Family Guy

Family Guy is an American animated sitcom created by Seth MacFarlane for FOX in 1999. The show was cancelled in 2002, but positive response to the show's release on DVD and re-runs 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 Cagney and Lacey, Doctor Who). According to FOX, a fifth season will being airing this fall, and another the following year.

The title character is Peter Griffin, an inept blue-collar worker head of a 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 ludicrous actions (see "Structure and comedic approach" below).

MacFarlane, the show's creator, does not serve as a full time writer on the show; he has only written for two full episodes: the pilot, "Death Has a Shadow", and the first returning episode of season four, "North By North Quahog." However, he does voice many of the characters (Peter, Brian, Stewie, Glenn Quagmire, Tom Tucker, and some others). Other voice actors include That '70s Show star Mila Kunis (Meg), actor Seth Green (Chris), former MADtv star Alex Borstein (Lois, Trisha Takinawa, Loretta Brown, and cameo of Bunny Swan), Writer/Producer Mike Henry (Cleveland, Cleveland Jr., and Greased-up Deaf Guy), and comedic character actor Patrick Warburton (Joe Swanson). Actress Lacey Chabert was originally cast as the voice of Meg; however, she was never credited for this part because she left the show in the first season.

History

Creation

Family Guy traces its origins to two shorts of around ten minutes each made by Seth MacFarlane during the mid-1990s, featuring two main characters: Larry, a fat, old, balding man who did idiotic things, and Steve, a talking dog who was smarter than most people. The second of these shorts was broadcast on Cartoon Network in 1997.

Executives at Fox saw both shorts, and MacFarlane was offered the opportunity to develop a show based on them, which evolved into Family Guy.

Initial run

The first episode was aired in the United States on the Fox Broadcasting Company on January 30, 1999, after Super Bowl XXXIII. The show premiered as a regular series in April and ran for six more episodes until the season finale in the middle of May. The first season contained seven episodes and introduced the viewer to the show's main characters. The second season began on September 23, 1999, and contained 22 episodes. The third season contained 21 episodes and began its run on July 11, 2001. During its second and third-season runs, Fox frequently moved the show around different days and time slots with little or no notice. Ratings suffered, and after only two episodes of the second season, Family Guy was taken off the network's permanent schedule and was shown irregularly thereafter.

When Family Guy was shown in the UK, and when the DVDs were subsequently released there (November 12, 2001), the first seven episodes of the second season were included with the first season, balancing them out with 14 episodes each.

There was a great deal of debate and rumor during the second and third seasons about whether Family Guy would be cancelled or renewed. Fox publicly announced that the show had been cancelled at the end of the second season. In an attempt to convince Fox to renew the show, dismayed fans created websites, signed petitions, and wrote letters; some even sent diapers and baby food to the network for Stewie.

A shift in power at Fox resulted in thirteen new episodes being ordered, which formed the basis of the third season. The show's writers, aware of the uncertainty of the show's future, referenced it in several episodes. During the third season, Fox announced that the show was cancelled for good.

Revival efforts

The news of Fox's cancellation in the third season was met with dismay by fans, and renewed efforts were made to convince Fox to resurrect the show. An online petition was launched, which garnered over 10,000 signatures within a few weeks. The petition gained over 100,000 signatures total, but this along with mass e-mailing and letter writing to Fox executives and organized street protests failed to save Family Guy. Later efforts to get other networks, particularly UPN, to buy Family Guy also failed.

Return to television

In 2003, Family Guy gained its first syndicated run on Canada's Teletoon network, where it quickly gained massive popularity due to frequent airings. Several months later, reruns of the series finally found a permanent home at Cartoon Network's late-night Adult Swim block, where, as of 2006, it continues to play. According to a Cartoon Network press release, "FAMILY GUY ranks #1 in its time period on cable among Adults and Men 18–24, and also beats both "The Late Show with David Letterman" and "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" in head-to-head competition among Men 18–34 and Men 18–24." (This was only an occasional ratings outcome.)

The series found further success on DVD, when it was finally released for the US market (NTSC, Region 1) on April 15, 2003. Divided into two volumes, Family Guy sold 2.2 million DVD units in the first year, reportedly surpassing every other TV-based DVD released in 2003, including Sex and the City and Friends compilations. The significant Cartoon Network ratings, combined with the unprecedented DVD sales, led to widespread rumors that Fox was in talks to revive the series.

