Family Guy has reached a level of impact upon the American pop culture where I believe the characters need little to no introduction.  Is there anyone, really, who doesn’t recognize Stewie? After all, he’s reached the status of icon and has even become a fixture of the Thanksgiving parade as one of the many floats.  Where The Flintstones, then later The Simpsons, were at one time the dominating animated family on television tackling day to day struggles of the modern American (each in their own and unique way), Family Guy (love it or hate it) now seems to be the go-to animated family. In this collection of 20 episodes, the creative force, Seth Macfarlane, and his team continue to deliver the laughs along with their twisted moral messages. In today’s culture, it seems like it is harder and harder to be a comedian and manage to not offend anyone, and for the first time I feel the show is restraining itself too much, and it’s hurting the product.  Family Guy has always been a show that was self-aware and would break the fourth wall, so it was not a big surprise when a character mentions how they’ve eased up on their jokes against the gay community.  Is this a move brought on because Disney now is writing the checks for those involved, or is this decision made by the writing team?  I want to believe this was a choice made by the writers where they felt they could still be funny without offending a group of people, but I kind of doubt it.  The appeal of Family Guy is that it’s a cartoon; it’s not a show that you should take seriously, though at times they do inject some nice social commentary.  Besides, after 17 seasons you would think viewers would know what they are getting into when watching the show, and if it offended them too much, they could easily change the channel.

I understand not every season can be great; even a bad episode of Family Guy can manage to be more entertaining than a show about celebrities dressed as rejected Muppet characters.  But … I was a bit disappointed with this season.  Starting off with “Married With Cancer”, where Brian thinks he meets the woman of his dreams who is dying with cancer only to find out her treatments have worked and she’s not dying after they are married.  It’s a fun idea as we see Brian go through his bouts of regret, but really, the jokes just didn’t seem to hit their mark.  Sure, I may have chuckled, but they really milked the slightest bit of humor of “cancer farts” to the point where it just got annoying.  Later in the season there is an episode “You Can’t Handle the Booth!”, and while I do appreciate the unique perspective, I feel this is one that missed its mark, but I still feel it has potential.  Basically they took an episode of Family Guy and had the Family Guy characters come in and do a commentary for the episode; here the humor is in what you hear and not so much what you are watching.  As someone who enjoys commentaries, there were elements I liked about this, but for the casual viewer I’d imagine this episode would be a chore to enjoy. It’s a smart move that the DVD has a version of the episode without the commentary.