Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Family Guy "Death Has A Shadow"

Episode Date: October 9, 2019

We've reached a very important moment in Simpsons history: The premiere of Family Guy. The controversial series has been airing next to The Simpsons on-and-off for the last 20 years starting on Super Bowl Sunday in 1999. And so we take a little pause on our chronological breakdown to explore the creation of Family Guy, how the first episode debuted in such a major spot, and how the pilot episode looks with the eyes of 2019. Listen now with a Pawtucket Patriot Ale! Special Family Guy retro cover is by 8-Bit Universe! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! This podcast is brought to you by the streaming network VRV: home to cartoons, anime, and so much more! Visit VRV.co/WAC to sign up for your FREE 30-day trial and kick a little money back to your friends at the Talking Simpsons Network!  

Attention Talking Simpsons listeners, we have a special mini-series just for you. We're going through the entire first season of King of the Hill, and you can only hear it if you're a $5 and up patron at patreon.com slash talking simpsons. We're giving the Talking Simpsons treatment to all 13 episodes of King of the Hill's first season, and if you want a free sample, you'll find the first episode available for free in the Talking Simpsons feed. Patreon.com slash talking simpsons. It's the only place you'll find the first episode available for free in the Talking Simpsons feed. Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. It's the only place you'll find the first season of Talk King of the Hill.

Major, go click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click. It's real easy, man. Uh-huh. Intellectual theft. What do you have to say about that, Griffin? Go! Ahoy, ahoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, where we drink until the Statue of Liberty takes her clothes off. I'm your host, Drink the Beer Champion, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons.

Who is here with me today? Victory is mine! Henry Gilbert, hi! Oh boy, today's episode is the Family Guy episode, Death Has a Shadow. Whoa, ass ahoy! And yes, we've reached the ultimate purpose of Talking Simpsons and that is to talk about Family Guy. From this point on, the show will switch over to be a Family Guy focused show and of course, I'm kidding, stop unsubscribing, please! No, please, stay, stay. We're doing this for a reason, right, Henry? Yes, yes. Much like when we reached the premiere of The Critic or the premiere of Duckman, we

actually did it early for Futurama. But when a Simpsons-related show debuts in the timeline of the show, we then do the premiere episode of it. And so we're doing that for the detestable Family Guy as well. Yes. As much as some Simpsons fans don't want to admit it, Family Guy's debut

is a very important moment in Simpsons show history. It really is. It debuted alongside the Simpsons. So that's also why we're talking about it in the timeline right now. So I get to this point in history, right? Yes.

We want to give you a preamble so you don't turn off the podcast and throw your iPhone in a bog. So today's episode aired on January 31st, 1999. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical point in real world history. You know what really grinds my gears? Freaking sweet,

Bobby. The Denver Broncos win 34-19 at the Super Bowl. Japanese pro wrestling legend Giant Baba passes away unexpectedly. And Family Guy intercepts Futurama's debut slot at the Super Bowl, which will be followed by a very special NFL-themed Simpsons episode. I think you mean the Denver Broncos.

Yes, sorry. The Denver Broncos. Yes. It was a big night for them uh and then right after they won at 34 to 19 it was time for the debut of family guy it's true uh but uh real quick about giant baba never heard of him i'm regular baba uh he's it's b-a-b-a so in japanese wrestling history in the 1970s, there were two legends. There was Antonio Inoki, who is still with us right now. He has a very strong chin, and he was basically the Hulk Hogan of his day.

But the Andre the Giant of his day was Giant Baba, who was a seven-foot-tall man with gigantism. Who, like, I mean, if you see a seven foot tall Japanese person, that's a crazy thing to see. Like, so now could he wrestle? Well, no, definitely not.

He was terrible. I mean, Andre was not a great wrestler, right? He kind of stood around until he did his one thing. He leaned in the corner. Well, he did a little more before all of his knee surgeries and stuff,

but giant Baba, what he lacked in athleticism, he added, he had in spades and charisma. One of the most beloved wrestling stars in Japanese history. You'll see him in a ton of anime. And as a producer of pro wrestling, he was like the, I guess you'd call showrunner, but booker of pro wrestling in Japan and all Japan pro wrestling. And it's one of the best runs of pro wrestling of all time and he's a big part of that so i'm looking at him online i see pictures of him with andre yes and with vince mcmahon too they they did a lot of stuff together bob on them yeah and his his passing was a real changing moment in japanese pro wrestling because all japan pro wrestling after he passed, his wife took over the business.

A lot of his top stars who were loyal to him forever, they didn't like how his wife put a bunch of bad people in charge. So all of the top stars of All Japan left to form a new wrestling organization, which really changed the makeup of Japanese pro wrestling. But anyway, yes, R yes r.i.p giant baba dying on super bowl sunday of 1999 i learned something on this podcast uh and also uh real before we get into the history and stuff a big thank you to the opening theme of this episode is the 8-bit cover done by 8-bit universe on youtube there's a link in the description oh thank you to them. But thanks.

We liked sharing your guys' cover. Just to keep the chiptune-y vibes of this, sadly, Family Guy never had a chiptune theme made by Konami like The Simpsons did. That's true. There should have been an arcade brawler. But yeah, okay, it's Family Guy time. Here we are.

So when this episode debuted, it was Super Bowl Sunday, and I remember a very ominous moment in my life that I'll remember forever. Monday, I was in art class in high school. And we were talking about The Simpsons. And one of my friends was like, you know what? I think I like that other show a lot better.

And I was just like, I can still remember that right now in my life, like 20 plus years later of that moment and thinking, what? No, no. And yeah, yeah. You know, I saw this when it premiered because it was advertised so heavily i watch anything that's animated and it was premiering next to the simpsons it was being so heavily marketed to the simpsons audience and i did not like it but i didn't like it wasn't a personality decision to not like it and also my friends were mostly like

man i don't really like it either like my younger brother three years younger than me he was my real my ride or die simpsons partner we we would be uh combative brothers in most things but not about simpsons fandom and we both agreed we didn't like the first episode of family guy and then over time it just turned into a thing of like oh we're picking sides now huh okay then fuck family guy like it turned it turned into that and it would for for years afterwards it became a thing if i met somebody's like man i love the simpsons them and family guy funniest guys on tv i'm like nope don't like that i will say up front though that uh i was one of these

people once at one point in my life maybe like a decade or more ago but i think there's nothing more hack now than to have hating family guy be your persona or being publicly hateful about family guy i think that the show got a lot better it's not something i would ever sit down to watch but i watched recent episodes for this podcast and i thought you know what not bad it's not as funny as american dad but it's not as amateurish as the old family guy that i know the best i think uh you know they got they hired better writers they got bigger animation budgets and they got they got better at their jobs but also like american dad is the better version of this it really is check out our what a cartoon episode about american dad from about a year ago we talk a lot about it there uh and we did do a family guy episode of what a cartoon as well where we did a more overall view of the series history so that's why i don't want to repeat ourselves too much in that and this is really focused on

how it affected the simpsons in 1999 and the overall matt graining a verse of content and it also how i felt then too, like, yeah, when it premiered, it didn't, it just felt like a lesser thing of The Simpsons and- Yeah, and I feel like as a pilot, it's not a good pilot. I mean, it establishes what the series is,

but not who any of these people are and why I should care about. And to go into the future of the show, I think they kind of capitalize on that where it's like, you don't care about these people. They're barely people. You're just here for the cutaways and the jokes that's it yeah yeah i think you know family guy was on an accelerationist path of what simpsons did like simpsons even in season one you know it's still a kind of sweet sitcom but its best

moments were when it undercut it and family guy begins with no this first episode we're already undercutting all your sitcom expectations and it's kind of a cynical show. So by the time the flanderization gets in place, by season five, they're just like murdering each other. Like you are every, no one means anything to anyone. Because there are rarely stakes or a reality in these early episodes of Family Guy, I think it took them a long time to figure out how to tell stories in this world with these characters yeah well i don't think seth mcfarlane was good enough yet as a tell as a writer of stories and how old was he 24 a very detestable 24 god damn it yep oh yeah and he got uh one of the best deals of a 24-year-old that ever has happened in television history. He was given a five-year contract of $2.5 million a year.

Yeah. It's so easy to hate Seth MacFarlane. It's so easy. I don't. And then also, like, he's a kind of handsome guy with a good voice who comes off as very charming. You want to hate him. You want to hate him. I get that. You know, one of my first things I ever did on a podcast over 10 years ago was angrily rant about how much I hate Family Guy, which I felt very passionately then. I'm 37 now. I don't have that energy to hate Family Guy like I used to.

I'm sure I wrote about it more than once but as a simpsons fan versus being like i don't know a south park fan who hates family guy or whatever it does i felt defensive as a hater of family guy from the position of i love the simpsons and you should not be comparing it to family guy which also like you could notice even in the first episodes like this is outright theft of a simpsons joke or the very least the parallel thought yeah on it if you want to be nice and also like yeah i was 17 when this came out and sorry 16 when this came out and i was better at appreciating animation too so i think that was another bit i didn't like about it yeah me too these early shows the family guy are so ugly and

so poorly done i don't blame the director or the uh creative team i just think they didn't know what they were doing they were starting a new show from scratch and that was still a fairly new process for them so yeah with with people who had never show run an animated series before even the veterans that got hired to do this none of them had been a supervising director of a show before nobody had been the showrunner of an animated series before uh like yeah seth mcfarland's background wasn't really ready for that kind of thing and i think fox was cheaping out in that this was the more appealing show for them because at this point the simpsons was a legacy show with 10 seasons it was very expensive. And Family Guy was the cheap younger brother. For sure. That was getting equal ratings, if not greater sometimes.

Juan, so if you guys listen to the What a Cartoon, I did a bit of research. But this time, I went overboard on the research of just the time frame from 1994 to January 1999 when this premiered. And how something like Family Guy happens out of nowhere. Like it's, you know, in a way you can hate Seth MacFarlane too, because he's a very lucky man who did work very hard and to like earned, if you earn anything in entertainment, he earned it. But a lot of that is luck too. Like he was just in the perfect place at the perfect time at the perfect price i will say a step too far for me with seth is you can't also be a movie star stop it he wants stop it he refuses to listen to you no matter how much work you get done you can't

do it i mean that uh the show orville couldn't it be better if he wasn't in front of the camera i won't watch it but if you you're a guy, from his perspective, if you're Seth MacFarlane and you're putting all the trouble into producing and showrunning a live-action show, which is much more hands-on for him than it is to just let Family Guy go with some other showrunner, then you're going to insist you be on camera like you want to be because you're putting in all this other investment.

