "murder" or "death" into the title of every episode (e.g. Mind over Murder and Death Has a Shadow) to make the titles resemble those of old-fashioned radio mystery shows. On a DVD commentary, creator Seth MacFarlane says that the writers stopped doing this when they realized they were beginning to get the titles confused and couldn't remember which title went with which episode.

Structure and comedic approach

The animated skyline in Family Guy

The actual skyline of Providence

The characters live and work in Quahog (IPA [kowhɔg] or [kowhɒg]), Rhode Island, a hyperrealistic and intensely satirical suburb of Providence. As a reminder of the true locale, many background shots feature a distinct cluster of three medium-sized skyscrapers, whose features are intended to correspond to a row of buildings in the actual Providence skyline. (The actual buildings in downtown Providence are, from left to right, One Financial Center, 50 Kennedy Plaza and the Bank of America Tower, see comparison at right). This belief is verified in "When You Wish Upon A Weinstein" when the Griffins went to the Providence Performing Arts Center to see Fiddler On The Roof. This leaves the writers free to make local references and gags specific to Rhode Island culture. A "quahog" is in fact a type of hard shell clam, the state mollusk for Rhode Island, and doubles as an euphemism for "vagina", much like the word "clam."

Characters' lives largely revolve around items and ideas of popular culture incorporated into everyday conversation and events. Some of these references have exaggerated grounding in reality — a paranoid and psychotic version of actor Adam West serves as Quahog's mayor, and public schools are named for Rhode Island natives James Woods and Buddy Cianci — while others unabashedly delve into the realm of fantasy without being questioned. It is entirely possible that we see the world through the eyes of the individual character, instead of the "real" world. This would explain why we understand Stewie's rants, Chris could have an evil monkey in his closet and a talking zit, and Peter could have stars like Gene Simmons pop in to answer questions, an ancestor who is a Jabba the Hutt-type creature and the Transformer Soundwave as a co-worker. As we are seeing the world through each of these characters' eyes, their absurd imaginations become reality.

File:Stewie Griffin.jpg

Stewie dreams of eliminating Mr. Rogers with his Raygun.

Although Family Guy sometimes maintains a rough sense of continuity, complicated plots are most often traded for a concentration on comedy that is based largely on pop culture references and non sequiturs. Though this style is often played within the characters' world, the series is also known for its use of cutaways, where the plot is interrupted and segues into unrelated, self-contained sketches of variable length — known as "manatee gags," from a South Park parody of Family Guy that implied the jokes were so non-sensical that manatees choosing random concepts could assemble them. Often initiated when a character refers to a past event (accompanied by phrases such as "like that time when...", "I haven't felt like this since...", or "This is worse than the time..."), these sketches are wildly divergent in topic—ranging from classic film scenes to historical events to contemporary television commercials. Many times they encapsulate twisted, humorous takes on reality, and sometimes they are completely nonsensical, such as Peter's being a magic mirror for Kevin Federline, serving as Sandy Duncan's glass eye, or using his bulk to "provide nighttime warmth for Lara Flynn Boyle".

The show owes a great deal of its comedic inspiration to the Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker's Naked Gun/Police Squad! series (spoof, parody and screwball), whose structural comedic approach has been homaged by Family Guy. Slapstick gags, deadpan one-liners, non sequiturs, flashbacks, absurdity, and pop culture parody have been an influence on Family Guy. Family Guy finally parodied this ultimate parody movie in the fourth-season episode called PTV. Some have also noted that many jokes on the show and the pacing seem like an updated version of the British sitcom The Young Ones whose cutaways frequent situations than those of Family Guy.

Though earlier animated series (such as The Critic) experimented with this style, few wandered the line between reality and fantasy so aggressively. Indeed, the use of this style has been parodied by the show itself; an entire episode was revealed to have been a dream concocted by Pam Ewing, a character from the television series Dallas, which retconned an entire season to the same conceit. With this approach, the series reverts to normality by the end of most episodes, and events in past episodes are sometimes ignored. Some reversions to normality are accomplished by tortuous or unlikely means, while others are tacitly implied. The episode He's Too Sexy for His Fat offers examples of each: Peter's extensive liposuction and cosmetic surgery is reverted by having Peter have a car accident and land in a lard factory, where he consumes a whole vat of lard. In the episode The Perfect Castaway, Peter is seen eating Joe's legs for food while Peter, Joe, Cleveland and Quagmire are stranded on Quagmire's raft of blow-up dolls in the middle of the ocean. Joe is seen without legs until the end of the episode, and when asked how he now has legs, he claims to have received them from a death row inmate who got the chair. Unfortunately for Joe, the man was also paraplegic. In another episode, Brian is viciously attacked by Stewie; he has shards of glass embedded in his head and face, is beaten repeatedly with a towel bar and toilet seat, has his legs broken with a golf club, is thrown down a flight of stairs, is shot through both knees, and is roasted by a flamethrower. Despite the immediate effects of the injuries, he is unscathed in his very next scene, akin to traditional Warner Brothers' cartoon style humor.

