Family Guy (seasons 8-present)

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Family Guy

🎵Family Guy! We've been on for years!🎵

Genre:	Fantasy • Comedy
Running Time:	25 minutes
Country:	United States
Release Date:	January 31, 1999 - present (Overall) September 27, 2009 - present (Seasons 8-present)
Network(s):	Fox (US) Adult Swim (2003-21, US) FXX (2021-present, US) Freeform (2019-present, US) Seven Network (1999-2010, Australia) 7mate (2010-present, Australia) BBC Three (2007-2016, UK) ITV2 (2016-present, UK)
Created by:	Seth MacFarlane
Distributed by:	20th Television (on behalf of Disney-ABC Domestic Television)
Starring:	Seth MacFarlane Alex Borstein Seth Green Mila Kunis Mike Henry Arif Zahir (Seasons 20-present)
Seasons:	16
Episodes:	263

Family Guy is an American adult animated sitcom created by Seth MacFarlane for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series centers on the Griffins, a family consisting of parents Peter and Lois; their children, Meg, Chris, and Stewie, and their anthropomorphic pet dog, Brian. The show is set in the fictional city of Quahog, Rhode Island.

While the first 5 seasons (1999-2007) were well received and seasons 6 and 7 (2007-2009) garnered mixed-to-positive reception, seasons 8 to 11 (2009-2013) garnered divisive reception, while season 12-onward (2013-present) had been universally panned. These seasons have gone down as one of the worst examples of seasonal rot and Flanderization.