Kissing Charlize Theron. Yeah, and then this next scene where Charlizeize theron kisses me and says i'm pretty and i think a larger conversation about family guy with related to the simpsons legacy is that i think family guy added to an oversaturation slash stretching thin of animation talent that helped the watering down of the simpsons continue along it's not just that family guy was next to the simpsons that i and i do think the writers on the simpsons felt a competitiveness with family guy and that got them to cross boundaries they wouldn't have otherwise just to be like well family guy's doing this raunchy stuff maybe she get raunchy with south

park and family guy was a real arms race of potty humor and kind of uh much worse jokes but also like uh the bigger conversation is in 1998 with king of the hill being this new hit show it already took talent away from simpsons greg daniels wes archer and many other animators at film roman and other and jonathan collier other writers too they all leave the simpsons Brain drain right there. Plus you've got Mission Hill being sold. And so that pulls away Bill and Josh. And Dan McGrath. And Dan McGrath.

And then at the same time, Film Roman is producing this new show, Family Guy. Futurama is happening and pulling away writers and animators there too. And there's also the PJs and other shows. I think more people have come out since then but in night in the late 90s the amount of talented people who could reliably create quality animation uh in prime time for america was a small group of people and they were being stretched thin by the number of shows that were coming out and so i think

it in general created more of a quality dip over time you know in uh it like that it was a brain drain that hurt the simpsons definitely i think we're living through a similar era actually well there's just so much content there are a few like really big streaming animated shows for adults but because of that there are also a thousand smaller ones there's too fucking many of them i can't i literally can't keep up with it though hey watch disenchantment how's season two of disenchantment pretty good it is uh a few days before it airs at this point in time so i assume it's great but yes there's too many things there's too many and then we were getting a little of that in the late 90s nothing Nothing like now where it's just like, how are there enough people who can draw things on Earth

to produce this much stuff? Let the computers do it. Something with computers. The computers do everything. That's a Rocco's Modern Life static cling reference. That's not Gabor Chupo. I immediately thought, is that Gabor? I mean, he might be saying that in his Rugrats meetings.

In this moment of the Simpsons being partnered with Family Guy, this is in January 31st, 1999. Who would believe that it would start a partnership that is still going strong 20 years on? They're like in season 17 now? 18 is about to start. Okay, wow. Yeah, it's completely bonkers. Also, when this premiered, if you told me 20 years later Family Guy and The Simpsons would still be together i'd be like no no and they crossed over we'll get to that that is a forbidden episode on this network i will not talk about it uh well so where do we begin let's start

with the birth of seth mcfarland october 26 1973 meaning he'll be uh 46 this year uh seth mcfarland uh grew up in uh i think you know above uh middle class uh money he was a child of means yes yeah but he also was you know a promising cartoonist and comedy writer who if you live on the East Coast and you don't have CalArts, you go to RISD, the Rhode Island Art School. That's a big one. And in 1994, I believe it was, he made his short student film and released it called Life of Larry, which if you watch it, it's all on YouTube.

You can watch it. that was a what a cartoon right uh this actually predates that cartoon cartoon no way but this will lead to larry and steve the cartoon oh got it got it yeah what i learned from watching life of larry again and re-watching all these things seth mcfarland has one show he wants to do and he's been doing it for 25 years uh i mean since basically his teens that's what he's been doing and so uh if you watch life of larry it's got the hallmarks of like a new england low class guy named larry who has peter's voice but isn't he's got a giant head he's not a fat guy he's got an urbane dog named steve who just is brian he has an annoying wife named Lois, also voiced by Seth MacFarlane

in this. And then a non-speaking, Gen X-y looking son named Milt, who's also big and fat like Chris is. A ton of jokes from it are actually reused in the Family Guy pilot episode we watched today, such as farting for the first time at 30, watching a Tom Hanks movie, God reacting to the story of Job. That's all in Life of Larry. Plus Life of Larry is hosted with live action segments by Seth MacFarlane. So he's shoving himself on camera from the very beginning. But he looks much different. Yes. He's much dorkier looking, right?

As our friend Matt Jay said, he's got big dorky glasses and he's not a handsome man. He's a nerd trying to look handsome, which when he gets more money, he gets a lot better at that. And there's also other jokes in it that would be reused more over season one. Like the whole, if you remember when William Shatner comes to town in season one of Family Guy and he has all these weird poses with no in-between animation. That joke is all over it. Life of Larry, if you haven't seen it, let me tell you, it has all the positives and negatives of Seth MacFarlane. Let's talk about those flaws.

It looks like shit. This is not animation. Okay, it's animated, but it definitely looks like a... I've watched RISD short films by people who go on to be great animators they looked way better than this like this is very cheap looking there's not even a consistent style in this nope all over the place barely animated characters it's just lip flap most of the time it's incredibly unfocused it starts with them watching star trek it's all just stitched together the reason i think I think Seth MacFarlane even has the live action stuff is because he's like, this doesn't

have a beginning to an end. I need to have me in live action explain to you the life of Larry. And so it just breaks up all these scenes that are just constant cutaways, no story, highly dependent on pop culture references. All of the characters do cutaways. And the cheapest bit, I think he must have had a time quota to turn it in because there's 30 seconds of darkness in it the lights are off and characters are talking now even a hater like me though would have to admit that seth mcfarlane comes off as a young and handsome success waiting to happen he seems like a guy with a ton of potential so you can see why people warmed to him immediately when they met him.

If you watch it, though, and then you think about how one year later a little show called South Park will come out, you can see why a door starts to open for a guy who makes this a life of Larry. But so one of the people who watched the presentation at RISD of this was Cartoon Network executive Fred Seibert, who headed up the whole What a Cartoon program. And he wants to hire Seth to make a kid-friendly version of Larry and Steve for the pilot program. And not only that, while he's working on that, and those Larry and Steve shorts will still star the same guys who are basically Peter and Brian, but they'll have more like kids adventures than sitcom adventures but seth would also become a writer and storyboarder for hannah barbara shows on early cartoon network including dexter's lab and johnny bravo but no

more live action segments with him no no not for not until uh adult swim he sneaks himself on screen again in a very similar garb yeah it's basically just him again like seth this why do a joke once yeah seth mcfarland dust it off uh so seth does two larry and steve shorts for cartoon network but they pass on it so he and his management takes those pilots to fox to pitch it to fox as a new sitcom he could do as a primetime show and he's following a similar path of other successes at fox cartoonist who becomes the showrunner like matt graining and mike judge though from the beginning he's also a voice actor like mike judge unlike mike graining he did all of the voices in his uh short film we pointed it out on the family guy episode of what a cartoon but he is a very

good voice actor really really a lot lot of strong and varied performances. Even in this first episode, he's very good. And also, you save money on the cast because you're already paying him for show running. So you're not going to pay him a lot to be the voice actor. So he is pitching it to Fox. Thanks to the surprise success of King of the Hill, plus South Park being the hottest thing going in animation, the new Simpsons, basically, Fox had a renewed interest in more animated programming to join the Simpsons and King of the Hill. They, in fact, wanted so much, they're like, King of the Hill shouldn't be partnered with Simpsons anymore.

It needs to be the anchor of Tuesday night. It's that successful. So they have a Tuesday night time slot they're going to start putting animation on, as well as the spot between The Simpsons and X-Files on Sunday night. That Tuesday night was perfect for me as a loser teen who loved cartoons but bad for every other show because it was King of the Hill, Family Guy, PJs, and something else on that night and they all basically lost all of their ratings by going to Tuesday. It was a giant mistake but it's just like how the simpsons got shoved to thursday when

they should have just stayed on sunday the whole time but uh you know network programming executives they get they get greedy they're like well if this was a hit on sunday we can move it somewhere else like that's why man the graveyard of of the thursday night show that was between friends and seinfeld and they move them all in their second season and they'd all die we just discovered that uh veronica's closet no sorry caroline in the city got as many viewers in its first season as the finale of game of thrones that's right it was just as culturally relevant as the end of game of thrones people so going on behind the scenes at fox futurama had already been approved to be a series like as a pilot it did not get fully ordered to series until about four months

before family guy did but it was still in action then but seemingly you've got futurama like that your go-to hit the next show from the creator of the simpsons wow but executives at fox of alternative comedy i believe their titles were mike darnell and leslie collins they liked uh the larry and steve shorts that seth mcfarland gave them they thought like i think they even said it in one article he's their matt and trey he's gonna be their south park guy i think they definitely saw seth as the future while matt graining and futurama was the past. And so Darnell and Collins, they give Seth McFarlane $50,000 to make a pilot. It's nothing. And you don't make television animation for $50,000. It sounds like a lot of money to all of us out here now, but you can't make a pilot with $50,000.

And so I've heard competing things. Some things say it was a 15 minute pilot. All that's on the internet is a seven minute pilot. that's on the internet is a seven minute pilot and i find it more likely that he made seven minutes because he was used to working in the seven minute format of larry and steve and the other uh cartoon cartoon shows but over a six month period seth mcfarlane he says he animated it entirely himself using digital assets and let me tell you if you watch it on youtube the original seven minute pitch pilot is there it looks like one person animated it but again i have to respect the hustle of mcfarland like how many uh people are like troy duffy of boondock saints given this

kind of opportunity who just completely fuck it up or get a full head and don't finish their thing. He was given $50,000, told you got six months to make a seven minute pilot go to it, Cartoon Boy, and he just fucking does it. Works himself to death doing it. And even if you don't like it, it has a consistent style. He developed

a style that the show would follow. And if you watch it, it is virtually the first seven minutes of this episode of family guy which is also why this episode of family guy takes a big turn when they run out of pilot story because they have to make this a lot of full 22 minutes not seven minutes uh but it's all there like one big difference is in the designs like lois is blonde with a red shirt meg is um played like less vain she's kind of nothing in it and she has a white shirt and a blue hat and chris has cutoffs and chris is also voiced by mcfarland the only woman in it is alex borstein

oh she's still in the pilot she is in the Yes, she was like floating around from the Mad TV pool. Yeah. It's funny how a lot of voice actors from this era came from Mad TV. Yeah, I have a bigger theory about that, but I definitely think some Fox favors were called in on this voice cast. Lacey Chalbert, you're ready to go. Get out there. But yes, Alex Morstein, she is in the pilot as low as she was cast that early. I watched one of those

mrs swan clips again i was like how did we do this how did we as a society say this is okay maybe like this is fine yeah we're living in the post that guy getting fired from snl landscape now but uh i mean it's uh hey maybe that lady she did look like a man who knows god that was a sketch i watched i know me too uh too. No, I, God, I missed one. I mean, anyway. So he makes the pilot. He presents it to them. And the Fox folks love it.

