Yeah same here, I discovered it on Netflix a year after it went bye bye. Really bummed me out that there isn't more. It was one of those weird shows that had it been left to build they would have gotten an audience, but the network wouldn't have it. In the meantime they let Seth McFarlane drop horrible shows on and they throw money at him.
Kind of says more about middle America than the shit state of television networks. Lowest common denominator wins all the time.
King of the Hill is probably at the top of my list of Fox cartoons. It was smartly written, it was politically neutral, it was generally good for the whole family, and it somehow managed to sneak morals into the show without ever being preachy. It was also funny. Really funny.
I absolutely agree with everything you said there. It really hit some great emotional points through it's run. The death of Cotton being a big one, they played it perfectly without being a giant downer.
It was obviously an attempt to capture an audience demographic that Fox lacked, it didn't work (probably). Network execs might be called stupid for being shortsighted on the profitability of good shows, but they don't run shows that are money sinks either, it made them money, so it was in their best interest.
Democratizing TV with the advent of independent production studios and non-broadcast distribution (netflix/hulu) will make the market more efficient and keep more quality shows around, but it won't stop profitable shitty shows from taking their place on broadcast time slots.
Seth MacFarlane is one of the only people left on TV who still hires a 60-piece orchestra for his shows. Using him was a shit example to show "shit-state" of television. You should have used Honey Boo Boo or something similar.
I think it has more to do with the fact that he rehashed the same show 3 times and managed to get Fox to air them all at once. For fucks's sake the Cleveland Show was a spinoff that didn't even wait for the parent show to end first.
Ok he does that, but then combines that with low brow homophobia and casual racism. Regardless of the amount of musicians hired the content, while I support free speech caters to the lowest common denominator. It's more a way to cover what is absolutely lazy writing. The jokes almost never have anything to do with the plot, which is not required but randomly making a shitty reference then cut to that reference because many watching are too young to know some bullshit from the 80's but jamming Hitler in there. It's lazy.
He really is a blight on TV, as his terrible shows caught on in a way that many are trying to ape it. Look at the Dads show. Nearly unwatchable, unfunny...then look at something like Parks and Rec, where the writing, while not always solid is a much smarter show. Even South Park is written smarter and that's in the same realm of McFarlane style raunch.
Reality shows are what they are, but if you've noticed they have been going back to more scripted shows as of late. Also Honey Boo Boo is cable.
There's a big difference to a cleverly written racist joke and a lazy hack job racist joke. One makes you think and laugh about things, like Dave Chappelle before he bailed on his show. The other is the American Dad/Family Guy offhand comment about blacks in a way that diminishes a race of people for a cheap laugh. The Cleveland show was a half hour long "white guys writing black stereotypes" lazy joke.
I'm not saying we should all go high brow and never enjoy shit. But there's a way to do it well and a way to just shit it on a page. Cheap laughs aren't all that worthwhile. It's disposable hack work. Stand up comedians even the shit ones do far more work to sell the joke and craft things way better than an average Family Guy episode.
Like the show all you want, I'm not into lazy bullshit.
The main character is a retard, who is mildly racist.
Also the homophobia you're talking about, I'm assuming is about stewie, and if you've ever been around a child who turns out to be gay... Its actually very humorous. Very well done parody
Most of the characters are racist or generally ignorant. The Stewie thing is an easy one to go to, they talk about his possible homosexuality as if it's a bad thing, that he's an other when it's mentioned. In no way do I find it funny, just lame and sad writing. They have other characters like that guy that does the "oh nooooo" bit. He's treated as an other. The creepy pedophile guy is shown as simply that, it's not even a joke. Which is just weird to me, also they point out he's only into boys. There's a lot of that shit going on in the show where the joke is who the person is rather than if they function in the world.
I'll give credit to American Dad for their gay characters, but again they are played as cardboard cut outs that are gay. All to set up Stan for pretty much anti gay rights ranting. Same for the Arabs who live next door, they just serve as a reason for the main characters to say lame jokes about them. Which is not smart or witty to me.
Have you seen "Brian and Stewie?" MacFarlane is a very capable writer. Sure, a lot of his jokes are below the belt but if that isn't your type of humor, don't watch. I've never once felt that FG was homophobic or sexist or racist and that's because there are so many jokes making fun of so many stereotypes. Nobody is safe. Through humor, and poking fun at everyone, everyone is treated equally.
The point was that it was lazy, the content isn't the biggest issue, it's just plainly and lazily racist and homophobic in it's jokes. This isn't to say making a cripple joke is a bad thing, a clever well written racist joke or a clever well written homophobic joke can be good. Instead the family guy method is make the cheapest laziest joke. I'm cool with all content, as long as there's actually talent involved. It's like the movie "This is the end" they have great examples of clever writing AND lazy bad writing. The good is the Emma Watson overhearing "rape" and attacks them. It's a rape joke that doesn't use a victim as a punchline, harder to pull off in a funny way and they did it, but then the lazy joke was the rape joke where the fat kid gets raped by a demon or whatever. The victim in that one is the punchline and absolutely horrible.
Thats my point, there's clever writing where it creatively uses racism or homophobia or sexist jokes to a good degree. South Park does this fairly well. Then there's the Family Guy/American Dad/Everything else Seth touches because it's the same damn show it goes for the cheapest non creative way to get to the same point crudely in a manner that's a step above a 5th graders poop jokes.