Why It's Not Our Family Guy Anymore

The main problem with these seasons is that they lack the charm and cleverness of the first five seasons, and to lesser extents, the sixth and seventh seasons.
- The show has gone massively downhill since season 8's episode "Peter-assment," and it hasn't recovered since due to all of the reasons mentioned below.
- This is also not helped by the fact that seasons 10, 12-14, 17-19 and 22 only accelerated the show's decline in quality, as they include some of the worst episodes of the entire series, like "Seahorse Seashell Party", "Trump Guy" (which almost looked like the show had a crossover episode with "Our Cartoon President") and "Better Off Meg".
  - On top of that, they weren't even kissing and was instead meant to be Meg performing CPR on Peter yet it immediately looked like they were in fact kissing each other on the lips, due to the bad animation making it very easy to decipt Meg kissing Peter.
- Out of all of these seasons, season 12 is usually considered the worst of the bunch, because it showed a lot of flanderization and had a few more bad episodes than the rest of the bad seasons, that it holds some of the all-time worst episodes of the series in general.
- To an extent, seasons 18 and 19 are also considered the worst due to how safe and shallow they are, with season 19 usually considered the second worst season of the series due to bringing back some of the things that people really hated in seasons 12 and 13, with more dragged jokes, cheap shock value and The Hudson Brothers, the show’s next Conway Twitty.
- Although not as bad as seasons 12, 18 and 19, Season 22 also reverted Peter back to being an unlikeable character again and had several jump the shark moments too like him being accused of kissing his own daughter Meg despite it being incest. Although the change in characterization was due to the writers strike, it doesn't excuse the dreadful flanderization.
The show keeps ignoring criticism and feedback with a lot of the writers refusing to listen to any form of criticism fans or critics make towards the show and its episodes, and such writers making episodes that only serve to lash out at the people making said criticisms. Such hater episodes include "You Can’t Handle the Booth," "Brian’s a Bad Father," and "Seahorse Seashell Party."
The writing has been downgraded from being clever and funny to completely atrocious and catastrophic, almost to the point of irredeemability. It's worse knowing that the writing staff behind the show is huge with 14 writers and a multi-million-dollar budget (more specifically, $2 million), both of which are impressive for a TV series and yet they come up with all this stuff. Plus, most of them barely had any experience in working on the show's earlier seasons, which therefore explains the series' massive decline in quality during these seasons due to the various problems such as bad writing and character butchery as listed below.
- What's, even more, worse is that the writers also clearly lack any respect for the fans or the audience in general, like how they decided to kill off Brian just because he was hated so much and then bring him back two episodes later. They also did absolutely nothing to redeem his flanderization and just kept him just as maybe even more unlikable, yet the writers make it clear that in a way they can kill him once, and if the audience gets mad, they have the power to do it again. This is a tactic known as "leverage".
The characters have been flanderized and derailed beyond recognition to the point of becoming unlikable and lacking the charm they previously had (especially the Griffin family):
1. Peter himself suffers from the absolute worst flanderization and character derailment of all the Family Guy characters, and even one of the worst in cartoon history, as he has gone from an oafish, yet naïve, silly, likable, and good-hearted father who cares a lot about his family and is incredibly respectful to Meg (in "The Story on Page One" he literally says he'd take a bullet for her, showing how he was a wonderful father) to a psychopathic, idiotic, selfish, childish, bratty, arrogant, super unlikable, malicious, manipulative, quick-tempered, monstrous, incredibly abusive, insensitive, and argumentative father who causes misery to many people around him and rarely shows affection to his family, does very illegal and evil things in almost every episode and also gets away with his actions considering that he did all of that stuff out of idiocy, which makes him a Karma Houdini. He is also a rotten friend, having to shoot Joe in the eye and Quagmire in the arm on two separate occasions. Though to be fair, his mistreatment of Meg already began in "Model Misbehavior", but he never abused her before that, making this horribly out of character for him.
2. Brian has gone from a slightly snarky, yet good-hearted, talking dog who is the family's voice-of-reason, to a completely self-absorbed, pretentious, alcoholic, egotistical, and "occasionally" an atheist fundamentalist (in other words, essentially a political soapbox) who tells lies to get attractive women to like him and thinks religions are for idiots. He's also a conniving and ungrateful scoundrel who will do anything to advance any of his careers, especially if it means hurting his loved ones, screwing over the people who helped him, or letting them die. He's also a massive hypocrite by saying Lois having an affair with anyone other than him is wrong.
3. Lois also suffers from the absolute worst flanderization and character derailment of all the Family Guy characters, and also one of the worst in cartoon history, as she has gone from a nice and compassionate wife to Peter and a loving mother that always supports and gives good advice to her children, to a short-tempered, immature, egotistical, annoying, wrathful, and psychotic dominatrix wannabe who abuses Peter, acts like she has control over her family's life, never defends Meg and Chris from their father's abuse and only talks down to her, is a massive hypocrite who calls her family out on things she's guilty of doing herself and is very loud and obnoxious, and has cheated on Peter on several occasions. She's an even bigger Karma Houdini than him because of her HUGE superiority complex.
4. Chris has gone from a normal, kind, slightly dimwitted teenager who is an incredibly talented artist who enjoys playfully and harmlessly teasing Meg like any brother would to a completely dimwitted, uninteresting character who's only known for masturbating all the time, joins the family in bullying, Meg, hardly willingly helping her, and is only used when Peter has too much screen time. Fortunately, he didn't see too much decline in character.
5. Meg until season 15 has gone from a whiny, uptight, socially awkward girl trying to make friends and was often embarrassed by her family's acts of bumbling and stupidity, though they still truly loved her at the end of the day and meant well (before the "Model Misbehavior" episode at least), to her family's routinely abused personal punching bag that can be occasionally as bad as them, such as trying to plan a sexual assault on Chris just so she could have closure from a gay boy, going all Fatal Attraction on Brian, trying to replace Bonnie as Joe's wife by framing her and breastfeeding their baby, or engaging in a deadly fight at the school cafeteria with Chris. Worst of all, Meg going through unnecessary abuse and torment is always used just for the sake and hopes of laughs and comedy, and it feels like the writers just wanted to express all their unjustified hatred towards her. However, since season 16, the abuse against her thankfully stopped.
6. Stewie has gone from being an evil genius baby bent on killing his mother and destroying the world to being a flamboyant gay stereotype. All of his screen time is dedicated to making silly one-liners, humiliating Brian or harassing him, and overall acting effeminate; when that really wasn't who he used to be.
7. Quagmire has gone from a funny and somewhat perverted ladies' man to a complete pervert who is used for little more than sexual humor and has his perverted qualities exaggerated. Like Peter and Stewie, there is also an incredible lack of expression from him.