The two executives who greenlit it, they love it. And they're like, you know what? We're going with this. This pilot is sold us on. Which also, Fox primetime shows do not get like a pilot of animation. They normally just order it to 13 immediately, but that's not what happened with Family Guy.

He actually did a pilot. And so May 14th, 1998, these are all the variety headlines here I'm going to be going through. So that's the official dates here. In May 14th of 1998, it is officially reported by Variety that fox is making a new animated series with the article citing fox anonymous sources that spelled it out why it was attractive to the broadcaster it was cheap and

edgy edgy like south park would work well within the fox system and was run by a young guy that wouldn't reject notes like matt graining would And they even called it the little engine that could that show. So, and we talked about it a bit on our Futurama podcast, but like Matt Groening was very aggressively not taking notes and being like publicly embattled with Fox. So I do think like if Matt Groening hadn't pissed off Fox execs that much, they might not have greenlit Family Guy as competition for Futurama. I think MacRaining earned the right to be a huge dick about Futurama.

He 100% did. Yeah. Yeah, totally. I read some, I mentioned it on a previous episode of something, but if you go back to like a Mother Jones interview from 98 or 99, he is so upfront with how mad he is at Fox. Like, it's around the premiere of Futurama or before, but he's like, no, they fucked me over. I made their network. And it's not him saying I made you I can break you he literally made Fox like Fox would not exist without the Simpsons period no way no way so once it's ordered to series the voice cast starts coming together beyond Borstein and this is where I say it is a

real bunch of Fox favors here which keeps it in the family which i think you know also probably makes it a cheaper or at least easier with red tape than casting a bunch of people who don't already have existing fox contracts like say the cast of pjs or futurama so you've not only got mad tv's alex porstein but also as a recurring voice actor on it phil lamar who's really getting into his voice acting career in 998 you've got seth green who at the time was on buffy the vampire this slayer a fox show it was a fox show yeah it was on wb but it was a fox production so he was working for them too and uncredited in every episode she's in lacey chabert of uh party of five i didn't realize she was uncredited.

Not in the credits. That's so weird. And of course, in season two, she'll be replaced by Mila Kunis, who was on that 70s show. So another current Fox employee. It just reminds me of how when I watch Netflix animated series like BoJack and other ones, which I really love BoJack, but I'm like, oh, that voice actor is contracted to another Netflix show. It's all like these other Netflix people. They really keep it in the family.

I had no idea Lacey was, for some reason I knew it was her and I wasn't a Party of Five fan or whatever. I just knew that she was on the show and doing that voice. I didn't know when it premiered. I didn't, only after the fact when her voice changed

did I look and like, who was it? It's a bad voice for that character. Like Mila Kunis gave that character a lot more edge to how hated she is. Which if they're going to treat her like shit, then you need somebody edgier instead of the nice voice of Lacey. Lacey has like a very like stage child actress voice, like a very storybook almost voice. And she's really good at that. Yeah, yeah.

But that's not the meg you want uh so it was hard to find on record a real explanation of why lacy one wasn't credited like even in the original variety article it's not just like in the credits on the episodes in the original variety article review of the series they list everybody except for her as the voice like they just don't say she's the voice now the reason she left the show and was uncredited seems a bit muddled uh like even seth mcfarlane i think he plays a little dumb of like i you know i'm not really sure how she left but she didn't want to work on it so she didn't but my belief this is my tinfoil hat time i think her managers wanted her to stick to

family-friendly animation at the time and i think too she probably had something in her contract so looking down her imdb she was a guest voice in a lot of shows in the late 90s but only the series regular on one show at the same time the wild thorn berries no oh she was uh el. She's Eliza, the lead actor on that show. Wow, I totally forgot about that. And so I think it could have been Klasky, it could have been a management, it could have been Chupo. But somebody didn't want the star of Wild Thornberries to also be a series regular on this profane and low-rated and seemingly doomed to failure family guy show. I forgot she played that hideous character.

One of Klasky Chupo's ugliest characters. And I've seen all of Duckman. She's got a lot of character to her. Yeah. I'll say that. But yeah, so she was the lead in Wild Thornberry. That had premiered in 1998. So I think it could have just been, I mean, it could be as simple as her contract says,

you're in first position on wild thornberries you are not allowed to be a series regular on anything else like it could it could be that simple but for whatever reason she only does the now in broadcast there's seven episodes of season one production there's 15 episodes of season one so that's why in season two in broadcast order meg's voice keeps changing because they'll air a production season one. So that's why in season two, in broadcast order, Meg's voice keeps changing because they'll air a production season one and then a production season two. So after they got the cast there,

they start building up their originals writers room, which you've got Seth MacFarlane and David Zuckerman. He was the showrunner. From King of the Hill. Yes. Yeah. He came over. There were several folks from King of the Hill.

Also Craig Hoffman, Danny Smith, Gary Giannetti, John Riggi, Chris Sheridan, Neil Goldman, Garrett Donovan, Ricky Blitt, Andrew Gormley, and Matt Weitzman and Mike Parker, the future American Dad guys. Who I think are the best writers of the first years of Family Guy. That's a lot of writers for a new show. Plus, writer-actor Mike Henry. Yeah, yeah. AKA Cleveland. Cleveland, yeah. Yes, who is white, but hey.

Anyway, another person stolen from the Simpsons, well, not stolen, but a person who worked on The Simpsons was they had non-writing producer on the show, Sherry Gunther, who she worked on the Klasky Chupo days of The Simpsons and also worked with Seth on multiple Hanna-Barbera Cartoon Network shows too.

Okay, I recognize her name. The deeper connections to The Simpsons is more on the animation side of things. First off, because this was a film Roman show, the production was done at a film Roman concurrently with Simpsons, but digitally before Simpsons ever went digital. Very ugly digital animation. And the supervising director of the series, roman concurrently with simpsons but digitally before simpsons ever went digital very ugly

digital animation and uh the supervising director of the series who also directed this first episode death as a shadow peter shin now peter shin was a timer and layout artist at klaski chupo working on various simpsons episodes in that capacity from seasons two through seven and he eventually got into the director position they broadcasted about the same time so i don't know which came first but he directed several episodes starting in season three of duck man and also a few segments of season two of freakazoid so good uh good resume there and also thanks to klaski chupo right his family guy was greenlit peter shin was fresh off of being a sequence director on the rugrats movie as well so high profile yeah for 98 right i yeah it was that was like the biggest animated hit uh in the

pre-shrick world like it was the first non-disney animated movie to ever make 100 million i believe it was a huge movie still i've never seen it no you know what i mean either it seemed a little too farty poopy yeah uh and especially i just boo on dill don't yeah they introduced dill to the package i don't care for it uh and so if you want to see what kind of skill and guidance shin brought to the show watch the first act of the episode that is the seven minute mcfarland only pilot and then see all the improvements side by side that peter shin did when he made it a real show when you're forced to adapt to that style which i think is particularly ugly in a not appealing way i feel like you're hamstrung in a lot of ways yes yeah i wrote the same thing foundationally hampered by trying to match seth mcfarland's pilot animation and it's something

they can kind of never shake they've improved the animation so much over time and then i think it kind of much like the simpsons plateaued and then went down in animation quality but it eventually got to be good animation good ish yeah i was still surprised by the american dad that we watched how good it got within that style yeah yeah they uh i mean i think they they learned a lot of lessons by that point and also could start from a better place yeah like yeah this again they were stuck with the fat with the speed that they were moving at they're like if the pilot looks like this let's just fucking work with it not not unlike how they had the shorts of the simpsons and they just had

to go with that and just make decisions on the fly which which leads to some you know uh wild moments in early simpsons not and so the same happened to to family guy and also in the first season of family guy shin pulled away two other animators from the simpsons uh directors dominic paul chino and neil affleck that's right both leave the show we talked a lot about them on our on our show talking simpsons which we're doing now and i forgot this is a talking simpsons uh animation was handled digitally overseas by sun wu uh and then so summer of 1998 a confluence of things happened great for family guy one that they got david zuckerman as co-showrunner so fox could trust a veteran to watch over McFarlane.

That Film Roman would be the production company. That Fox finally signed an animation deal with the WGA to make their shows Union, which included Family Guy. So those fucking lucky Family Guy writers, they got to be Union from day one, unlike the poor Simpsons writers who didn't become Union until season 10. But most importantly, at Fox, Mike Darnell, who greenlit the show, got a big promotion. So, boy, do you think he's going to give good, favorable deals to the show he greenlit? Do you think? I think he's going to be very favorable to Family Guy and treat them well and give them a place on his network. So Mike Darnell, other than Family Guy, his claim to fame is he oversaw all the Fox reality programming of the world's blankiest blanks. That was all him. He takes credit for that.

When buildings fall down. And also, incoming Fox television president, Family Guy was greenlit before this this but as we're entering 1999 fox has a new network president doug herzog which you know is the man who canceled mystery science theater that's him that's him yeah you're right okay i knew that i was feeling some just uh deadly vibes from that name now i know why uh and herzog so doug herzog uh he was behind much of the hit mtv programming of the early 90s like beavisis and Butthead, Real World, those shows. I hate that he canceled MST3K, but I can't argue with his success of greenlighting South Park and rebuilding the brand of Comedy Central to a much more popular one. And so he's fresh off of the success of the rejuvenated Comedy Central with South Park.

What show do you think he's going to like? The nerdy sci-fi show called Futurama that costs a lot of money, or the profane cheap show by a young guy? I wasn't aware of this angle, but it's all coming together now. Yeah. I'm not saying, but I'm saying. Oh, very nice. Another Comedy Central pull. So Darnell and Herzog led the way of a group of execs that definitely preferred the cheap and agreeable family guy to the expensive and headstrong futurama being produced at the same time december 3rd 1998 it is announced that fox has locked down the 25 year old mcfarlane to a multi-million dollar five year long a production

deal uh they literally say in the article, they see him as the future and creator of their own South Park. They are pitching him as that, which I think is why the merchandise, like that was another reason I did hate Family Guy. The merchandise was there before there was the demand. Day one, it was there. I remember going to Suncoast and I saw the Brian Stewie stuff.

