It seems today that all you see is violence in movies and sex on TV…
Despite the show’s title and theme song, most people don’t immediately think “family friendly entertainment” when the subject of Seth MacFarlane’s Family Guy comes up. No, I think that the scenes that would jump to the minds of most fans and casual viewers of Family Guy would be the ridiculous chicken fights from the early seasons, or Stewie beating Brian to a pulp while shouting, “Where’s my money?” or possibly the time MacFarlane straight up sang a song to the FCC about how much he hates their insistence that he dial back the piss, shit, fart, cum and puke gags that he loves so dearly.
For as long as Family Guy has been on the air, the show has been a firebrand for unrestrained, unapologetic indecency in TV comedy, and it’s been the target for numerous censorship crusades as a result. But is Family Guy really at its best when it’s thumbing its nose (among other things) at the pearl-clutchers?
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In a recent viral thread on Twitter, Family Guy fans made the case for the family-friendly, FCC-compliant, less-rape-jokey version of the show being its best self:
Honestly, for as much as MacFarlane has championed the cause of blue comedy on television, Family Guy is a lot sharper when it makes those subtle observational jokes, or when it’s silly for the sake of being silly. In fact, if you wanted to make a list of the Family Guy fandom’s least favorite bits, I’d bet that most of those entries would be exaggerated, overdone, hyper-violent gross-out gags — well, either those or the Conway Twitty running bit, Peter holding his leg and sucking his teeth for five minutes or the Terry Schiavo musical.
Crudeness and violence certainly have their place in comedy and the FCC may be a bunch of wet blankets, but Family Guy doesn’t have to be indulgently profane in every episode to get laughs. They also don’t need to kill off characters to just to keep things interesting — looking at you, Season 12.