  - In fact, he has also developed a hatred towards Brian. Not because of anything personal, but because he becomes a surrogate for the fans that started hating Brian heavily. If anyone watches the clip where Quagmire reveals to Brian why he hates him, they will notice that there is nothing related that involves Quagmire and just makes him look like a hypocrite. This subplot got very old fast.
8. Joe has gone from a strong and confident police officer who was a good role model to a crutch for cruel handicap jokes to an old groaner who screams way too much, and a cowardly spineless cop who lets Peter get away with everything and never arrest him for any lawbreaking acts like shooting him in the eye with a BB gun, and for giving his daughter Susie a raspberry in the "wrong place". What also doesn't help is that in the newer seasons, he gets way too much screen time. It's like the writers have a new motto: when in doubt, shove him into the scene.
  - In most episodes, he gets treated horribly for no reason, like Peter beating him with his wheelchair without hesitation in "Killer Queen", or a bird telling him to hang himself in "The Birthday Bootlegger".
9. Bonnie went from Joe's caring and supportive wife to see him as an inconvenience and someone to bully, cheat on Joe and kill. The biggest example of Bonnie wanting to cheat on him is the episode "Foreign Affair" in which the main plot of the episode is her wanting to have an affair in Paris.
10. Despite it occurring in his spin-off series, Cleveland was flanderized from being a slow-talking but friendly and hilarious Black man, into a whiny, immature, annoying, unfunny, and literal manchild in his very own show, as he acts like a literal clone of Peter. Thankfully, he redeemed himself when he moved back to Quahog.
11. The character of Ida, Quagmire's transgender parent, only exists just so the writers could make transphobic "jokes", such as how not once after her sex change has she has been referred to as a woman. What makes this way, way worse is that Seth MacFarlane described her introductory episode as "the most sympathetic portrayal of a transgender person" when in reality it was anything but sympathetic. If anything, the entire episode spent its time mocking the transgender community.
12. Sometimes, the show introduces a new character and then immediately either kills them off or just throws them aside with little to no character development. Notable examples include Vinny, a new dog the Griffins get when Brian dies, and Jess, a young woman Brian marries who is killed off after two episodes.
13. The show continually tries to push a new character named Doug as Stewie's new nemesis, but the character is so one-dimensional that it won't take long for viewers to forget him. Since there were a handful of episodes dedicated to him in season 20, it was almost as if the entire season would revolve around him and Stewie, but then they appeared to drop him after "The Birthday Bootlegger", making his presence ultimately pointless... only for him to return in the "The Candidate".
14. Speaking of Stewie having a rival, once Cleveland returned with his new family, they were completely abandoned and never really did much on the show, only being seen in the background, when Rallo Tubbs could have been the perfect rival/frenemy to Stewie, similar to the rivalry/friendship between Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny or Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, making it a huge missed opportunity.
15. Speaking of character development, none of that is given to the characters in any of the episodes. And when there is, it's all but forgotten in the following episode, despite this show's episodes being canon.
A very wide number of bad-to-mediocre episodes (see the Notable Bad Episodes from These Seasons section).
Some episodes are offensive and mock tragedies in an unfunny taste.
- Most notably, the show makes many references to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which is pretty tasteless since MacFarlane, the show's creator, almost died on that day by thankfully missing the flight that would've headed towards the north tower of the World Trade Center.
  - Nearly every single intended emotional or dramatic moment falls flat or is very hypocritical and insincere due to its mean-spirited tone, and use of humor at the wrong moments. Like the scene in "Life of Brian" where the squirrel kicks and spits on Brian right after he gets run over by a car, or Quagmire watching baseball on his phone during the funeral, although it’s somewhat justified as he hates Brian.
Most of the episodes have terrible, misguided, and (sometimes) damaging morals like in "Peter-assment" saying it's okay for a woman to rape a man if she's lonely.
Quantity Over Quality: Like along with The Simpsons (despite eventually becoming decent) and SpongeBob SquarePants (despite going back to being good), the series has been running for way too long (it started in 1999 and there are no signs of the show ending anytime soon), spanning a total of 22 seasons and 408+ episodes and counting. While it sounds like a cool idea on paper, the show has jumped the shark because of this. It's to the point where even MacFarlane is aware of the downfall of his own series and wants it canceled, even though Fox won't allow it as this series devolved into their cash cow.
Most of the endings are either unsatisfying, mean-spirited or even misleading:
1. In "No Giggity, No Doubt", Quagmire starts growing more of a character with his new daughter, Courtney, saying he's going to be more of a father to her. Still, in the episodes after that, he's back to his usual, sex-craving self, and the writers completely wrote out Courtney with no explanation, as if she never existed.
2. In "The Heartbreak Dog", when Brian apologizes to Joe for kissing his wife, Bonnie. Instead of Joe accepting Brian's apology, the former just abused Brian for the entire episode and even shoots him in the leg in the ending.
3. Likewise, the ending of "Cutawayland" (despite actually being a good episode) is nothing special and it uses a "just a dream" cliche, which is overused a lot.
4. In "Family Guy Lite", Peter has lost a lot of weight, but in the next episode "No Giggity, No Doubt", he's back to being overweight, and it is never explained why.
5. In "A Fistful of Meg", Chris walks in and is surprised to see Stewie and Brian looking like the former, who tells the audience that the next episode will be about this, but in the next episode itself, "Boopa-Dee Bappa-Dee", everything is back to normal.
6. In "Meg Goes to College" (despite actually being a good episode), Meg fails to windsurf, so she’s sadly out of college, and to add extra salt to the wound, she is drowning. Lois tells Peter to call an ambulance in worry, only for Peter to tell Lois to do it because Peter’s phone number is blocked by 911 because of making nuisance calls to them, which shows Peter’s usual stupidity going too far to the point where he’s not even funny and is obnoxious.
7. In "Hard Boiled Meg", there's an out-of-nowhere twist ending in which it reveals that the entire episode was a VR simulation of Seymour.
The fourth wall is broken too many times in several episodes (like "The Unkindest Cut", and "Trump Guy"), which has gotten old quickly.
- In nearly all episodes, the characters will often talk directly to the audience, which also gets annoying quickly.
The humor, jokes, and gags have been severely downgraded:
1. The humor, in general, is either disgusting, confusing, mean-spirited, or over-reliant on pop culture references and cutaway gags.
  - For example, jokes about school shootings and other mass shootings, suicide, domestic abuse, animal abuse, child abuse, Neo-Nazism, terrorism, racism, pedophilia, sexism, and rape are all present. However, the jokes aren't funny, and they come off as biased and/or tasteless. That is why these jokes don't work.
2. The delivery is godawful as many voice actors talk with little to no expression or effort like they're robots.
3. Repetitive stereotypes are used as a limited cycle of jokes, such as Jewish people liking money, black people being sassy, gay people being flamboyant, Asian people speaking broken English, Italian people talking and acting weird, and British people having bad teeth.
4. The abusive jokes towards Meg are just unfunny, mean-spirited, and overused, making the characters seem even more unlikeable.