In fact, I remember one of the teachers was like, whose leg do I have to hump to get a dry martini around here or whatever? He already has a catchphrase? Have I heard this yet on the show? Yeah, that really, as I was becoming a more cynical teen, that also really turned me off to that. Oh, by the way, I feel really stupid because

that Tuesday night show, sorry, the Tuesday night block, I forgot what the fourth show was. It was Futurama. Yes. So the Futurama PJ's King of the Hill Family Guy, sorry. Obviously it was Futurama. In that article, too, about signing up McFarlane, it's even mentioned that the Family Guy premiere is up in the air. Could it be after Simpsons or could it be on Tuesday? Who knows? But even the article's like, well, Futurama's probably getting after Simpsons. December 13th, right after they show off their big investment in Seth MacFarlane,

it is announced in an unprecedented move that Family Guy, not heir apparent Futurama, will get the post-Super Bowl 33, 10 p.m. Eastern Standard Time premiere. It is a gigantic boost. Like in the 90s, being the show that premieres after the Super Bowl, that's about as good of a boost from your first episode as you can do we have numbers on the amount of viewers on that yes okay it's got to be what i'm gonna say 30 smaller than that uh 22 uh it was more like they want to say 20 i think it's more like 17 sorry i think like 30 million is mash or something like

that well the well the super bowl did get 30 million but it also as you saw heard at the top 34 to 19 it was not the most exciting super bowl it's one of the ones where people don't stick around not everyone sticks around for the fourth quarter uh but so yes it was a huge boost that the show would be getting super bowl as we know now after the fact futurama was sure they had that Super Bowl slot. They were certain of it. They do a joke in season one about it. It's true. And also, it's been a year since Talking Futurama. And it's coming back, by the way.

Season two is coming back if you're a patron. So look for it on patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. But also, wasn't Futurama on after The Simpsons like three times before moving to Tuesday? And it never did better than then. Nope. Never did. Well, so it is announced in that December 13th article that they're getting the post-Super Bowl thing,

but they're not sure when. They say it's going to premiere in April, Family Guy, but they're still not sure on the time slot. And you can really read between the lines in that that Fox hasn't yet broken it to Futurama that they're not getting Simpsons. 1998 closes with that unsureness about who gets Tuesday and who gets Sunday. And also they're competing with the about to premiere Eddie

Murphy claymation sitcom, the PJs, which at one point was a big deal for Fox. But by the time it debuts in January, nobody cares. I think Doug Herzog probably didn't care as much about a show he didn't greenlight. So, Family Guy debuts. Its ratings were worse than the previous year's post-Super Bowl special, which was not really, but the first three minutes were live, Third Rock from the Sun. Oh, you're right. Yeah. Where John Lithgow gets tackled on the football field right after the game. So, three minutes of it are live? I'd say even one minute, really. But that's just the comparison.

It actually did worse than the year before. They didn't get a ton of retention. And they even said that it wasn't that much higher than what the PGA's debut ratings got two weeks earlier without a Super Bowl intro. Wow, wow. But the fix was in already so that kind of didn't matter so february 1999 fox is at a crossroads they got the pjs they got family guy and they got the still to debut futurama what are they gonna do and up front they ordered two seasons of futurama right yes yeah i thought so so february 16th comes the official news that family guy will get the

post simpson slot starting in april but the futurama will get two sunday previews before moving to after king of the hill on tuesday god i know all this but it's still coming a shocking news to me it's like it's all unfolding in front of me i'm like no i can't stop it no i mean when the two nights where futurama was with simpsons it just made sense it felt so right it felt perfect it all went wrong after that yeah it could still be on tv now on fox if they kept that and that's such an insult to graining to just like oh we'll give you two nights there how you fuck how you like those Sunday night ratings? Yoink. See you in Tuesday town, loser. Family Guy started airing in April, but its ratings weren't that great either, to be honest.

And after seven episodes, they take a break for summer in 99. And by the next season, Futurama gets to go back to Sunday for a season, while Family Guy goes to Tuesday. And then after a season of that, then everything's getting preempted so much. And then they decide that King of the Hill goes back to Sunday and that Family Guy and Futurama will be before King of the Hill. They're going to create this 7 o'clock thing that's really called the preemption hour during football season. All sports destroy that slot. I hated sports more than my than any time my life

during that time but that is the tale of how family guy got to go after the super bowl and stole futurama's glory and but the funny thing is fox really screwed them over in the end like towards the end of family guy's original fox run they were just not airing episodes i remember the summer of 2001 i uh was not in school i had a part-time job i just had a lot of free time and i was like well family guys on tonight and it's new there are new family guys yeah it was just them burning off the rest of season three and you know we all thought the show would be gone forever that and pj's just got a summer dump basically and yeah it was well that's hollywood isn't it like monday here is some the guy at the top next

day to show at a box factory and that's what was happening't it? Like, Monday, the guy at the top next to you is from a box factory. And that's what was happening to Seth. He was signed to this big deal, but they're like, oh, Family Guy wasn't the huge hit we thought it'd be. Eh, we'll just sit on your deal, pay it until it's done, and then you'll be a guy who doesn't make TV shows. That's what it all seemed like was going to happen until Adult Swim and TV on DVD happened.

It's amazing that Futurama and family guy were sort of rivals but they also together made adult swim a thing yeah yeah it's it's shocking the two shows that seem to hate each other so much had good reason to hate each other in the beginning then became so like linked for from then on thanks to adult swim because when it first started on in 2003 i remember adult swim every night would kick off with futurama and then family guy and then all the adult some stuff it was such the perfect like role into all the weirder stuff i watched so many family guys me too that was uh that was also my my dirty secret that i was like i was a family guy hater but i also was like through entropy i would watch every episode because

i just would turn on adult swim so what am i gonna do not watch it i already have the channel to this i already have the tv to this channel i'm the same way so simpsons and family guy would forever be connected there'd be a big competition between them simpsons took their shots at family guy many times over the years i think that stopped when Family Guy became an undeniable success. And instead of taking a knock at a failed thing like fish police, they were taking knocks at a popular thing. And I don't think Al Jean and other folks at Simpsons wanted to be mean anymore about that stuff. Even though I think they were absolutely deserving to do that. It was so weird to see Family Guy be this just very minor obscure show for three years and then when it

came back in 2005 like between 2005 and 2008 or 9 it was never bigger there was merch everywhere video games uh it just was inescapable everywhere yeah just yeah and the simpsons family guy uh sniping at each other would grow over time, culminating in the 2014 crossover two-parter, which Harry Shearer is the only one who sat it out, which I'm proud of you, Harry. Yes. I love you, Harry Shearer. I have watched this.

Yes. And I refuse to talk about it. It scarred me. They are family guy episodes. Yes. But it's not a place the Simpsons should ever be. No, no. Even in their current form

which i still like in some ways they are two kinds of humor that should not mix well and so what's going on with family guy and the simpsons these days well interestingly enough in february of 2019 when it was announced that the simpsons got renewed for two more seasons family guy only got renewed for one more which i think shows that i think disney's done with they're not going to want more family guy in its current form after this current season this is my prediction i think it is the uh culturally it's the more ephemeral show i don't think it will have the staying power of simpsons i mean definitely people probably still watch it a ton but i think as a draw on a disney plus the simpsons is that a lot more plus

i do think that disney plus is trying to be an all ages kind of streaming network and family guy is a real dirty show r-rated in some on occasion and the simpsons makes disney jokes not like family guy makes disney jokes yeah that's true so as of, they were renewed for 18th, but not 19th. Yes, yes. So 18th will begin. Are we in 18? The 2019 to 2020 season is the only season they're officially doing now. So if we don't find out soon, it could be over.

It could be. Wow. Well, give it till February next year. I think February is usually the cutoff for those and uh and also like family guys on hulu but then again hulu is basically owned by disney now anyway so it's so weird what even is hulu now well hulu originally was fox disney fox comcast when disney bought fox they became 50 and then they they said to Warner hey can we just buy your 25% they did so now it is 75% Disney and 25% Comcast and Comcast doesn't seem that invested in it

and Comcast is NBC yes and NBC has Peacock now or they will they will yes so I don't even get Hulu anymore uh Hulu I think is just going to be a thing they want you to have in addition to Disney plus I think that's pretty much it. Uh, so who knows what the future holds as well, because Seth MacFarlane's current deal with Fox slash Disney that ends in 2020 as well. Just his overall deal to produce content. Who knows? Netflix could get tired of making things that look like family guy and just pay Seth

MacFarlane a billion dollars to make them more Family Guys. I could easily see that. Is there a Ted 3 on the horizon? A million and one ways to die in the West? I don't know if Disney's into those movies now. He's going to have to sell them to somebody else. But alright, that

is the tale of how Family Guy got into it. I also wanted to do all this talk because this is a light on content episode of Family Guy. It really is. I don't think we can get two hours out of this like it's since it's won. Star was born on Super Bowl Sunday. I say, am I to spend the entire day wallowing around with my own feces? A little service here.

Meet Stewie on the series premiere of family guy april 11th on fox quadruped mutant ass ahoy folks it's the break for this week's talking family guy and yes uh we had a lot of fun going over uh the first installment of Family Guy this week just because it's so important in the history of Simpsons, quite honestly. And we hope you guys enjoyed it as much as our regular episodes of Talking Simpsons, which will resume next week. And we're able to do this thanks to the support of amazing listeners like you

at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. Every week, me and Bob put out a new talking simpsons podcast and a new what a cartoon podcast plus tons of extras all for our patreon.com slash talking simpsons subscribers for five dollars a month you'll get to hear every episode of talking simpsons and what a cartoon a week ahead of time and ad free plus you get access to all of our amazing interviews with folks who'd worked on the simpsons, in some cases as early as the first shorts. Plus, our monthly community podcast. And best of all, our many Patreon-exclusive miniseries where we talk about different animated series in the same Talking Simpsons style.

We did the entire series of The Critic. We did the entire first season of King of the Hill. We did the entire first season of King of the Hill. We did the entire first season of Futurama. And coming very soon is the first half of season two of Futurama. And only $5 and up patrons can hear that. So please check all of that out at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. And if you just grabbed a bunch of money from some magical money rain, you should sign up at the $10 and up level at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons premium supporters. Not only get all of the $5 stuff I just mentioned,

but they get our monthly What a Cartoon Movie podcast where me and Bob talk about a different animated feature film once a month. We just did Cowboy Bebop the movie. Before that, Akira, a goofy movie. Batman Mask of the Phantasm, Into the Spider-Verse, and tons and tons more. We talk about all of our favorite animated films. And you can only hear that if you sign up at the $10 premium level of patreon.com slash talking simpsons. And that has so many more benefits for you there too.

