When Family Guy originally premiered in 2000, my initial feelings towards the animated show were that of extreme adoration. I was an immature high schooler who soon began spreading the phrase about that new "Simpsons-esque" cartoon that has been somehow falling through the cracks. Following the show was cancelled, I was among the thousands of people who purchased the very first two DVD volumes, which ultimately result in Fox resurrecting the show.
I'd both a Peter Griffin t-shirt along with a Stewie one, and I wore them with pride. At parties, my friends and I'd play "Drink the Beer" where if we drank our beer, we won...another beer! So when Family Guy premiered on Fox again in 2005 after that initial cancellation, I was happier then Quagmire in a Vietnamese brothel.
But ever since then, I slowly begun to drift from Family Guy. Episode after episode, the writing begun to suffer and the show lost more and more structure. Once a great mixture of outrageous humor, offensive material and vulgarity, Family Guy now was more centered on being absurd then being funny. I grew fed up with the epic battles between Peter and the Chicken or the musical numbers by the child-molesting elderly neighbor, Herbert. And I truly learned to loath the out-of-nowhere live-action Conway Twitty performances. kickassanime (Seriously, does any Family Guy fan locate them funny? I'd prefer to know.)
Which brings us to 2009, where my opinion on Family Guy can best be described by that of Lois Griffin's opinion on her behalf husband. She loves him and always may even though his stupidity can get so overbearing that she feels as though she's wasting her time. Sure, she may do better and sometimes wishes she did. But in the long run, the good times outnumber the bad times, which results in her decision to faithfully uphold his side.
And that's exactly how I experience the recently released Family Guy: Volume Seven. A few of it's good, a number of it's bad, but when it's all said and done, you'll laugh significantly more than you'll sigh despite these episodes being truly a far cry from the classic Family Guy that I fell in love with.
Of Volume Seven's thirteen episodes, not as most of them stick out as great television. Due to the show's structure, you can only really expect funny moments and dialogue to appear sporadically throughout each episode. The infamous cutaway gags/flashbacks that Family Guy is really popular for will also be pretty hit-or-miss. Ones like the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion getting pissed at Dorothy because she admitted she was going to miss out the Scarecrow most of all right before them are hysterical. But you then get ones like the Shouting-Arab Gram Business that completely fall flat.
An enormous perk of purchasing this DVD rather than just watching the in-patient episodes on television could be the profanity that gets sprinkled in all the episodes by the creators. I need to admit, it's pretty hilarious hearing each member of the cast drop an F-bomb one or more times, especially Stewie. Other special features which can be included on the DVDs are deleted scenes and commentaries by the show's creators.
A featurette entitled "Family Guy Cribz" got my hopes up that they would parody the MTV show Cribs by having some of the show's hottest characters take us on a tour of their residence (How funny could Quagmire's have already been?). Instead, I obtained a genuine documentary on Family Guy's production offices in Los Angeles and individuals that work there, which only left me wishing I worked for Family Guy. Finally, Volume Seven comes with a sneak peak of Fox's new spin-off series The Cleveland Show where Stewie takes the language right out of my mouth. "What the hell? He's getting their own show?"
Aside from Family Guy's slow decline in quality, I still find myself laughing out loud at these newer episodes. The characters remain enjoyable to view and I can be fond of the show's immature nature. Family Guy: Volume Seven is not really a waste of time in the slightest, I just hope that by the full time Volume Eight comes around, we visit a Family Guy that doesn't have to invest a complete episode of Peter singing The Trashmen's "Surfin' Bird" just to squeeze fun out of us.
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