5. There is also the overuse of gross-out and toilet humor and fart jokes like Peter having musical farts which he uses to sing the Sanford and Son theme song, or even being a ghost made out of a dog's fart.
6. It even overuses shock humor and gore to the point where it's more disturbing and creepier than actually funny.
  - Not to mention some of the graphic imagery is just outright disgusting and disturbing, such as a scene in the episode "Peter Problems" where Peter kills a beached whale with a forklift truck.
7. Oftentimes the show tends to constantly explain the jokes before the punchline is set up. That's because the writers of the show are shallow enough to think the show's audience is brain-dead enough to get the joke, making Family Guy becoming a more notable example of being the worst offender. Here are some examples:
  1. In "Trump Guy," there is a television gag parodying Pirates of the Caribbean featuring Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow where they spell out what the joke is before the joke is delivered. In this case, the joke is "Pirates of the Caribbean with the microphone being too close to the jangling bracelets and that's all that it is.
  2. In "Brief Encounter", Stewie asks Brian if he would end the episode with a "To be continued..." meme from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure before Brian gets blown up by Stewie's bazooka while "Roundabout" plays as the episode ends. Not to mention this meme has been inactive quite after 2019 or 2017, which makes the episode's ending feel dated, and the meme was not even replicated right, since the “to be continued” text is supposed to pop up before the event happens, showing just how little they know about the meme, as this joke was just a poor attempt at being relevant.
  3. Because Family Guy often explains the joke before even setting up the punchline, most of these jokes are ruined by the writers making the characters explain the joke before the punchline is set. If you want a quote from the Joker: "If you have to explain a joke, there is no joke!" While later seasons of The Simpsons are a mixed bag in terms of jokes and humor, at least that show itself hardly had a single moment of the characters explaining the joke to the audience before either the punchline is set up or because there is some other way to insult the audience's intelligence because unlike Family Guy, The Simpsons hardly did this.
8. Sometimes, the show can throw in jokes that last for way too long to a point where a joke that could have been funny at first, ends up getting completely ruined in the end due to it taking too long to end. Whilst the first seven seasons were also guilty of using this type of humor, in these seasons, they're pretty much a long-running theme that the writers seem to like using:
  1. In "Yacht Rocky", which involved a scene where the decapitated head of Meg's dead boyfriend Chad falls to where the rest of the Griffin family are, and Chris tries to throw it back up to Meg, but it lasts for a whole minute just for Chris to get it back up there.
  2. In "Boys & Squirrels", which involved a cutaway gag of Peter trying to unwrap the Saran Wrap and put it on his dinner plate, which lasts for twice as long as the previously mentioned scene.
  3. In the episode "Send in Stewie, Please" where Stewie goes and explains his doctor's love life, which goes on for a whopping six minutes.
  4. In "Quagmire's Mom", there's an infamous cutaway with Peter doing nothing but tapping his foot (which looks more like a still image) waiting for "Baba O'Riley" by "The Who" to start that lasts for straight 90 seconds.
  5. The "Star Wars" parody trilogy is also an example of this too. "Blue Harvest" was originally meant to be a single episode that was intended to be a joke as a result of the show relying too much on Star Wars humor at the time. Still, Fox forced them to parody the other two movies, and while the episodes are pretty good, doing the other two films ended up ruining the joke, which even the show admitted in "It's a Trap!" via its opening crawl.
9. Similar to Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon", one of the main reasons that made the original seven seasons of Family Guy beloved by fans was the fact that back when the show was hampered by network censorship restrictions it not only controlled its amount of adult and gross-out content, yet it encouraged the writers of Family Guy at the time to be more creative with their comedic gags and story executions. For example, in various episodes, although it does have abuse, violence, deaths, cutaways, and even farting, it wasn't too much since the writers managed to write other funny gags and even the deaths are not too graphic since it is only for a brief time or even off-screen. But since the time Family Guy is released from the network censorship restrictions it previously had in the first seven seasons as of season 8 due to its successful ratings, this resulted in the show losing its creativity in favor of the overuse of gross-out and raunchy humor without any network censorship interference whatsoever.
10. Some of the humor is just people screaming and being over the top, mainly with Lois and Joe.
11. The episodes often steal elements from its sister show and The Simpsons, the former in particular being odd because both American Dad! and Family Guy are created by MacFarlane himself.
12. Several episodes are repetitive in-jokes and plot structure with a lot of recycled elements from previous episodes such as Peter not listening to Lois at first and then realizing he is wrong and apologizing, the Meg mistreatment, and the Brian and Quagmire feud.
13. This show Endlessly has jokes about penises and gay stereotypes for what feels like every two seconds. It can't even go half a millisecond without some joke about penises, sex, or gay people. It's never funny either, as this show seems to believe it's the funniest thing ever and makes audiences crack up because Stewie says "gay" or Lois talks about penises.
14. Most of the cutaways and scenes portray nothing but filler (for example, the Conway Twitty cutaways). This also really harms the episodes in themselves, since if one were to take out the cutaways, the episodes don't even add up to 11 minutes.
15. More recently, the show has been continuously making autism jokes. The most notable occurrence was in season 14 where there was an autism joke in five episodes, with the first four times being consecutive.
The voice acting, while great, can get annoying and overly hammy for some of the characters, especially for Lois.
Overuse of product placements, such as Skittles and Subway. Although this was used in the first seven seasons, it was not this common.
There's a lot of overuse of the zoom-in effect to highlight something "dramatic" but just makes it lazy.
Rather poor and lazy Toon Boom Harmony animation that is a pretty big downgrade from the hand-drawn animation in the first seven seasons, due to it being rather stiff and limited overall. This switch could be from budget cuts as the show was affected heavily by the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, but the point still stands.
- This most apparent in episodes animated by Digital eMation (who's the most common animation studio on the show since the HD switchover, with Rough Draft Studios being a far distant second), where instead of animating something, will often awkwardly pause for a few seconds or instead use a stock image or live-action footage. This is most notable with the karaoke cutaway in "Quagmire's Mom" and Conway Twitty (and also the Hudson brothers in "And Then There’s Fraud"), which is just a pretty lazy way of getting visual production done.
- Additionally, in several episodes like "Prescription Heroine" or "Cop and a Half-Wit," the show will rip footage from somewhere else but edit a character from the show into it, whether it’ll be their face or the whole character, and the writers and animators seem to think it is much funnier than what it is in reality.
- The episodes animated by Yearim have slightly better animation since there is more movement and the studio did try their best to make the animation look more expressive, but even then, its still limited.