Please, one more time, that's patreon.com slash talking simpsons, and that has so many more benefits for you there, too. Please, one more time, that's Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. Right off the bat with Death Has a Shadow, I think we should mention the Season 10 episode that they did. Oh, yeah, Back to the Pilot. I watched that for this recording, and it's very funny in that it's a Back to the Future 2-style parody in which they return back to previous scenes they were in. But in this case, it's mostly them making fun of how bad the pilot is.

They're aware. If you think we're going to be mean to the pilot they're aware of how bad it is within the show itself and they make fun of it yeah they also make fun of lacy chalbert for oh she sounds like she's about to blow a major opportunity i i think seth mcfarlane is better at laughing at himself than uh the simpsons is i'll give him that edge too i mean it would be funny if the simpsons went back to a bad older episode and like experienced that horror but i think the closest we've come to that is having the tracy allman characters on the couch uh oh no wait they were ghosts yeah halloween episode that's right so in a way they kind of but not fully like this yeah but yes why don't we hear the wonderful first jokes of Family Guy.

Mom, Dad, I found cigarettes in Greg's jacket. Greg, were you smoking cigarettes? No, Dad. Well, he's lying. There's no doubt about that. Greg, I'm afraid your punishment will be four hours in the snake pit. Maybe that'll give you some time to think about what you've done. Oh, man. That'll teach him. And Jan, I'm afraid you've earned

a day in the chamber of fire for tattling on your brother. Ah, smoking. How does a boy like that go so wrong? Well, I live in a crummy neighborhood. The Brady's? Oh, hell yeah. They got robbers, thugs, drug dealers, you name it. You folks want some pancakes? No, thank you. See, that's the worst we got is Jemima's

witnesses. Bam! want some pancakes no thank you see that's the worst we got is uh jemima's witnesses it's funny it's really telling that the first uh joke in this entire pilot is not featuring the characters really just like welcome to the show it is parodies more than the critic they listlessly watch television yeah uh and yeah the first let me know first jokes on family guy are what if a brady bunch was like crazy and doesn't jemima sound like jehovah that's it that's the tell me henry will they make similar scooby-doo jokes i look forward to someday thinking about how you know i never really thought about how like shaggy's kind of like a pothead isn't wouldn't aren't they just doing drugs all the time man i know i've never thought of that to be fair the harvey birdman version of that was much better yeah yeah in both cases they did get frank welker to do to resume his voice i did i do i appreciated when

family guy put in the effort but this is okay this is the thing i did hate about family guy is that this is so fish in a barrel like observations that i feel like everybody had been making the entire 90s this thing about the brady bunch is nothing new it's like what if the brady bunch were fucking like those jokes always have happened yeah it's just like filtering older stand-up through this cartoon lens almost the fucking brady bunch did it themselves in their movies yeah yeah that's true i never thought of it yeah the Brady Bunch movies were just making fun of the Brady Bunch for two different movies. And also just a general note I have about Family Guy compared to The Simpsons is, on The Simpsons, well, Al Jean would break this rule sometimes, but usually The Simpsons would

be watching a show that is like a show, but it would be hosted by Krusty or they'd make up somebody to host it. On this they're like. It's the Brady Bunch. It's just they're watching it. I think that's why people liked it so much though. Because it was things you recognized. I know.

And that's part of the appeal. Which is like oh yeah. This is not a parody of the Brady Bunch. With different characters. This is just the Brady Bunch. But exaggerated in some way. They did a joke I found. A recent-ish joke. which is they played double dribble

like the nes game yeah 90 seconds i think they did one with like tech mobile too man which is just like doing a let's play via family guy yeah but it's a joke about but i i gotta give it to them on the specificity of just like yeah the corner three that's that's that's what's broken and troubled double dribble but it's a but yeah it is like i recognized it the joke like uh but the brady bunch thing they're doing was the plot of a season two episode called where there's smoke which is about them finding cigarettes in greg's jacket and him saying it's not his which does belong it actually does belong to his friend tommy interesting that's not one of the more well-known ones i think because i think they covered all those in the movie yeah they i'll give it to mcfarlane for

going a little deeper on that god jemima's witnesses though that sucks such a bad joke just and that's how you go into your opening yeah so up front you're like uh what is this show like who are these people what's the point of this what is the reality and just like lisa sax did 15 months earlier they also conceive of an opening where the characters recreate all in the family so another thing that when i saw it i was like simpsons did that and then not only is the op you know the all in the family recreation but that basically turns into the simpsons opening with the dancing with the elephants yeah it's it's a bit weird now i do think the opening does sum up what family guy at its best too which is that it's a hoary

old sitcom that then becomes some quality musical numbers like that's that's really what the show obviously what seth mcfarland really wanted to do was sing like once he got a cigarette all right time to sing and i'll sing as three different people i'll be singing as myself all the time i'll invite frank sinatra jr on the show and then it'll be frank sinatra jr plus me and also me and then i'll be in the audience as another character saying i like it he has albums folks multiple albums uh we come back from the opening meg wants lip injections we then get the show's first hitler joke one of uh many many many hitler jokes you know hitler jokes once felt kind of uh lame and tacky now they just feel like uh i don't know there's a different weight to them now definitely yes i think not

to get too way down with modern day politics but the joke was just like oh this will never happen again hitler's open game on hitler now you're just like, ooh, I'm looking at Hitler's everywhere now. Now I do think this Hitler joke was not in the pilot presentation that Seth did. Neither was the lip injection stuff. So this was all added in, I think by Zuckerman, just to fill out the show. Like definitely this lip injection things gives Meg something to do aside from nothing,

which is what she did in the pilot. But the Hitler gags on, it was something that always separated them from the simpsons yeah matt graining famously hated hitler gags you can see a few here and there but what i noticed about this episode compared to one 10 years later is like they are so desperate with the cutaways like they never give you a second to just breathe and like take the show in at face value there are just like so many cutaways in this i would say like three or four times the amount you would see like five or six years later on the show in at face value. There are just so many cutaways in this. I would say three or four times the amount you would see five or six years later on the show.

And they smash them up together too, like, and then I did this, but after I did that, and then I did this. Yeah, it's like a cutaway combo almost. But why do we meet the hilarious talking baby that the world loves to hear? Excellent. The mind control device is nearing completion.

Stewie, I said no toys at the table. Damn you, vile woman. You've impeded my work since the day I escaped from your wretched womb. Oh, don't pout, honey. You know, when you were born, the doctor said you were the happiest looking baby he'd ever seen. But of course. That was my victory day. The fruition of my deeply laid plans

to escape from that cursed ovarian bastille. Return the device, woman. No toys, Stewie. Very well, then. Mark my words. When you least expect it, your upence will come.

Mom, can I turn the heat up? Oh, don't touch the thermostat, Meg. Your father gets upset. Come on, this thing goes up to 90. We'll touch the thermostat. God, how does he always know? thermostat, Meg. Your father gets upset. Come on. This thing goes up to 90. Don't touch the thermostat. God, how does he always know? Brain implant, Meg.

Every father's got one. Tells you when the children are messing with the dial. Hey, Peter, my thing went off. Your thermostat okay? Yeah, it's all right. Hey, is my kid over here? Forget it. False alarm.

There's like a weird off-model Cleveland popping in there. So in the pilot, seven-minute pilot, it is just Cleveland. Yeah. So I think they wanted cleveland to be in different scenes like well also in the in the seven minute pilot there's no quagmire so i i think in between the pilot and making the first season they realized they needed a lenny and carl for yeah for for i almost called him homer for for peter homer griffin uh yeah some things they dropped in this that i i like that they dropped was like

so immediately upon watching this as a 16 year old in 1999 like this is pinky in the brain this stuff has already been done the uh diminutive character who wants to take over the world who's secretly evil and talks in this very affected way it's it's the brain it's the brain you've done this before so i'm glad that like after this season they just dropped this completely and so he's just like a weirdo. It's lame as fuck. I hated it from the second. By the end of the third season, when they figured out that he's an effeminate weirdo who just says odd things,

and also who hangs out with Brian while also hating him, that's a much better character than, like, victory is mine. Like, that sucks. He's already got his catchphrases picked out ahead of time it's very stupid i like in the back to the pilot they also point out that he just says too many words like yeah he has a thesaurus with him and that he lost access to his like amount of gadgetry and also that uh stewie is a total ripoff of chris ware's comic acme novelty library the lead character in that jimmy you look at him

he just is the football headed i will say i say bobby's world to you sir oh okay that too but it in acme novelty library he's bald as well that's true yeah it is i mean chris ware is talked out about like oh yeah they just stole it it's just my it's my drawing they stole it boy that thermostat joke also lame as fuck. That's like a family circus joke with no extra spin on it. It's just a family circus joke. We need to see the brain implant. Exactly.

Have a bloody sore there or whatever. Then by minute five, Chris finally gets to say his first word in the show. They did not give a shit. They honestly don't need Chris. They don't need any of the kids, actually. Well, really, what I noticed is if you're a character that is not voiced by Seth MacFarlane, you will be underwritten because Seth MacFarlane won't be wanting to say your line. He's not thinking of you when he's writing those lines.

And then Brian enters the room, too. That's where he says that Ass Ahoy line. That was Brian's first line in the show. They make fun of that in the back to the pilot episode as well like they were establishing that uh blank ahoy would be brian's catchphrase so i what i like about back to the pilot is you see these scenes that you don't see in the pilot like the interconnected scenes so when the helicopter crashes or sorry when the blimp crashes in the super bowl scene in the season 10 episode brian says crash ahoy like they're pointing out that ass away is a terrible line yeah it then uh brian also points out that peter's wearing pants after seven what's

the occasion which virtually every episode of family guy has a scene that happens after 7 p.m and peter is definitely wearing pants at home so well peter is one of the characters that could be safely nude on tv without needing sensor bars or blurring because the uh the gut just covers all the genitalia there yeah i do uh a line i actually like of brian's where peter gets his bathing suit flies off and he's then thrown upside down in the water so his gut isn't hanging over it then uh brian says like huh so that's what peter's penis looks like that's a good line see we're remembering there are funny jokes on family just not in this episode peter asks for permission to go to a stag party which again just feels like a fucking flintstones scrap like there's no it really is he's going to like the the moose lodge or whatever like we talked about it when we did the princess

cashmere episode of simpsons that felt old in 90 yeah 90 it felt old like your dad's going to a stag party to watch to watch porno like no that is since the death of the union in america yeah labor unions that doesn't exist there ain't no toy union on this show uh but yes peter promises he's not gonna drink and remember you had an irish coffee the day we went to see philadelphia i it. That's the guy from Big. Tom Hanks. That's it. Ah, funny guy, Tom Hanks. Everything he says is a stitch. I have AIDS. Promise me, Peter. Lois, honey, I promise not a drop of alcohol is going to touch these lips tonight. Hey, who wants to play drink the beer? Right here. You win. All right, what do I win? Another beer.