But there are also episodes making changes in continuity upheld and even embroidered in later episodes, such as Peter's occupation being shifted from a toy factory assembly line worker to a fisherman, to a lowly worker at a beer factory; the breakup and subsequent divorce of secondary characters Cleveland and Loretta Brown; and the recent birth of Peter's son via sperm donation — and Stewie's resulting half-brother rival — Bertram (voiced by Wallace Shawn), to a lesbian couple. In a recent fourth season episode, The Fat Guy Strangler, Brian picked up a rock and hit Peter in the head, telling him that it was revenge for keeping the window rolled up when Brian tried to jump head-first into the family car, which Peter had repainted at the time to resemble the General Lee — an event that took place in the season 3 episode, To Live and Die in Dixie.

As a native of Kent, Connecticut and alum of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), MacFarlane has written a number of in-jokes and references into Family Guy which allude to real life places in Rhode Island and the surrounding New England area, including Providence, Pawtucket, Narragansett, Barrington, Newport, and Warwick in Rhode Island; Hartford in Connecticut; and Natick, Framingham, Upton, South Attleboro, Webster, and Boston in Massachusetts. In fact, Natick, which is referenced as being home to a Twinkie factory in the show, was home to a Hostess factory — the maker of Twinkies — for many years, although it was closed in the late 1990s.

The last scene of Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story features an aerial view of the RISD, and some episodes show or reference to Brown University, which is located quite near RISD. Template:Endspoiler

Criticism

Main article: Criticism of Family Guy

File:Mad458.jpg

Cover of the October 2005 issue of Mad Magazine.

Family Guy has also received criticism for what critics see as premises and humor too similar to those featured in The Simpsons, another animated series on the Fox network. In 2005, the similarities were spoofed on a cover of Mad magazine, which featured an illustration of the main Family Guy characters altered to look like the characters on The Simpsons. Under it ran the headline "We salute Family Guy: TV's most original animated series!" (In the Australian version of this cover, the picture was that of the Family Guy family sitting on a couch closely resembling that of the Simpsons and giving off silhouettes resembling their corresponding Simpsons character).

The Simpsons writing team has taken shots at Family Guy several times, including:

• In "Missionary: Impossible", a television is shown bearing the Family Guy logo before being turned off by guest star Betty White.

• In "The Italian Bob", a book with a list of Springfield's criminals contains an image of Peter Griffin, above the caption "Plagiarismo". A second image in the sequence shows Stan Smith from American Dad!, with the caption "Plagiarismo di plagiarismo."

• In "Treehouse of Horror XIII", Homer obtains a "magic hammock" that clones him. One duplicate that is made of Homer is Peter Griffin.

Seth MacFarlane has stated in interviews that he and The Simpsons creator Matt Groening have an amicable relationship despite the jabs from The Simpsons writing staff. In an AV Club interview, MacFarlane commented on the controversy:

Apparently they hate our guts. I'm not sure why. I've said this before, but that show, at its best, is up there with the best episodes of All In The Family, Mary Tyler Moore, and Dick Van Dyke, I think. I was reading a quote from one of the writers, from a lecture that he gave, that said "The Simpsons staff hates Family Guy." Who knows why? I'm not losing any sleep over it.

The creators of Family Guy were able to make a couple of return jabs at The Simpsons. The first was in the opening credits to the season 4 episode "PTV" in which Stewie, as a parody of the opening credits to Police Squad!, rides his tricycle through many scenes, ending in the Simpsons' garage where he runs Homer Simpson over, followed by Peter remarking, "Who the hell is that?" The second was in the episode Mother Tucker in season 5, where Brian references a time that Stewie sold out, and then they cutaway to Stewie holding a Butterfinger bar and saying the line Bart Simpson had said in the Butterfinger commercials of the early 1990s: "Nobody better lay a finger on my Butterfinger." Finally, in the episode Peterotica, Peter has a flashback about the family being featured in animated shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show, looking the way the Simpsons did when they debuted on there.

In an April 2006 interview, Matt Groening revealed that the rivalry between Family Guy and The Simpsons is "very affectionate", complimenting MacFarlane and comparing the competition to The Addams Family and The Munsters in the 1960s.

File:FGToLiveandDieinDixie.png

Chris and Sam embrace in "To Live and Die in Dixie"

Family Guy has been panned by certain television critics, most notably from Entertainment Weekly, which was in turn attacked by MacFarlane during a scene in the straight-to-DVD movie Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story.

Other cartoonists who have publicly criticized Family Guy include John Kricfalusi, creator of Ren and Stimpy, who argued that "If you're a kid wanting to be a cartoonist today, and you're looking at Family Guy, you don't have to aim very high...The standards are extremely low.

The show was roasted in a two-part episode of South Park, in which characters called the show's jokes interchangeable, saying that they had no place in the storyline. In the two-part episode "Cartoon Wars," the writers of Family Guy were portrayed as manatees that moved various rubber "idea balls" inscribed with random topics (such as Gary Coleman or Mexico) into a giant bin that became the jokes written into each episode. A character similar to Bart Simpson is featured in the episode attempting to get Family Guy cancelled. But later, Kyle mentions that he likes the random jokes and "At least it doesn't get all preachy and up its own ass with messages, you know?," referring to the tendency of South Park episodes to have an explicit moral. The Family Guy writing staff appears to use the phrase "manatee gags" for the "like that time I..." jokes in the show, as shown on the Season 5 DVD commentary.