MacFarlane originally wanted the show to end, but Fox forced him to keep it going. On that note, he still can use veto scripts allowing the series' downfall, likely due to his apathy toward the series (MacFarlane was frustrated with Fox for how they aired three episodes behind his back during the 2007-08 Writers' Guild strike, likely explaining it).
- The show often makes incompetent and petty jabs at Fox's other cartoon, Bob's Burgers, even joking it was animated in a moving car. It's clear to everyone that this is purely out of jealousy, spite, and incompetence because Bob's Burgers actually has a few Emmys more than how Family Guy has ever obtained.
The DVDs have various deleted scenes, some of which were cut from the episode for being "unfunny". Still, in the case of "Brian's a Bad Father", they cut a scene of Brian talking to his son Dylan in favor of unfunny cutaways, including one where Peter wants to "cut" himself with a knife.
The conflict in most episodes is extremely forced. For example, in "A Shot in the Dark" when Peter accidentally shoots Cleveland Jr., Cleveland accuses him of racism completely out of nowhere.
Some of the songs are crude and offensive, such as "The Canadian Nudie Bars" and "Tinder Is Gross" (while they're pretty good and catchy songs).
The episode "Run, Chris, Run" used two videos of the NES games Double Dribble and Tecmo Bowl without the permission of the original owners, and Fox took down the originals in an attempt to cover their tracks. They were eventually re-uploaded, but the damage was already done.
It often jumps the shark numerous times as an attempt to gain more viewers that are mostly nothing but ratings traps, namely in Lifeguard Meg where both Peter and Meg "kissed" each other on the lips despite Meg being Peter's daughter and is nothing but incest, and Life of Brian where Brian gets run over by a car but only a few episodes later get revived by Stewie with Time Travel which ruined the impact of his death and made it seem like it was only a step-up and that's it, and in another episode called "Brian Griffin's House of Payne", Chris and Meg severely injure Stewie's head, and it gets worse when Peter gets involved. To add fuel to the fire, he makes it look like as if Lois ran him over and they both decide to hide it until November! Outstanding parents am I right?
- This proves how much 20th Century Fox didn't care about the show's fanbase and instead only cared about milking the show for all it's worth, which went against Seth's wishes since he wanted the show to end, but Fox only see Family Guy as a cash-cow thus why the show kept jumping the shark multiple times just as a ratings trap strategy to gain more viewers and ignore criticism they've received over the years.
In June 2020, the protests of George Floyd pressured Mike Henry to step down from voicing Cleveland, which comes off as hypocritical because the show's writers consistently insert racist jokes.
The show often contains scenes of animal abuse too, like when Brian gets shot and killed by Joe while reimagined as Jay Gatsby, later stabbed to death by Peter while reimagined as a pig and crushed as a puppy by Chris in "High School English," Brian mauling a baby squirrel to death in "Boys & Squirrels", Peter eviscerating a beached whale with a forklift in "Peter Problems," and Brian getting run over by a car in "Life of Brian". And Quagmire beats the daylights out of Brian in "Quagmire's Dad."
While the character designs are still good and have very few changes, some of them look disturbing, like Brian and Stewie's hybrid children, Brian without fur, and when a character dies.
There are recently too many episodes that are just parodies/plagiarizing popular fiction or events, and even rehash episodes from the previous seven seasons such as "Grimm Job" (season 12), "High School English" (season 15), "Heart Burn" and "Holly Bibble" (season 18), "Tales of Former Sports Glory" (season 19), "Rock Hard" and "HBO-No" (season 20), "Oscars Guy" (season 21) and "Love Story Guy" (season 21) While these episodes are not all bad, the concept has gotten pretty unoriginal at this point.
These seasons have zero continuity with older seasons as many events from the first seven seasons are never mentioned, and the show keeps changing the continuity that disregards any past events and retools them for no apparent reason. This is likely due to these seasons having a different writing team than the first seven seasons that didn't have much involve with those previous seven seasons, and had the nerve to put whatever they wanted into the show, which makes these seasons feel more like fanfiction rather than true seasons of Family Guy. An example is Brian's mom, who is only mentioned a few times but Brian's backstory has now been changed and she looks nothing like she did in one of the flashbacks for the newer seasons as she did in Road to Rhode Island, looking more like a quadruple female version of Brian instead of a regular Labrador in the aforementioned episode.
- Another example is Peter's Two Dads, which is also never mentioned and as been retconned in Peter's Sister for no reason, and after that episode, Mickey McFinnigan is never mentioned in the entire show once again nor does he ever appear make actual appearances in the show itself, which is an example of why these seasons feel more like fanfiction rather than official seasons of the show itself.
- Heck, the first three seasons never get acknowledged by the newer seasons nor are they ever referenced at all, since most of the events that happened in them are retconned or just used as nostalgia pandering, which shows how little the new writing team cares about the show as a whole and Seth in general, who made the show as an extension of his talent and cared about what he wanted to make and show the world that he can be a funny guy, which is something that the writing team behind the newer seasons ignore and instead insert their ideas into the show as they like, thus explaining why these seasons feel more like fanfiction and not the show it once was.
In general, it tries way too hard to seem "edgy" and "cool", when it always falls flat and resorts to nothing but pointless shock humor and sex jokes (ex. Peter killing multiple animals and Quagmire being a child molester). It even at times feels like a significantly less funny, less raunchy, less vulgar, and less charming South Park knockoff, which in itself is a way better show.
Continuity errors and plot holes:
- For example, "Peter's Sister" reveals that Peter has an older sister called Karen, despite it being established in the tenth episode of Season 5 "Peter's Two Dads" that Peter was born from an affair with his mom and a drunken Irish man called "Mickey McFinnigan" which meant that Peter was an only child since his parents only met for a day and didn't spend much time with each other since Thelma wasn't pleased with having sex with a drunken Irish man and went to Mexico to get an abortion and later gave birth to Peter that day.
- In "Old World Harm" while a good episode overall, the subplot revealed that Brian had a bad childhood when he took a shower, even though he was seen taking a shower before in the season 4 episode "Patriot Games".
  - To add insult to injury, in the same episode. Brian was said to be kicked out of the Griffin Home onto the streets despite his first interaction with them was meeting Peter.
Despite the show's TV-14 rating, this show isn't even appropriate for teens anymore due to its overuse of sex jokes and graphic violence. The content would fit much better for a TV-MA rating, which is not new since some episodes have received that rating on rare occasions.
- However, the series was rated 15 in the UK and an MA15+ in Australia, which is equivalent to a TV-MA rating in the US.
In conclusion, these seasons destroyed the overall reputation of Family Guy to the point where many people started to consider Family Guy in general as one of the worst animated sitcoms of all time, and these seasons even caused the entire show itself as a whole to get hated by some too. The problems that these seasons have are so bad that the ratings have started to decrease fast, due to how many fans decided to quit watching the series altogether and also due to fewer people wanting to watch it after the decline in quality, yet Fox is still airing the show to this day due to it being considered their "cash cow", despite the declining ratings.