On November 19, 2003, the E! Entertainment Television channel and its website (see below) reported that Fox was negotiating with Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane to revive the show with 35 new episodes. On February 27, 2004, in an interview with IGN, Seth MacFarlane confirmed that Family Guy would resume production. MacFarlane provided even more information in a BBC interview.

On March 26, 2004, Fox television officially announced that it had committed to producing at least 22 more episodes of Family Guy to be broadcast in early 2005. Adult Swim had retained a window to run these episodes, starting on May 1, 2005. Seth MacFarlane was quoted as saying, "I'm just incredibly excited that we're back in business on Family Guy. Now all those crazy kids who've been hounding me to bring the show back can stop bothering me and move onto more serious matters—like saving Coupling."

The fourth-season premiere of Family Guy took place on Sunday, May 1, 2005, 9:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Fox, and immediately poked fun at the situation by showing a flashback to 2002, with Peter listing all of the Fox shows that would have to fail (and did) before 'Family Guy' would be able to return.

One aspect that has helped the show's current success is its placement on Sunday night with the other Fox animated programs. Reruns of the fourth season began play during Adult Swim on June 9, 2005.

Furthermore, a Family Guy direct-to-DVD movie, titled The Untold Story, which was a collection of three Family Guy episodes strung together in one collected plot with additional added scenes, was released on September 27, 2005. The 88-minute film is unrated and includes commentary, deleted material, and other bonus features. An edited version of the film was shown as the Season 4 finale on May 21, 2006.

A Family Guy video game is currently in production under the Take-Two Interactive banner, and will be developed by High Voltage Software. Playable characters include Peter, Brian, and Stewie. The game is slated for a 2006 release on the Game Boy Advance, Xbox, and PlayStation 2. According to Gamespot, it is also for GameCube.

On September 27, 2005, Variety reported that 20th Century Fox green lighted production of 22 additional all new episodes of Family Guy.

The fourth season of Family Guy has just recently been released in Ireland and the UK. The release of it before it initially aired has seemingly proven quite successful for sales, and in Ireland, the DVD debuted at #1 on the Irish DVD charts (the highest ever for a TV show DVD) for week ending 27 April, and maintained it for 4 weeks First week of Irish release of Season 4 on DVD, debuting at # 1] The 3 weeks following also show it at #1. Due to this success in Ireland and the UK, it is thought that Fox may try to beat TV channels in showing Season 4B, by releasing it on DVD first.

International syndication

In the United Kingdom, BBC Two started showing Season 3 in September 2005 along with American Dad!. The first half of the fourth season of Family Guy was released on DVD on April 24, 2006 in the UK.
In Australia, the show has made its long awaited return, airing Thursday nights on the Seven Network during the summer non-ratings period. This was shifted to a later timeslot on the resumption of the ratings year. It is also shown 6 days a week on The Comedy Channel and FOX8, which are carried on the cable networks Foxtel, Optus and Austar. Season 4 has recently been released on DVD, and has replaced the seasons 1-3 box set at the top of the HMV and Sanity DVD charts.
In Canada, it is shown on the Global Television Network, often simultaneously with the Fox telecasts across the border. Also, Teletoon continues to air syndicated reruns of the series. Reruns of the first three seasons are also presented in a dubbed French version on the French language Télétoon network.
In Germany a dubbed version of the show is emitted on Pro7 Thursdays at 00:45 CET (at the moment 2001-2002)
Swedish viewers can watch reruns of the show Sundays at 20:00 CET on TV6. Family Guy is also shown Fridays on TV3 around 19:00 CET.
In France, the cable channel Canal+ is broadcating the second season
In Flanders (Belgium) the show has always been broadcast by Kanaal Twee, although with lengthy interruptions. The fourth season hasn't been shown yet. Episodes are never dubbed, they are subtitled in Dutch instead (as with most animated shows in Flanders).
In Norway the show is sent on ZTV weekdays at 18:30. It was also shown on TV2, but was taken off after a few episodes.
In Latin America the show is broadcasted by FOX Latinoamerica on Mondays and Tuesdays at midnight.
In the Middle East the show runs on the free-to-air emarati satellite channel One TV. It can be received through Arabsat or Nilesat.
In Israel Israeli viewers can receive the show via yes sat. television.
In Ireland, viewers can watch it on Channel 6, or the UK channels BBC Two and FX.
In Spain, viewers can watch the last season on the FOX Channel and the new free-to-air channel La Sexta has just started to broadcast the first season.
In Kuwait. KTV 2 showed the 1&2 seasons.
In UAE, One TV shows an episode every weekday except Thursday.
In New Zealand, TV3 shows new episodes on Saturday, and repeats weeknights at 7pm on C4 (TV3's sister channel).
In Iceland the show is shown on the TV station Skjár einn on Thursday nights.
In Poland TV4 (the subchannel of Polsat) showed the 1&2 seasons. It was entitled Głowa Rodziny. TV4 was also the only channel which aired Futurama.
In Portugal it can be seen on the Fox Channel and on Sic Radical.
In Italy the first two seasons were brodcasten by channel Italia 1 from november the 5th, 2000 (reruns from september the 4th, 2004). The 3rd (previously broadcasten by Italian Fox cable channel) and 4th seasons are currently broadcasten (July 2006).
In The Philippines, Seasons 1, 2 and 3 are shown on JackTV.
In Turkey, the show is going to be broadcasted in autumn by CNBC-e.