During his speech at the Harvard class day 2006, in character as Stewie Griffin, MacFarlane rebutted:

You're wondering to yourselves: what can I expect from the outside world? Will I find my niche? What should I know about the vast territory that lies beyond the confines of my little subculture of textbooks, Ramen noodles, coin-operated laundry and TV shows that seem to think they can skate by with random jokes about giant chickens that have absolutely nothing to do with the overall narrative? The boys at South Park are absolutely correct: Those cutaways and flashbacks have nothing to do with the story! They're just there to be ... funny. And that is a shallow indulgence that South Park is quite above, and for that I salute them.

TV to other media

The TV to DVD media has become a very successful enterprise. When Family Guy was previously canceled there were no reruns aired because no station had the rights. In 2003, Family Guy Volume 1 was released on DVD, and later that year, Volume 2. Several TV stations obtained rights to the show and began airing seasons 1-3. Having the episodes available on DVD gave the series a huge boost in popularity. Because of the DVDs, Fox realized that the series was widely popular, and the decision was made to bring it back. Then in November 2005, Volume 3 was released on DVD, followed by Volume 4 which was released on November 14, 2006.

DVD movie(s)

Main article: Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story

The direct to DVD movie released on September 27, 2005, focuses on Stewie searching for his biological father, who he adamantly believes is not Peter Griffin. Three separate but continuous episodes, originally intended for the end of the third season and start of the fourth in the event that the show would return, were instead combined into a full-length film. A one-minute scene from the movie can currently be viewed here. The movie was shown in the form of the individual episodes played in order serving as the show's 90-minute fourth-season finale on May 21, 2006. The open and close of the DVD feature long "news"-like sections covering the film's "premiere". These and several other scenes were edited out of the TV broadcast, as the 81 minute movie needed to run for 65 minutes on television. Due to commercials and credits, the TV version ran for 90 minutes, and included one new scene: a parody of the end credits for Soap closed part 2.

Main article: Family Guy: Happy Freakin' Christmas

The direct to DVD movie features 2 Family Guy episodes previously shown on TV is set to release on DVD on November 27, 2006. Including the shows "Da Boom" and "A Very Special Family Guy Freakin' Christmas" It also features a 10 minute never-before-seen featurette on Stewie. Running time: 1 hour and 30 minutes (approx) play.com

UMD

On November 25, 2005, the first and second seasons were released on PSP UMD. Also Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story was released on September 27, 2005. Family Guy: The Freakin Sweet Collection became available on UMD as of May 9. The third season was released on September 19, 2006.

Music and Music Video

A music video titled "Sexy Party" by Stewie Griffin appeared on YouTube on November 26, 2006, reaching the number 1 spot in amount of viewings on November 28, 2006.[1]

Theme song and score

Composed by Walter Murphy (A Fifth of Beethoven), the familiar theme music of the show begins as a parody of the opening theme of All in the Family, where Peter and Lois sing at the family piano, similar to Archie and Edith Bunker.

In keeping with the series' malleable comedy, the traditional opening song has been occasionally dropped for other themes, including parodies of Law & Order, Family Ties, Police Squad!/The Naked Gun, 24, The Simpsons, Bobby's World, the Rocky movies, and the Hope-Crosby "Road to..." movies.

Most of the early episodes have original music scores (consisting mostly of musical "stingers") also composed by Murphy, while others have tracked music either from earlier episodes or other Fox animated shows (this was a practice done for television shows produced from the 1950s through the early 1980s).

Another composer for the show is Ron Jones, who wrote the theme song for "Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story", and the music for a number of episodes.

Title Sequence

The title sequence in Family Guy does not vary, but small differences have occurred since the first episode in 2000.

• Stewie, Meg and Chris' pictures in the background are just outlines from 2000 - 2001 but in Da Boom, the pictures turn into the actual characters and not just outlines.

• In Episode 5, Season 6, Whistle While Your Wife Works, they, for the first time, made a "Stage Gag" by having Peter tripping on a stair on the stage and crushing one of the dancers, puncturing her lung. Peter became upset that he was going to have a swollen foot for a week. This all ends with Stewie popping up in front of the camera and saying "You know we should, we should, we should probably go ahead and shut that off."

Podcast

A free podcast is available for MP4 download from the official site or from iTunes. Twenty - eight episodes have been released. On several of the podcasts, cast members discuss upcoming episodes and joke amongst themselves.

See also

• List of characters from Family Guy
• List of Family Guy episodes
• List of places on Family Guy
• List of songs from Family Guy
• List of neologisms on Family Guy
• Criticism of Family Guy
• Family Guy DVDs
• Family Guy action figures
• List of Family Guy voice actors
• Larry shorts
• American Dad!
• The Simpsons
• Futurama

External links

• Family Guy at IMDb
• Family Guy Channel
• Official Website
• Planet Family Guy
• Family Guy Forum
• Family Guide

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