Redeeming Qualities

The show was much better in the first 7 seasons, which makes the show's downfall even sadder.
There are a handful of good/decent episodes, such as:
- Season 8:
1. "Road to the Multiverse" (Which started these seasons on a high note and is the highest-rated episode on IMDb)
2. "Spies Reminiscent of Us"
3. "Brian's Got a Brand New Bag"
4. "Hannah Banana
5. "Quagmire's Baby"
6. "Business Guy"
7. "Big Man on Hippocampus"
8. "Dial Meg for Murder"
9. "Extra Large Medium"
10. "Go, Stewie, Go"
11. "Brian & Stewie" (Despite mixed reviews from critics)
12. "The Splendid Source"
13. "Something, Something, Something, Dark Side"
14. "Partial Terms of Endearment" (Which ended season 8 on a high note)
- Season 9:
1. "And Then There Were Fewer" (Which started season 9 on a high note)
2. "Halloween on Spooner Street"
3. "Baby, You Knock Me Out"
4. "Road to the North Pole"
5. "New Kidney in Town"
6. "Friends of Peter G"
7. "Trading Places"
8. "Brothers & Sisters"
9. "The Big Bang Theory"
10. "It's a Trap" (Which ended season 9 on a high note)
- Season 10:
1. "Back to the Pilot" (Despite mocking the 9/11 attacks)
2. "Amish Guy"
3. "Cool Hand Peter"
4. "The Blind Side"
5. "Livin' on a Prayer"
6. "Killer Queen"
7. "Forget-Me-Not"
8. "You Can't Do That on Television, Peter"
9. "Mr. and Mrs. Stewie"
10. "Leggo My Meg-O"
11. "Family Guy Viewer Mail 2" (Despite its infamous controversy surrounding Robin Williams in the episode)
- Season 11:
1. "Into Fat Air" (Which started season 11 on a high note)
2. "Yug Ylimaf" (The 200th episode)
3. "Joe's Revenge" (Despite retconning a lot of previous lore)
4. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph!"
5. "Space Cadet"
6. "Brian's Play"
7. "Valentine's Day in Quahog"
8. "12 and a Half Angry Men"
9. "Total Recall" (A pretty creative episode that revolves around Brian and Stewie finding the real Rupert. It's also got a unique sub-plot where Lois hangs out with Joe and Quagmire)
10. "Save The Clam"
11. "Roads to Vegas"
12. "No Country Club for Old Man" (Which ended season 11 on a high note)
- Season 12:
1. "Finders Keepers" (Which started season 12 on a high note)
2. "Quagmire's Quagmire"
3. "Boopa-dee Bappa-dee"
4. "Grimm Job"
5. "Mom's the Word" (Despite the bad ending)
6. "3 Acts of God"
7. "Secondhand Spoke"
8. "The Most Interesting Man in the World"
9. "Baby Got Black"
10. "Meg Stinks!"
11. "He's Bla-ack!"
12. "Chap Stewie" (Despite being another time-traveling episode, which ended season 12 on a high note)
- Season 13:
1. "The Simpsons Guy" (Which started season 13 on a high note)
2. "The Book of Joe"
3. "Stewie, Chris & Brian's Excellent Adventure"
4. "#JOLO"
5. "Roasted Guy"
6. "Fighting Irish"
- Season 14:
1. "Pilling Them Softly" (Which started season 14 on a decent note)
2. "Papa Has a Rollin' Son"
3. "Peternormal Activity"
4. "Candy Quahog Marshmallow"
5. "A Lot Going on Upstairs"
6. "Underage Peter"
- Season 15:
1. "The Boys in the Band" (Which started season 15 on a high note)
2. "Inside Family Guy"
3. "Hot Shots" (A decent satire of anti-vax parents)
4. "High School English"
5. "Passenger Fatty-Seven"
6. "Peter's Def Jam"
7. "The Finer Strings"
8. "The Dating Game"
9. "Cop and a Half-Wit"
10. "Saturated Fat Guy"
11. "The Peter Principal"
- Season 16:
1. "Emmy-Winning Episode" (Which started season 16 on a high note)
2. "Nanny Goats"
3. "Follow the Money"
4. "Three Directors"
5. "The D in Apartment 23"
6. "Petey IV"
7. "Crimes and Meg’s Demeanor"
8. "Boy (Dog) Meets Girl (Dog)"
9. "Dog Bites Bear"
10. "V Is for Mystery"
11. "'Family Guy' Through Th"
12. "Switch the Flip"
- Season 17:
1. "Big Trouble in Little Quahog"
2. "Griffin Winter Games"
3. "Hefty Shades of Grey"
4. "No Giggity, No Doubt"
5. "Island Adventure"
6. "Adam West High" (Which ended season 17 on a high note)
- Season 18:
1. "Disney's The Reboot"
2. "Peter & Lois' Wedding"
3. "Heart Burn"
4. "Christmas Is Coming"
5. "Rich Old Stewie"
6. "Baby Stewie"
7. "Start Me Up"
8. "Coma Guy"
9. "Holly Bibble"
- Season 19:
1. "Stewie's First Word" (Which started season 19 on a high note)
2. "La Famiglia Guy"
3. "Wild Wild West"
4. "The First No L"
5. "Fecal Matters"
6. "Boy's Best Friend"
7. "PeTerminator" (Is often considered one of the best newer episodes and best in the series)
8. "Customer of the Week"
9. "Who's Brian Now?"
10. "Meg Goes to College" (despite the bad ending)
11. "Family Cat"
12. "Tales of Former Sports Glory" (Which ended season 19 on a high note)
- Season 20:
1. "Rock Hard"
2. "80's Guy"
3. "Brief Encounter"
4. "The Fatman Always Rings Twice"
5. "Christmas Crime"
6. "HBO-No"
7. "Hard Boiled Meg"
8. "All About Alana"
- Season 21:
1. "Oscars Guy" (Which started season 21 on a high note)
2. "Bend or Blockbuster"
3. "The Munchurian Canditate"
4. "Love Story Guy"
- Season 22:
1. "Fertilised Megg" (Which started Season 22 on a high note)
2. "Supermarket Pete"
3. "Old World Harm"
4. "Snap(ple) Decision"
5. "Baking Sad"
6. "Take This Job and Love It"
7. "Lifeguard Meg" (Despite the Peter and Meg "kissing" segment)
Some guest stars including Ryan Reynolds, Sean Penn, Liam Neeson, David Thewlis, Jimmy Connors, Alan Bennett, Tom Hiddleston, and Cate Blanchett are very great in the show, with Cate Blanchett listed as one of the best Family Guy guest stars to date as she gives a great voice performance as Penelope and even had a voice cameo as the late Queen Elizabeth II.
Some characterizations are still done right:
1. Even though Stewie was flanderized, his flanderization wasn't very severe compared to all the other characters who were flanderized since season 8 he remains the most likable and enjoyable character in the show to date.
  - You could also see his flanderization as character development in a way since Stewie is no longer evil and has changed his ways.
  - Speaking of Stewie, he and Brian have an awesome, believable friendship, and they are usually the main highlight of episodes involving the two.
2. Meg, during seasons 8-15, is sometimes tolerable, even if she was still a punching bag. She has redeemed herself since season 16, has gained her original personality back in most episodes, and is a far less punching bag now, making her likable again, similar to the first seven seasons. She's often seen as one of the good characters since season 16 that stayed good even when the show got worse.
3. Around season 14, the Griffin family (namely Peter, Stewie, and Chris) finally reconcile with Meg, so there have been far fewer Meg torture gags.
4. Mayor Adam West was still a funny character, although his voice actor of the same name sadly passed away in 2017. His cousin Wild West is a fairly fun new character too.
5. Bruce is still a likable and funny character and one of the only nice characters on the show.
6. Ollie Williams is still a funny character as always.
7. Consuela is still a hilarious gag character and her catchphrase "No, no..." never gets old, although she seemingly had been retired from the show after season 19 (likely due to Mike Henry resigning as the voice of Cleveland, he probably also wanted to stop voicing Consuela as well).
8. Carter Pewterschmidt could be seen as likable, even despite his arrogant and mean-spirited nature, as not only does he have many hilarious moments and lines, but he also has an understandable reason for disliking Peter due to his stupidity, and he does have a certain "love to hate" charm factor about him as well, due to his fairly entertaining personality.
9. There are a few memorable and interesting one-time characters too, such as Natalia from the episode "Nanny Goats" and Tiny Tom Cruise from the episode "Big Trouble in Little Quahog."
