The rivalry between “Family Guy” and “The Simpsons” may not be culturally significant now, but at one time it was a pretty tense affair. As South Park pointed out in the 2002 episode “The Simpsons Already Done It,” Matt Groening's iconic animated series has an inevitable influence, and no matter how hard a new animated series for adults tries, it will eventually end up using a continuing story. .. Close-up of the episode of “The Simpsons”. Even real life can't help but be affected by the series, as The Simpsons predicts dozens of real-life events and cultural developments before they happen.
But by focusing on a gruff father figure as the head of a dysfunctional family, “Family Guy” has always seemed more indebted to “The Simpsons” than other shows. This in itself was the reason for the infamous rivalry between the two shows, which began after “The Simpsons” episode “Treehouse of Horror XXIII,” which featured a group of clones of Peter Griffin himself. The “Family Guy” had a surprisingly dark reaction to this in the 2007 episode “Movin' Out (Brian's Song)”, where Quagmire forced himself on Marge before shooting the entire Simpson family. Perhaps it's no surprise that Fox made sure this “joke” was cut from the episode, but the dispute over the “Simpsons” has really heated up.
During those intense early years, The Simpsons were never forced to stop trying to make fun of Family Guy, mainly because the show avoided horrible sexual assault “jokes.” However, the writers took it upon themselves to edit, cutting out a certain type of joke that had come to define the humor on The Seth MacFarlane Show.
The Simpsons cut trailers because of Family Guy
In the years since the rivalry between the “Simpsons” kids began, there has been a lull in tensions, and the two shows finally crossed paths for a full episode in 2014, before crossing paths again, this time with “Bob's Burgers”. In 2023. What do the creators of The Simpsons think about Family Guy now? Well, many of them have worked on both shows since then, so there's certainly nothing like the fury that existed between the two series back in the day.
However, for fans of either show, it's fun to delve into the history of this big TV issue. Particularly interesting is the way the writers of “The Simpsons” did more than just criticize “Family Guy.” As revealed in the DVD commentary for the season 3 episode “Bro, Can You Save Two Dimes?”, the writers of “The Simpsons” intentionally stopped writing jokes after “Family Guy” made that particular kind of joke.
In the episode, Mr. Burns is informed that Homer's medical checkup revealed that his sperm is sterile. To appease his employee, Burns created a bogus award, the “First Annual Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence,” which included a $2,000 cash prize. As the family discusses what to do with the money, Marge suggests purchasing a new washer and dryer combo, before the episode cuts to a shot of the basement where the family cat, Snowball II, is nearly crushed by the appliances outside. control.
In the comments section, season 3 producer and host Al Jean responded to the cut joke by saying:
“We were starting to make these jokes more frequently at this point, where we were moving away from some of the irrelevant images. “We did it a lot for a couple of years, then we did it less, and then Family Guy started doing it, and then we didn't want to do it anymore.”
In response, executive producer James L. Brooks: “And then we found out he was dead,” Jin responded. “Once they were imitating us.”
Seth MacFarlane has his opinion on The Simpsons
Although the series stopped using punchlines as it progressed, these quick jokes actually created some of The Simpsons' best moments. Surely all fans remember Homer's dream about “Chocolate Land”? The show was full of this type of humor during its early years. Hans Molmann's chapter on eating oranges (“Eat the damn oranges!”), or Homer's vision of starting a new life under the sea, during which he eats all the “friendly crustaceans” he can. These are some of the funniest moments in the show's history and seem to have directly inspired Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane.
During the SXSW interview (via Forbes ), MacFarlane admitted that The Simpsons were directly responsible for the clip's frequent use on their show, even citing the Homer fantasy “Chocolate Land” as an example. “There were things like that that they used intermittently,” he said. “You remember each one of them so well that it seemed like a matter of style because it was so memorable.” However, in MacFarlane's opinion, The Simpsons used excerpts “sparingly,” and the Family Guy creator actually went into his show thinking about how to use those jokes “structurally.”
In fact, “Family Guy” turned this type of humor into an art form, to the point that you can now find compilations of the show's best outtakes from any season and lists of the 10 best jokes in the history of ” Family Guy.” . But over time, this style of comedy became the reason why many people didn't like the show.
The jokes cut from Family Guy have become a recurring joke
Over the years, “Family Guy” began to receive some criticism for its reliance on corny jokes, and “South Park” mocked the show's writing team, portraying them as a tank full of manatees collecting “balls of ideas” and put them into a joke generator to create what Cartman calls “random, interchangeable joke after joke.” MacFarlane addressed this type of hate during an appearance at SXSW:
“It's something that in recent years has almost become commonplace in writing circles. Which is interesting because these are the hardest things to write. When it comes to story-based comedy, it's almost easier. “With Snippets, you need to develop an entirely new premise, story, and arc, all in just seconds.”
As The Simpsons has become irrelevant and South Park has become a kind of cultural Rorschach test, it's interesting to think about Family Guy and its place in the culture. The show has received a lot of criticism, in part due to its reliance on non-sequential scenes, flashbacks, and outtakes. But “Family Guy” contains some undeniably classic episodes that have clearly had a major cultural impact. While MacFarlane spoke openly about being influenced by The Simpsons, the series also had its own unique sense of humor that went beyond the jokes.
As The Simpsons writer and season three co-showrunner Mike Reiss wrote in his book Springfield Confidential: “When Family Guy debuted 10 years after The Simpsons, our young writers were outraged: 'It's just cheesy! ' “It's moving so fast!” “They're just pop culture references!” In any case, while “Family Guy” could be accused of simply being a copy of “The Simpsons,” the writers of “The Simpsons” themselves clearly felt that it was a very different show than their own. Special, that they supposedly never said it was “in bad taste” or “nothing more than pop culture references.”