Oh, I'm going for the high score. Well, actually, Charlie's got the high score. Hey, man, your clock won't flush. You know, I feel kind of bad, you guys. I promised my wife I wouldn't drink. Oh, don't feel bad, Peter. Gee, I never thought of it like that. That's a good line.

What I wrote down was the first, remember that time? It's from Lois, not from Peter, which is interesting. And Brian. So Lois and Brian team up for a series of cutaways about remembering the time when something happened. Boy, and what a time to remember something happened, things they did there. So there were multiple jokes cut for the first Super Bowl airing, I think, because they knew they'd have a wider more mainstream audience after the super bowl so they cut some stuff that included the church joke that

wasn't there okay that uh the god reacting to job story that is straight out of life of larry uh the the risdy student film as was the tom hanks joke which totally makes more sense if you think that came out in 1994 as opposed to in 1999 it did feel a lot older in 99 meg is seemingly of her current age while watching philadelphia meaning they must have seen it at a revival house i guess so yeah that philadelphia joke um i mean it is very crass but it's also super dated by the time this came out i think they would eventually decide like instead of having four cutaways let's find the best joke from that and just do that one uh i think they got a little more confidence yeah it's like no no we need five jokes about peter being drunk also i was waiting for uh peter to fall down in that butter rum thing in the in the specific classic style yeah

didn't do it though though this was a rough night of comedy for the catholics because right after this episode is the one that got cut from future simpsons episodes of the the catholic church we've made a few changes they've done nothing wrong uh i will talk about that yeah but okay so peter goes to drink and i gotta think what really hurt me in my first viewing of this as a 15 year old simpsons viewer is viewer is I had just seen Homer get drunk with his friends when his wife told him not to and then be hung over in wild barts. It was two weeks before this. So I already am being reminded of like, oh, wait, I already saw The Simpsons did this. Like, I'm already thinking of like, this shows The Simpsons.

Yeah, I forgot how close that was. I mean, like, Peter, it's definitely an exaggeration of Homer even more. Yeah. Well, because Peter has to be bigger than Homer. He has to be the worst version of Homer in all ways, which makes him a like sociopathic monster in most episodes. And someone who is like,

uh, I believe legally designated as quote retarded yeah an episode as well uh then uh quagmire's the guy who hands him the beer this is quagmire's first appearance though in the first larry and steve you get a brief shot of a pilot as a person flying a plane who does look like quagmire in that so oh boy quagmire uh yep yeah it's nice to see him as a party guy i like the voice but bob he'd be the vehicle for their ugliest worst jokes uh at the expense of the most helpless people well bob haven't you considered though that rape jokes are funny uh never once no me neither they suck they're not funny i think uh that also is something that struck me like oh

of course the first episode has more than one sexual assault joke there is yeah yeah it's 99 it's just how it goes like that you know pc matt graining stopped him from doing this shit man they uh good but anyway yes we've quagmire they they haven't fully struck on what the character quagmire is that they want yet, which, giggity. Giggity, giggity. So I do like the line, though, of like, oh, I never thought of it that way. I should just ignore my wife's feelings. Don't feel bad is the epiphany he had.

It feels old as fuck to watch porno with friends, that idea. I've never done it. I'm almost 40. I'm getting to 40, rather. I'm not almost 40 yet. I think of a time in the 60s where your one skeezy friend mail-ordered a eight-millimeter reel of a porno, and you're like, well, none of us else have this. Let's just save our time and watch it together and jerk off separately some other time. Save these memories in the spank bank. I think the closest we have to this now is if you go to

a porn account on Twitter and then see that your friends follow it Not that I've had that experience Though Asa Blanca That's like a lame joke too I am impressed They got away with like When I whip this out and you're not on it He's saying get on my dick

I prefer the Both the Critic and simpsons had casablanca parodies right before this too that's right leading up to this so it was old hat and jay sherman imagined the uh statue of liberty taking her clothes off that's where okay of course yeah so they ripped that off too another joke taken no leering at the statue uh but in this case they get super drunk to see it which i i don't want to keep being monday morning quarterback but like okay so one of his kids grabbed the asa blanka tape which is clearly labeled as asa blanka in a case that says

asa blanka but accidentally thought it was a blank tape that then they tape a special of the statue of liberty over it how like in it doesn't make sense actually it's weird they should have had the tape break and it switches over to the tv and then there's like a statue of liberty thing or something like the whole point of it is is is that you're trying to fantasize about the statue of liberty that's the lame joke you're going for but to get there of like oh crap my kid taped over they're like why wouldn't chris just watch the entire thing and not give a shit about taping yeah that special if anyone wouldn't destroy porn it'd be chris a teenage boy they got away with a joke about the sound of masturbating with him that's right or television yeah and that's like if they did it post season four i know they got to be dirtier but but they did that pre-cancellation.

I couldn't believe they got away with that. I do think, though, in the Super Bowl airing, they didn't get to show that. And if you're not on it, line. I believe that was cut. Peter wakes up the next morning. He's hungover after having 37 beers. That's a comedy number. Oh, yeah.

It's a classic comedy number. It comes up a lot. It's a prime number. That's funny. He drank them in a row, from what I've heard. And so, yes, that's when Chris finally gets his first line to say, yeah, fight the power. He has no character.

He's nothing. Then we get another joke that wasn't in the seven-minute pilot, the accountant's in the head, which that feels like a Barker and Weitzman American dad kind of joke. Yeah, yeah. I do like that joke a lot about not thinking about what's outside the head yeah that's dangerous too smart for mcfarlane yeah so i'm gonna take any credit away from him on this uh and uh lois's fall is in the pilot presentation too

so from the beginning they're like yes the plot the idea we have with stewie is he tries to kill his mother that's all we've got i mean peter is where he needs to be uh vocally and stewie is too but boy lois is just like oh peter what did you do this time peter oh geez and borstein says they asked her to speak that's her sped up she spoke so slow i think they didn't discover what they really wanted to do with lois until the christmas episode where she screams at everybody yeah i think that's when they figured out like oh lois should be angry she's too nice like i don't like nice lois it's fun when she freaks out i think there's like a running joke that they didn't establish in this episode where she says blank is god's way of telling you that blank that feels like the start of an abandoned running joke with her yeah like almost like a peggy hill style

character totally totally yeah no they they but more like religious like a Peggy Hill-style character. Totally, totally, yeah. But more like religious, like a guilt, religious guilt-driven. But yes, Peter is hung over. You see, Peter, a hangover is nature's way of telling you I was right. I mean, you... Mom, are you all right? My goodness, this chair leg was loose. Isn't that silly? I could have broken my neck. Damn.

Look, honey, I took a cab home. I slept on a table so I wouldn't wake you up. Nothing bad happened. Well, I guess you're right. Apology accepted. All right, I'm going to work. Somebody's got to put food on this table. Then he falls off.

How are you coming, Johnson? Well, Mr. Weed, I've been working on the new G.I. Jew line, and as you can see, they look great. You call these bagels? falls off. I like you but I need you to be more than just eye candy around here it's your job to watch for any toys that could be hazardous to children now look sharp yes sir he falls back asleep that's Rocco himself

Carlos Alas Rocky that's right that's Mr. Weed which again I think they're establishing things they didn't pick up on where this whole toy factory setting

or Peter is working at the toy place never really became a dominant thing on the show and then they kill mr weed yeah yeah from seasons one to three i think they forgot he had a job there they they'd occasionally remember it it was pretty meaningless his job and that's i mean that is it didn't i don't think it

was intentional but it ended up being something that does differentiate them from the simpsons is that peter gets kind of a new job every couple seasons on the show like he went from that to work to working for carrie fisher yeah uh to then he became a longshoreman i know that one yeah and some other stuff i but this toy gag he only works at a toy factory for four toy jokes like that's all they gave their main character a job for four fucking toy jokes. And once those are done, you're like, I got nothing else. Yes. No named coworkers with personality.

Although it's not a great joke, but I do have the line. Glad he's on our side in my head for some reason. I mean, the delivery of that with his spinning eyes is just like, calm it down, Shecky. I like how much he's trying to sell this bad toy idea. Yeah. Which again, another fucking Seth MacFarlane. He wrote himself every joke. G.I.

Jew was not in the Super Bowl airing. I can see why. But it was in the seven minute pilot. So MacFarlane wrote that. That was not one of their Jewish writers writing that. But they approved of it tacitly. It's South Park edge lordiness. That's all it is.

That's a blow. So we got a Hitler joke and a Jew joke so far. They cancel each other out, frankly. And of course, Mr. Weed, they realized instantly their joke with him. He's a fag. That's what's funny. He says things in a lispy way. He likes getting a dick later.

He's somehow Peter's neighbor based on how far he can throw that statue dick. That's right, yeah. I don't like that. I think they were not very creative with Mr. Weave. It's like, we need a vehicle for gay jokes. Who do we go to? I guess his boss could be effeminate, and also vaguely foreign, so they can do something with him. But he's not gay acting

or voiced by Carlos in the seven minute pilot. I think he's voiced by Butch Hartman is what I read. Yes, yeah. He went on to Infamy. But he was an old boss of Seth so he's watching out for his old boss.

I still want to do Fairly Odd Parents for What a Cartoon at some point. We'll do it. It's not a bad show. I think this act break joke is not good. Nope. In that there's no heightening. It's just kind of lame. So Peter falls asleep and then various

things roll by that shouldn't roll by on the assembly line. Which they already did on Simpsons when Tom and Tom were toward the death factory. That's also true. But there just should be one, the final thing that rolls, there should be a twist on that joke. It could be like an evil book or something, or something innocuous but that's secretly evil.