10. Though Cleveland was also flanderized in The Cleveland Show, he did improve himself in seasons 2-4 of his spin-off and when he moved back to Quahog in season 12, he went back to his original personality, thus making himself likable again (apart from some episodes like "A Shot in the Dark").
11. Whilst Joe was also flanderized, his flanderization wasn't as severe as the other characters who were flanderized and he did slightly improve in season 11 and started to revert to his original personality.
12. While Chris was also flanderized, he didn't see too much decline in his character since he wasn't flanderized into becoming psychotic like the rest of the Griffin family was, and he still kept most of his likable charm.
  - On a side note, Chris has also begun to interact more with Stewie and have full conversations with him, which is actually good so that Brian is not the only member of the Griffin family to understand Stewie.
13. Even the more flanderized characters such as Peter, Lois, Brian, and Quagmire can still have their more likable and original personalities in some episodes.
  - Starting with Season 21, they’re slightly reverting back to their original personalities with the exception of Peter (who sadly still acts as childish as he does in the previous modern seasons).
The newer episodes can sometimes have their funny moments, such as Cleveland's bathtub gag or Quagmire's gags.
- In fact, there's a decently funny running gag in "The Blind Side," where Peter repeatedly falls down new stairs that Lois bought, while swearing outrageously.
The musical score is still good most of the time:
- Some songs are also good and catchy, such as "A Wonderful Day for Pie," "Friendship is the Best Thing Ever," "Down Syndrome-Girl" (despite it taking three minutes of the episode), "Republican Town," "All I Want For Christmas This Year," "Christmastime Is Killing Us," "Mr. Booze" (though it wasn't written for the show and took three minutes of the episode, it's still a great song sung by the cast), "Thank the Whites," "Candy Quahog Marshmallow," "Frank Sinatra's Restaurant," and "Tinder Is Gross" (despite being offensive).
- Even some of the licensed songs are still good
Despite the voice acting is annoying for some characters like Lois, it's still great for everyone else, especially Peter, Stewie, Brian, and Quagmire, which is impressive since they are all voiced by MacFarlane, the show's creator.
- Cleveland's new voice actor, Arif Zahir, does a really good job at sounding like Mike Henry, even before he got his role on the show. His impression can be heard when he was doing gameplay on YouTube.
  - This is mainly because many of the cast and crew still haven't changed.
The action scenes are still decent, such as the fights between Peter and Ernie, and the Giant Chicken, despite being generic and overused.
Much like The Simpsons, it at least pays tribute to dead members of the cast and crew like Doug Lackey, Carrie Fisher, Adam West, and Gilbert Gottfried.
Seasons 8, 9, 11, 15, 16, 20 and 21 are usually considered the least bad of these seasons and are considered average by fans.
- In all fairness, Season 8 is not as bad as what one may think, because there are still a number of good/decent episodes, and the show's many flaws weren't as present here, but it is still the season where the show's downfall at least started to kick in, hence, it's considered average.
- Season 9 could be considered the best season out of all the seasons featured here, since it has transitioned to HD pretty well, the characters aren't flanderized as much as in the other seasons, and there are a bit more good episodes.
- Season 11 is a slight improvement over Season 10, mainly because it doesn't have a notoriously bad episode.
- Seasons 15 and 16 are slight improvements over seasons 12-14 as Meg has gotten her original personality back and her role as a punching bag has gotten toned down.
  - To a lesser extent, while Season 10 is considered bad by many fans for containing some of the worst episodes, it does contain some really good episodes that are listed above, which does make it considered average by some.
  - Additionally, season 20 onwards are slight improvements over seasons 17-19 as these seasons contain a lot of references to the earlier seasons. In fact, some fans have even said that season 21, in particular, may be considered a major improvement over seasons 8-20, as the show is starting to show major signs of improvement and the flanderized characters are starting to revert back to their original personalities, but even season 21 still was not enough to save the show as the animation is still a downgrade from seasons 1-5 and to a lesser extent seasons 6 & 7, as well as the jokes still being unfunny as typical season 18 onwards is. But only time will tell if Family Guy will finally fully recover from its seasonal rot/dark ages/downfall like how The Simpsons and SpongeBob SquarePants were able to. Sadly, Season 22 was a massive downgrade from Season 21 and has more bad episodes that have garnered infamy amongst viewers (namely the episode where Meg and Peter literally "kiss" each other on the lips which shall be reminded was meant to be CPR.) just like before, meaning that the show itself will never reclaim the former glory it once had.
While the animation has been downgraded, the backgrounds are a step up from previous seasons.
- Likewise, the animation is good in some respects, especially in "Peterminator," "Back to the Pilot," "Chap Stewie," etc.
Some of the cutaways and scenes are funny, memorable, and/or touching:
1. The cutaway in "Disney's The Reboot" in which only Chris sings the Family Guy theme song for a potential reboot called Family Guy Again is great.
2. The cutaway scene where Stewie watches Caillou in "Stewie's First Word" was funny and even pointed out the flaws of that show. Not to mention the cutaway scene in the same episode where Peter sits with Caillou's dad was quite touching and it also managed to translate the art style from Caillou very well into Family Guy's style.
3. The episode "Peter & Lois' Wedding" has a hilarious scene in which Beavis and Butt-Head (voiced by Mike Judge) cameo.
4. Ditto for the cold open of the episode "Bigfat" (which was originally made for "April in Quahog") with characters from American Dad! and even King of the Hill, the latter of which ended in 2010.
5. Sometimes, simple ideas for cutaways for the show can sometimes have hilarious executions, such as the cutaway in "Bri, Robot" that involves Joe Swanson listening to Tubthumping by Chumbawamba while continually saying "Oh no!" after the lyric "I get knocked down!" and "Yeah!" after the lyric "But I get up again!".
6. There's also the now infamously memetic cutaway in "Scammed Yankees" where Carter sings a parody of Jamiroquai's "Virtual Insanity" whilst parodying the structure of that song's music video which is actually pretty hilarious and clever.
Some episodes can teach good life lessons/morals.
The video, "Family Guy COVID-19 Vaccine Awareness" is a pretty interesting PSA.
Some episodes like "Screams of Silence: The Story Of Brenda Q", despite being a bad episode, it takes itself very seriously and even has some funny jokes here and there.
To be fair, there are some, if not many, people who prefer this era of Family Guy over the first seven seasons, hence it still has a considerable cult following. In fact, there are even people who like both eras of the show regardless.
Despite Peter still being flanderized as of Season 22, the other characters managed to redeem themselves.