Characters

The show revolves around the adventures of Peter Griffin, a bumbling but well-intentioned blue-collar worker.

Peter is a Catholic Irish-American with a classic Rhode Island / Massachusetts accent (similar to a Boston accent). During the course of the series, he discovers he's part African-American (though he doesn't look it). His wife, Lois, a stay-at-home mom and piano teacher, is a member of the Pewterschmidts, a wealthy socialite family. (Inexplicably, she has an accent more reminiscent of an outer borough working class New Yorker.) Peter and Lois have three children: teenage daughter Meg Griffin, who is frequently the butt of jokes for her apparent ugliness; goofy teenage son Chris Griffin, in many respects a younger version of his father; and a diabolically evil infant son, Stewie Griffin bent on world domination and the death of his mother Lois. Stewie speaks quite fluently but due to his age his more evil comments are ignored by his family.

The family lives with an intellectual talking dog, Brian Griffin, who has repeatedly expressed romantic interest in Lois. He's also the only member of the family who really understands Stewie, instead of treating him like an infant. Even though Brian has been completely anthropomorphized by the show's creators (he walks on two legs, drinks martinis, owns his own car, and engages in normal conversation with the Griffins), the Griffins still consider him 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 the vacuum). He does, however, object to any overly submissive domestic behavior.

Other recurring characters include the Griffin family's colorful neighbors—paraplegic police officer Joe Swanson, his perpetually pregnant wife Bonnie; sex-crazed airline-pilot bachelor Glen Quagmire. Glen also is in love with Lois (and just about anyone or anything else female), and when he is enticed by the idea of women exclaims, "Giggity-Giggity", and, "All right!" Mild-mannered deli owner Cleveland Brown, his wife (ex-wife as of the fourth-season episode The Cleveland-Loretta Quagmire) Loretta and their hyperactive son, Cleveland Jr. (who hasn't appeared again since Season 3); news anchors Tom Tucker and Diane Simmons along with "Asian Reporter Tricia Takanawa"; and the mayor, Adam West, modeled after and voiced by the actor of Batman fame, who is portrayed as paranoid and mentally ill;as well as other various co-workers and town personalities. Family Guy does not have 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 making appearances in new episodes), and most of the episode plotlines center chiefly around 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's 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; and Peter's nemesis the Giant Chicken (who originally poked fun at a Burger King commercial), whose fights with Peter which parody Hollywood action films usually end up causing 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.

Episodes

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

For the first half of the first season, the writers tried to work the words "murder" or "death" into the title of every episode (eg, 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 characters live and work in Quahog (pronounced co-hog), Rhode Island , a hyperrealistic and intensely satirical version of a suburb of the capitol and largest city of Rhode Island, Providence. A small cluster of medium sized skyscrapers in the background can be seen when shots of the Griffin's house is shown from the outside. They are almost identical to those of downtown Providence. A "quahog" is in fact a type of hard shell clam, the state mollusk for Rhode Island, and doubles as a regional slang term for "vagina", much like the word "clam." Characters' lives largely revolve around items and ideas of popular culture, which are 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. 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 — known as "gags" — of variable length. 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 mainly parody on pop culture 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.