Who knows? Yeah, a cute doll that then the head falls off and it's a knife. But instead it's like it's a plug. It's an axe. It's a toaster with forks in it. And then we get our first appearance of Tom, Tucker, and Diane. And now back to Action News 5. Our top story tonight, when toys attack.

Quite a situation we've got here, Tom. Quite a situation we've got here, Tom. Indeed, Diane. It seems the happy-go-lucky toy company of Quahog, Rhode Island, has released several highly unsafe toy products into the retail market. Come on, Timmy. Throw the silly ball. Oh, boy, a pound

poochie. Come on, baby Heimlich, spit it out. Peter, I am a bard. Your negligence has damaged this company's reputation. You're fired. Ha, jeez, for how long? That joke's okay,

at least. Yeah, yeah. I guess they have their kent brockman now two of them tom and diane diane got killed off in season nine that's right i like how they established that um tom has a son with an upside down face and they carry that they establish it for one joke like don't use the word freak that's an ugly word diane and then we find out his son is an upside down face uh the tom Tom Tucker also is Anchorman five years before Anchorman so they actually didn't rip something off there

though I mean that pastiche was there it was in the ether. One very distracting thing and I might have mentioned this on the What A Cartoon is that the voice of Diane is also the voice of the boss in Metal Gear. That's right. So I couldn't stop thinking of Family Guy while playing Metal Gear 3 and hearing those emotional moments.

Thinking that the boss is about to throw it to Tom Tucker. Yeah. And the defective toy stuff is very Cartoon Network. It feels like stuff they wanted to do. The stuff he wrote for Johnny Bravo and then was told, that's too dirty for Cartoon Network. But then when it's on this, it's like, I don't know, that's not edgy enough for Family Guy. A fork in a toaster or whatever. Yeah.

An axe hitting a baseball, I don't know. I feel like, or an axe hitting a baseball bat, I feel like two seasons later, that would have hit the kid in the face or something. Yeah, it would have. It would have at least been excessive violence. It would have been more cruel. That's all we want from Family Guy.

So the original pitch reel basically ends there, except where Peter describes all of his jobs a little later. That's in there. That's where it ends, the pitch reel. And so they basically had to figure out how Peter would get a job back or any plot after that. The pitch reel ends with Seth saying, and so on. You understand. There's more of this. And so, yes, Peter is fired. He then decides that he needs to lie to Lois about it. I do like the callousness of they're not people like us about women. Yeah, which was a funny joke, but now people believe that. I mean, people always have, but now they're on Reddit, and you can find them.

It's them having their cake and eating it too with that it's also they really don't know if uh people can hear stewie or brian like stewie will say things and people will not really respond to him and only peter talks to brian i it just doesn't feel like they had a clear rule set for that yeah there's a joke in a future episode where uh they're in the future and people are asking questions about like, can people understand the baby? And it's never written all that clear. And so as Peter listens to his devil because his angel, shoulder angel is stuck in heaven traffic.

That's a funny joke. I feel a real Barker and Weitzman vibe off that joke. It's not in the seven minute pitch. Especially when the callback comes back and there is a smaller angel that's also stuck in traffic that's a real american dad kind of yeah and the spilling of the coffee is very funny too it's like oh this is just perfect yeah you know it's a very it's a mundane occurrence yeah it's their bread and butter barker and weitzman i do love just the observational stuff of the very mundane elements of life like spilling your coffee in the worst moment and uh i do believe that when peter says your mom says things like stop doing that i'm asleep

i think that's officially their first sexual assault joke in the show yes we're breaking new ground congratulations yes yeah so well at least okay not to go too far into this but at least he was stopped yes he heard stop and he stopped yeah so uh also then when lois comes into the room and peter is not saying he was fired or like but keeps saying like i don't have a job in the world for lois not to catch on to that it makes you think she is a very stupid person like she's just she's played way too dumb in this show yeah there's no reason for her to not understand what he's saying when he keeps giving it away that he lost his job.

Yeah, she shouldn't be shocked later. And also, if Peter wants to keep something a secret, the last thing you should do is tell all of your children you were fired and then like, now don't tell your mother. Well, why'd you even tell them? And the reason he did that is because they needed five more lines to fill out the time in this script to get to the time the time limit also the gun popping out of the tuna fish sandwich the pacing needs to be way tighter on that yeah yeah one thing i noticed about this show that would be improved greatly

in future seasons is that the pacing just is very swimmy and awkward and the jokes aren't hitting in the right uh pace i guess also why is a baby eating a tuna fish sandwich? They don't do that. And no one else is eating tuna fish at the table. Yes, it's just because he liked drawing a funny picture of a gun popping out of a sandwich. And in the Back to the Pilot episode, we see how that tuna fish sandwich is made.

I do like that. That was a nice embellishment. I think they meant it like, okay, so Stewie made this tuna fish sandwich separately and put a gun in it. That's how it came to the table. Oh, yes. Also in this sequence here,

we get the very first victory is mine which i feel like victory is mine victory is mine yeah that's when he steals back that i mean uh what i don't like about stewie and early stewie is like he's such a cynical character where from the beginning they're like that's the character that's him we got to get him on a t-shirt victory is mine is going to be on a hat what else can he say like i feel like he was made with catchphrases in mind but he outgrew that catchphrase character immediately yeah he they found way more stuff for him to do fun to write that yeah he's character it's boring and and like every episode in the first season seemingly had like a pinky in the brain style subplot where stewie was doing something to take over the world

or to escape or to destroy something in his life as a B plot. And it would fail, but usually fix things at the end, like this episode with the device, which I don't think in the pitch pilot, there's no explanation of what the device does. It just gets taken away from him. So that's why the rest of the episode is him trying to get the device back. And then we get a bunch of cutaway gags in a row of peter's new jobs where he's working for uh coco puffs he's working as a sneeze guard where he's pointing a gun at a woman which that does feel accurate to uh people with

guns yeah from season four onward he just shot that woman in the face yeah and then is where the pitch reel cuts off which is the von trapp family joke which man family guy loves sound of music jokes they really do so i mean it allows them to do musical and nazi jokes i mean that is that's a nice that also a nazi joke that he the von traps beat him or something yeah yeah well so the pitch reel actually has the joke better okay uh but so in the pilot he thinks he's won a musical contest which in the plot of sound of music the von trapp family wins a talent contest but they are sneaking away from the nazis to go to switzerland while they're being announced as the winners and so it's like and

who's the winner the von trapp family and then it cuts to a Nazi saying, the Von Trapp family is gone. They're gone. So in this joke, Peter is there. He finds out he lost. He says, that's bullshit. Which in the seven minute pitch reel, he just says, bullshit. It's not bleeped over. And then the extra joke is the Nazi pops in the door and says, they escaped.

And Peter says, all right. Like he's celebrating. He won because they're done. That's a better joke. That joke makes sense because I was just lost into like, is it just right like he's celebrating he won because they're done that's a better joke that joke makes sense because i was just lost into like is it just funny that he's there at that point in time yeah it's fun well isn't it funny that peter's that sound of music you wouldn't expect the cartoon character to be in the sound of music so i feel like they cut out the part of the joke that made it complete it's like they cut a joke in half maybe it was to cut

down on nazis in this too yeah it's like we already had we need a nazi in every act yeah we gave you hitler we gave you but we're not we gave you gi jew we're not giving you this nazi uh and then there's also a gag that peter was in tiananmen square which it's again it's just a random thing i remember that but they also just get it wrong the tiananmen square person facing down the tank is clearly in like iconic photo, black slacks and a white shirt. The Tiananmen Square person he stops is a protester with a bandana on and a red t-shirt. That's not even the picture. It's a weird drawing. It doesn't make sense.

Yeah. I mean, at the very least, the character he stops didn't talk with a Mrs. Swan accent. Yeah. We can hope at the very least that the character he stops didn't talk with a Mrs. Swan accent. Yeah, yeah. We can hope, at the very least, that that didn't happen. It's also really weird in this episode that, like, Brian is always sitting like a dog. Yeah. It's very Garfield first strips to me. I remember listening to the commentary on this episode because I bought the DVDs, of course, even though I hated the show.

I got to hear those commentaries. They mentioned that. They also mentioned the weird, like, tongue movements of the characters. Oh, yeah. The mouth charts are all off for this first episode. Like, there's a lot of tongues hitting the roof of mouths on syllables where they shouldn't. It's very distracting.

Yeah. And as very much pointed out in the Back to the Pilot episode, there's a scene where Peter's eye just goes over his nose for, like, eight seconds. It's funny that even when they try, so in that episode, back to the pilot, there are just them cutting scenes out of that old episode. But certain times they try to recreate it, but even trying as hard as they can,

they can't make it as ugly as it used to be. It's so funny to see them try to fake ugly. It's like, no, you're too competent at this. It's not working. I do think the best cutaway joke of this episode is Peter pretending pretending to be a lamp all day and that's what he doesn't work again making lois look very stupid like what is lois's character she's very gullible but yes uh we get the first victory is mine in the next scene is stewie steals back his device which then gets immediately taken back from him uh then peter is starting to worry about how they're spending money when he has no job. Lois is like, why? He says, because you're getting fat, which is a plot

for a later episode of the show, where they basically have a similar exchange about like, I do like the line where Peter says, Lois, men aren't fat. Only fat women are fat. That's a good line. It's a good line about toxic masculinity. A bad perspective, yeah. But Peter is about to tell the truth, but he instead decides to lie some more. Lois, this is really hard for me to say, but... What is it, Peter?

You're getting kind of fat. What? It's not healthy. Peter, I do my Jane Fonda workout tape three times a week. When was the last time you saw your toes? Shit, man, I thought you people were supposed to be jolly. Peter, what the hell's the matter with you? Honey, you know, if there's something wrong, you can tell me.

Hey, yeah, sorry, man. Am I late? What'd I miss? Oh, thank God you're here. What do I do? Tell him to keep lying. He's in too deep. I don't know.

Hey, where's the other guy? God, this is unbelievable. Lois, I promise you, everything's fine. You got nothing to worry about. Well, well, mother. We meet again. Stewie, I thought I tucked you in an hour ago. Not tightly enough, it would seem.

And now, you contemptible harpy, I shall end your oppressive reign of matriarchal tyranny. Oh, you can play with your toys tomorrow, honey. Right now it's bedtime. Oh, blast you and your estrogenical treachery. Sweet dreams, kiddo. You have the power to end this. Yeah, that thesaurus-based humor was a thing in the 90s.