Notable Bad Episodes From These Seasons

Season 8 (2009-2010)

"Family Goy"
"Jerome is the New Black"
"Dog Gone"
"Peter-assment" (Which as mentioned before started the downfall of the series and is considered one of the worst episodes of the whole show)
"Brian Griffin's House of Pain"
"April in Quahog"
"Quagmire's Dad"

Season 9 (2010-2011)

"Excellence in Broadcasting"
"Welcome Back Carter"
"Brian Writes a Bestseller"
"And I'm Joyce Kinney"
"Foreign Affairs"

Season 10 (2011-2012)

"Seahorse Seashell Party" (Possibly considered the worst episode by critics and is one of the most infamous episodes of the show)
"Screams of Silence: The Story of Brenda" (Also qualifies as one of the worst episodes by critics)
"Meg and Quagmire"
"Internal Affairs" (Which ended season 10 on a sour note)

Season 11 (2012-2013)

"The Old Man and the Big 'C"
"Lois Comes Out of Her Shell"
"Turban Cowboy"

Season 12 (2013-2014)

"Vestigial Peter"
"A Fistful of Meg" (A Meg torture episode)
"Life of Brian" (Often considered the worst episode by fans and the episode that killed the show from having any chances of ever recovering from its darkest age)
"Christmas Guy"
"Peter Problems"
"Brian's a Bad Father" (Also regarded as one of the worst episodes)
"Fresh Heir"
"Herpe, the Love Sore"

Season 13 (2014-2015)

"Baking Bad"
"Brian the Closer"
"Turkey Guy"
"The 2,000-Year-Old Virgin"
"Our Idiot Brian"
"Quagmire's Mom"
"Stewie is Enceinte"
"Once Bitten"

Season 14 (2015-2016)

"Peter's Sister"
"Hot-Pocket Dial"
"Brokeback Swanson"
"A Shot in the Dark"
"The Peanut Butter Kid"
"Scammed Yankees"
"The Heartbreak Dog"
"Road to India" (Which ended season 14, as well as the "Road to..." series, on a sour note)

Season 15 (2016-2017)

"Peter's Lost Youth"

Season 16 (2017-2018)

"Send In Stewie, Please"
"The Unkindest Cut"
"Are You There God, It's Me Peter" (Which ended season 16 on a mediocre note)

Season 17 (2018-2019)

"Married With Cancer" (Which started season 17 on a terrible note)
"Dead Dog Walking"
"Stand by Meg"
"Con Heiress"
"Trump Guy"
"You Can’t Handle the Booth" (The worst by fans, the lowest-rated episode on IMDb, and a terrible way to start the Disney era, though it may have been intentionally bad)
"Throw It Away"
"Girl, Internetted"

Season 18 (2019-2020)

"Yacht Rocky" (Which started season 18 on a sour note)
"Bri-Da"
"Connie's Celica" (A Lois torture episode)
"Undergrounded"
"The Movement"
"Baby Stewie"
"Better Off Meg" (Another Meg torture episode)
"Movin' In (Principal Shepard's Song)" (Which ended season 18 on a sour note)

Season 19 (2020-2021)

"Boys & Squirrels"
"And Then There's Fraud"
"The Marrying Kind"

Season 20 (2021-2022)

"Must Love Dogs"
"Mister Act"

Season 21 (2022-2023)

"Old West"

Season 22 (2023-2024)

Reception

While the first five seasons were well received, the sixth-seventh seasons, had mixed to positive reception, seasons 8-present received an extremely polarizing reception by the majority of critics, audiences, and fans alike, but have slowly started to become more negative in later years. Criticism was primarily directed at its mean-spirited moments, the flanderization of the characters, over-usage of shock humor, an abundance of bad episodes, etc. As a result, many fans have stopped watching the series altogether because of how worse it has gotten, and this led to it having low ratings. PhantomStrider also ranked this era as #1 on his videos "Top 10 Worst Modern Cartoons" and "Top 6 Cartoons That Got Bad". He also considers the show to be his worst example of seasonal rot and he also claimed that very few cartoons deserve to be cancelled other than Family Guy as much as it does.^{[citation needed]}

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Family Guy (seasons 8-present)

Contents

Why It's Not Our Family Guy Anymore

Redeeming Qualities