Though earlier animated series (such as The Critic) experimented with this style, few before Family Guy wandered the line between reality and fantasy with such aggression. 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.

Because of this approach, the series reverts to normality by the end of most episodes, and occurrences in past episodes are sometimes ignored. Some changes back 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 questioned as to how he got them back, he says he received them from an inmate on death row about to get the chair. Unfortunately for Joe, the man was also a paraplegic. In one episode, Brian has shards of glass embedded in his head, is beaten repeatedly with a towel bar, toilet seat, and 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 this, he remains unscathed in his next scene, akin to traditional Warner Brothers' cartoon style humor.

But there are also cases of episodes making changes to continuity that are upheld and even elaborated on 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 new rival, Bertram, 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.

Being a native of Kent, Connecticut, and a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, 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, Warwick, Hartford, Natick, Upton, South Attleboro, and Webster. The last scene of Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story featured an aerial view of the School.

Criticism and controversy

Ever since its initial run, "Family Guy" has received much criticism from a variety of sources. Of particular concern to television watch groups is the show's adult content and disregard for traditional morality. Critics and peers have criticized the show for its derivative themes and characters, the simplistic artwork, liberal bias, and absurdist style of comedy.

Family Guy has been accused of allegedly copying material from The Simpsons. Mad magazine put the cast of Family Guy on their cover altered to look like the Simpsons with the headline: "Family Guy: the Most Original Show Ever!" Ironically, TV Guide Spot reported that Family Guy was originally intended to be a sketch for MADtv. The Simpsons staff have taken shots at Family Guy several times. In a Simpsons Halloween episode, Homer clones himself and one of the clones turns out to be Peter Griffin. In the episode where the Simpson family ventures to Italy to pick up Mr. Burns's car, a quick sequence of images from a book depict Peter Griffin with the caption, "Plagarissimo" and the American Dad character from the show of the same name, also created by MacFarlane, with the caption "Plagarissimo de plagarissimo." Seth MacFarlane has stated in interviews that he and Simpons 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:

In France, the show is currently broadcast by Canal+, and has been renamed "Les Griffin" (The Griffins), an obvious allusion to The Simpsons. The Simpsons' rights for the French market are actually owned by that same network, and Family Guy is shown in a timeslot similar to that occupied by the Simpsons at various stages of the network's history.

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 The Untold Story. The Parents Television Council has also registered their disapproval of the show, giving it second place on their 2000 and 2005 lists of "worst prime-time shows for family viewing."

In addition to TV critics and political groups, those who have publicly criticized Family Guy include quite a few fellow cartoonists. Criticism was offered by John Kricfalusi, creator of Ren and Stimpy, who complained that, }}

The show has also been 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 balls enscribed with random topics (pop culture, celebrity) into a giant bin that became the jokes written into each episode. Earlier in the two-parter, Kyle, a main character, says that he enjoys Family Guy. Later, a man 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.

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

"Stewie Griffin" part of speech on Youtube

TV to DVD media

The TV to DVD media has become a very successful enterprise. When Family Guy was canceled there were no reruns to be aired because no station had the rights. In 2003 Family Guy Volume 1 was released on DVD, then later that year Volume 2. Several TV stations started to pickup the 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 is scheduled to be released in Fall 2006.

DVD movie

The direct to DVD movie released on September 27, 2005, focuses on Stewie searching for his biological father, who isn't 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 were cut out of the TV broadcast, along with many other scenes, as the 81 minute movie needed to run for 65 minutes on television. With commercials, credits, etc, the TV version ran for 90 minutes, and included one new scene: a parody of the end credits for Soap closed part 2.

UMD

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

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's malleable comedy, the traditional opening song has been occasionally dropped in favor of different themes, including parodies of Law & Order, Family Ties, Police Squad!/The Naked Gun, 24 (TV series), The Simpsons, the Rocky movies, and the Hope-Crosby Road 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).

Podcast

A free podcast is available to download as an MP3 from the official site or from iTunes. Seventeen episodes have been released. On several of the podcasts, cast members discuss upcoming episodes.

References

External links

Official Family Guy Website
Family Guy at Quahog5news.com
Family Guy at the Big Cartoon DataBase
Family Guy at Wikicites
Family Guy Clips Everything Family Guy Related
Family Guy Videos Lots of Family Guy videos and more

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