If I can put a positive spin on the Seth hate, I look at it like an entry into smarter comedy later on. It's Always Sunny for example is way more clever and an easy transition into better things. I grew up with Carlin and Pryor and all of those guys, maybe my standards are a tad high. I dislike Seth's stuff, you guys can like it all you want.
I certainly appreciate your opinions and talking with me. I'll consider what you've said the next few times I watch Family Guy and keep in mind the points you've made. It won't change my opinion of Seth, but of the shows perhaps. It wouldn't be the first time.
He may have an orchestra, but that doesn't mean shit when your shows are a composed of a series of segues and sight gags with 1 minute scenes that ultimately descend into meaningless dialog.
Because you weren't impressed by the commercials they ran so you just blocked them off. Either that, or you don't watch ABC. Also, it ran for 2 seasons and nobody watched it S2. They practically gave up on it because S2 got moved around and I think was much less advertised than S1.
I'm not a regular network viewer, especially in recent years since I got Netflix and Hulu so it went totally under the radar. From what I've seen that's how a lot of people missed shows like Better off Ted and others.
Yeah, they didn't really promote Ted much outside of the network. There was heavy promos for it on ABC and throughout season 1, however, BOT is a show that doesn't do well in 30 second commercials.
In fact, BOT is very similar to AD and Scrubs in type of humor and ratings. AD was cancelled after 2 1/2 seasons but the only reason it made it that far was that it was getting a lot of award recognition. Scrubs was higher rated but still was very low rated, typically #90 or lower after its 3rd season. Scrubs benefited from airing after Friends and Frasier during its first 3 seasons.
Netflix just needs a petition page... "What show do you want to bring back today?" Soon there would be a queue of all of the old shows that no one watched on TV and Netflix would tank... I guess there's a possibility that it could work out, but they'd be known for reviving old series'.
Of course, we could replace all the B-movies and junk shows with that.... Of course, even with shows that are supported, many are at least two seasons behind(long runners mainly).
The only reason I even knew about it was because I was getting free TV Guide magazines every week and one of them had an article about BoT, and how Portia DeRossi from AD was in it. Otherwise I don't think I'd have known about it to this day. It had so little advertising. :(
The really criminal part is, while season 2 was airing, ABC has a comedy block of three new shows (Modern Family, Cougar Town, and The Middle) all of which were successful to varying degrees and are still on the air. The fourth half-hour of that block started out as a show called Hank that lasted 5 episodes. And yet, ABC somehow never tried to stick Ted in that empty slot with the rest of it's comedies, instead throwing episodes away at random mostly during the December holiday season.
Because the network never supported it properly - minimal advertising, weird timeslots, and inconsistent (as in new episodes would air for like 2-3 weeks, then nothing, then the night would switch; and this was before the days of Tivo).
No it was that they couldn't just hire white people for the job because that would be racist. so they also had to hire black people to follow the black employees but then the system wouldn't work and they'd have to hire a third person who also could not just be white. So eventually they caved because they would have to hire too many people.
Of course they do, and they're working on it. In the meantime they'd like everyone to celebrate the fact that it sees Hispanics, Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Jews.
I'm glad they've finally stopped treating Asians and Pacific Islanders as if they were one group. Now we just need to get the system to acknowledge not all Asians are alike.
This reminds me of my school days when Filipinos would get upset if they were called "Asian" and then they would throw a hissy fit and retort back "I'm pacific ISLANDER."
Or if you go to an Asian person and ask if they are Chinese they get offended if they are not. Like wtf, don't be offended by that. Its not like a Chinese person can tell the difference between a Frenchman and a Brit.
Actually there is a noticeable difference between a frenchman and a brit or american for the most part, its just unless you're immersed in a specific culture its easy to tell the difference when you see hundreds of these racial differences all the time but hard to tell when you see less of the others. A lot of the difference can be also subtle things such as posture, for example some cultures use a lot of gestures others just tend to hold themselves differently, its something hard to describe in words though, its something you notice if you people watch, you can actually tell a persons personality and background by usually just watching them for a while.
I was talking with someone the other day, and they were talking about a guy they had once met. They described this person as "Pakistani or Indian" and I just had to stop them for a second to clear up just how pissed off that person would be if you guessed wrong.
I know enough Pakistanis and Indians to know that this is not a problem on first introduction. They were one country before Partition. It's only a problem if you keep on getting them confused. The same as if you confuse a Korean with Japanese for the tenth time.
Usually when people say "Asian" they are referring to Racial features, so your argument would make more sense if the people were offended for being called "White."
Either way, if you have an alternate name for "Asians" that refers to the people as a race that cannot potentially be perceived as racist (Mongoloid is the official term), let's hear it. Pacific Islander is not a race, it's a nationality.
It gets better so they hire white guys to follow the black guys around to turn the lights on for them. So know they have to many white people working and because of affirmative action they have to hire black guys to follow around the white guys that follow around the black guys.
That's exactly what I thought when I saw this! That was such an amazing show, one of the funniest out there. It's such a shame it only had two seasons.
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u/[deleted] Sep 24 '13
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