(07-10-2012 10:22 AM)PirateTreasureNC Wrote:  

(07-10-2012 01:58 AM)MTPiKapp Wrote:  My beef with Family Guy(and South Park nailed it) is that it's just not intelligent. It's formulaic and it's repetitive and it's cheap and easy. It's much easier to write a series of off beat jokes and randomly insert them throughout a 22 minute episode than it is to write a show with a linear storyline and a plot and jokes that derive from that plot.

Also, sometimes I feel like Family Guy tries to hard to reach as far as they can for their references and wants to pat themselves on the back for some obscure 70's pop culture reference.

The show certainly has it's laughs, Seth Macfarlane is too intelligent and talented to not make the show funny, but he's too business savvy to stray from his time tested formula that more than likely doesn't live up to his real talents. The guy could probably write a funnier show, but it would stray from his proven method and would also probably alienate some fans. With all due respect to the average Family Guy fan, it's primarily a lowest common demoninator type show. The jokes are spoon fed to the audience and the better show he could probably write would more than likely stray from that as well.

Heh.... I can't stand American Dad and have never actually watched a Cleveland episode. Family Guy is tolerable depending on the episode.


I'd say South Park has gone more satire than funny in its later years. The first 2-3 seasons was foul mouthed humor..... then they decided to try to teach people a lesson in every show. They are more hit and miss of late IMO. I still like it and they have a few winners every season but those are getting less and less.

I think South Park is some of the best social commentary/satire on television.

I agree that South Park is a bit on the decline, not in that it's not good anymore, but that in the middle seasons, nearly every episode was fantastic and in the past couple it's definitely been hit or miss, but there have been some absolute hits in the past few seasons(i.e. Medicinal Fried Chicken, It's a Jersey Thing, Insheeption, Creme Fraiche, Crack Baby Athletic Association, City Sushi, Broadway Brodown, Cartman Finds Love)

I do think the most recent half season has been the biggest disappointment with Cartman Finds Love being the only top notch episode, but I think only one or two episodes in recent seasons have been actually bad. I Should Have Never Gone Ziplining is one of the only episodes that I really thought had almost no redeeming qualities.

Perhaps their best days are behind them, but then, people said that many times about SNL and the Simpsons ans both have been cyclical over the years, perhaps never returning to their full former glory, but definitely having upswings after it appeared they were done for sure. I doubt South Park lasts as long as either of those shows, but then back in the beginning when the animation was crap and it was basically just crude humor I never would have believed it would last as long as it has, but the fifteenth anniversary of the series premiere is coming up in a few weeks.