Yeah. I mean, even picking the brain was guilty of that. Just like the joke is the character uses big words and that's basically it. But it's not a personality yeah uh estra matriarchal tyranny oppressive reign just god i mean too he hates women so much like that is another theme of stewie the character or at least his mother yeah i think it would move from him trying to you know have devious plots to just basically him wanting to kill his mother yeah yeah, yeah. And I think he does in one episode. There's an episode called Stewie Kills Lois,

but it turns out that she was just presumed dead. He did not actually kill her. There's another episode in the episode where Diane is killed off. She is killed off by Stewie because she's about to kill Lois, and he kills her to save Lois, and Stewie reveals this because no one's going to kill lois and he kills her to save lois uh and stewie reveals this because no one's gonna kill her but me so now the running egg on family guy is the occasional time stewie remembers he wants to kill her brian then uh wax peter on the head for uh not telling the truth uh the

newspaper title keeps shifting around a lot they're having some real trouble with that it's a wacky newspaper in this wacky world of jokes and then we get uh some real welfare shaming yeah so which totally was added on by zuckerman that was his just to fill this whole well welfare subplot was added by them there's not a lot of commentary i think at one point it's pointed out it could be an oversight but it is sort of like oh yeah welfare is like winning the lottery but as we all know there's no such thing as welfare yes there's not a program called that it's not there are social say there's things like snap that you can get and other things but like housing assistance heating assistance things like that they are so means tested and undervalued and getting cut slashed more and more every day it's what um people who hate poor people call entitlements yeah which by the way they don't talk about how billionaires feel

entitled to have nothing taxed that's not an entitlement they earned having nothing taxed yeah i mean they were born rich what more do you want from them but the 90s were the with the era of welfare reform really i mean it started with reagan and clinton's like i'll do it too yeah no i mean a lot of clinton's platform was i can hate poor people in a Republican way, vote for me. Like that was, and that's totally why this show, which is by Seth MacFarlane, you know, a taxachusetts liberal. He still, though, is on his show doing this whole thing about how means tested welfare needs to be and how it's a never-ending money party, which it is absolutely not. Try fucking living on American social assistance, man.

Like, try qualifying for it. I tried two ones. I was making less than five figures a year. They're like, you're too rich for this. Get out of here. That's why folks

are falling into the Yang gang with his $1,000 promise, which that would not pay anyone's rent that I know. No. I mean, the Simpsons would make fun of things like this in that one episode i think realty bites they made fun of unemployment and unemployment's money that you earn you pay into it not everyone even gets it but it was it

it is a very white uh middle class way of thinking oh i didn't earn this money oh no you're a scam artist you're you're also just like you're a bad person if you settle welfare peter the second he got fired should have applied to this the only reason he didn't uh was seemingly out of some shame or whatever uh and i mean me and bob could go on this for all day long but if i could tell you guys to listen to one thing it would be friends of the show citations needed their podcast episode 26 the welfare dog whistle is very insightful about this topic and how it is used to shame and attack poor and minority people in america and it's a really disgusting thing anyway then we get a fart joke yeah it feels very weirdly placed in the middle of all yeah it came out of nowhere i forget what the context is for him not realizing what gas was until he

was 30 or not having gas until he was 30. The welfare guy just asks if he had any interesting things in his life worth mentioning, which is not what welfare people would ask anyway. But the fact that you can't remember what sets it up is proof that Family Guy jokes are interchangeable dross. Yeah, I mean, he's just put in that office for that sake of that joke, I guess. Pretty much, yeah. The setup of the joke, yeah. He needs some new straight man to set up a joke that joke was in the pilot though right that was even in life of larry the school student project seth mcfarland

really likes the idea of somebody not farting until they're 30 and being confused by it it's just uh seemingly funny oh upcoming is the reason why peter got so much money yes it's in my notes i totally forgot about that. So, yes, their first welfare check comes in. Guys, our money problems are over. We're officially on welfare. Come on, kids, help me scatter car parts on the front lawn. Boom.

How much are we getting? Let's see, $150 a week. Wait, that's a comma, not a decimal. Whoops. No, no, I haven't seen Peter all afternoon. I was giving a piano lesson. Stewie, why don't you play in the other room? Why don't you burn in hell?

Well, no dessert for you, young man. Boy, who would have thought getting drunk at a stag party would get me $150,000 a week from the government? This is why I don't vote. Hey, maybe somebody down there was drinking too, huh? Mr. President, why do you think the American public has continued to support you throughout these impeachment proceedings? Probably because you're so fat. Peter, you might want to call the Welfare Commission. That check is obviously an oversight. Well, not necessarily. Maybe I'm like

their one millionth customer. What, you're going to spend $150,000 a week um yeah on what so yeah i guess the reason why uh peter's getting 150 grand per week is because the democrats are drunk i guess yeah they're just clerical error now that i mean that clinton joke is again it's needless like completely needless is that peter's like imagined reality or the reality of the situation? I don't know. Yeah. I guess it is. We're thinking too much about this, I know. I mean, the joke is that Clinton gets away with everything,

which, I mean, he did. Just ask Jeffrey Epstein. Oh, you can't. But sorry, I don't want to give people Epstein brain. Let's get out our Ouija board and ask him. But the Clinton joke did remind me of like, that's how goddamn long this show has been on. They made jokes about sitting President Bill Clinton.

Dear Lord, 20 long years. And yeah, Brian is a real NPR neoliberal with that hate of the welfare. And his public urination. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. I mean, that's such a West Wing style joke, too. Just like, this is why I don't vote.

And then we do get a mention of Lois's piano recital lessons. I do like that. Oh, yeah. I guess they had that built in for the character at this point. They at least set that up. She has something going on, folks. Though, again, she's so stupid. She's like, this baby just tried to kill me directly with things that are visible on screen.

Oh, well. But isn't it crazy that a baby said hell bob you wouldn't see maggie do that no no way it's fish in a barrel making fun of this yeah yeah they went there so you'll believe a baby can say hell i do though have an interesting uh thought on this with the welfare money plot i think it might be slight commentary about how seth mcfarland felt going from being a regular guy to getting his first millionaire contract paycheck i can see that yeah what if his first paycheck was 150 000 he's like what do i even do with this much money do i have to spend it all right now what what is this i was used to living very uh slim let's say and

now that i make an okay living not like sethFarlane, but I can take care of myself. I just don't know what to do with the money. It keeps piling up, Henry. What do I do with all this money? This is why rich celebrities go crazy. It's just you get that money, you don't know what to do anymore. I just assume the economy will fall apart in five years, so I need every dollar. I'll be safe in Canada.

It'll be okay. But $150,000, look Look It's a lot of money It can't rent you Even the statue of David No But they just wanted to do A cock joke And the penis is not that big

Or detailed Yeah actually Or a giant cylinder Yeah It's just a fucking Dildo joke And then of course What do you do with a dildo

Well it flies into the window Of a gay guy And then he thinks He calls it Eduardo Yeah It's like that's all That's a joke Yeah, it's like, that's a joke. Ha ha. But it's like, I think they wrote it in like,

yeah, Peter is holding a detailed stone penis, and Fox is like, no. Yeah. And it's just like a cylinder. The joke doesn't work because they can't draw a penis. Yeah, which like, then don't do it. Yeah. You can't do.

Also, one of the most off-model shots is them right after that penis gag. Like, Stewie's eyes are all wrong yeah it's just bad i know the drawing you're talking about i can think about it looks like when south park drew the joke versions of them that's true uh and uh then also another very late 90s thing of just like the term for it is like street comedy meaning like observations anybody makes that you just say it's like it's not exactly that you're ripping off one person's joke but it's just you're ripping off a thing that everybody says so it's lame to do it calling fajitas vaginas vaginas that is such like i was hearing that all through fucking high

school it's not funny and what what restaurant is serving fajitas and also sausage biscuits a mick biscuit too yes sausage It doesn't make sense. It was just so he could say that fajitas reads like vaginas to a stupid person. Also, just say the fajita joke. You don't need the Sausage. But see, they wanted Brian to say an urbane thing back because those are the two voices that are at battle in Seth MacFarlane's mind. His New England jerk upbringing

and the fancy man he wants to be. Not a good Seinfeld either. No, that sucks too. The joke only is there because like Seth MacFarlane probably said, I can do a Seinfeld imitation. Watch me go. I mean, I guess the joke is

it's not a very good Seinfeld joke, but also it's not a very good Seinfeld joke. And if you want to be, if you do an edgy dick jokes, maybe make an edgy joke about him dating a high schooler. He could do that. It was still fresh. They didn't have the guts to do that then, Mrs.

Like, no, do sexual assault jokes, make fun of the gays, but don't you piss off Jerry Seinfeld. He's off the air now. We're safe. We're all safe. And the Meg getting the lip implants thing, I know in the script probably they thought it'd be communicated well visually it's not like there's a sight gag where she kisses

peter on the lips on the face sorry and uh it's like a big lip imprint but it's not funny it's just awkward and weird yes yeah though i do like the joke that comes right after it in this that is funny i did think that was a funny joke. This is great. I can finally afford to give my little girl the lips she's always dreamed of. Thank you, Daddy. I don't know, Peter. Lips are one thing, but did you have to buy breast implants for Chris? It makes him happy. Hey, these are cool.

He's playing around with loose breast implants, not implanted into him. I forgot what the punchline was, and I assume they're going to rip off The Simpsons and do the Krusty joke, where it's like, am I complaining about the breasts? But no, it's that he bought him loose breasts. That's loose implants. That's cute. That's cute.

Then the mail carrier arrives. Shockingly, that butch woman did not become a regular recurring character. Yeah, what's up with the mail lady? If that character had been voiced by Sam Smith, if McFarlane had voiced her, she'd be in be in every episode yeah i feel like they're trying to establish like the gruff mail lady character in this first episode like where did she go and uh the moat keeps the black knight away though not the same design for a black knight is the one that peter will face who's voiced by will ferrell i was also i was a little shocked

they get away with like lois saying what the fuck and then having us go over it. We got bleeped bullshit and fuck in this episode so can Simpsons do this? Oh yeah, actually Brockman said it's about fucking time. And Homer even said the loudest profanity that Ned had ever heard.

And Marge said I'm so fucking embarrassed. So these things all happened. They went there. They did it. Not new territory, but the crime is exposed. Well, congratulations on all your success. Here's your welfare check. What the? Hiya, honey.

What? Lois, I know what I did was wrong, but I only did it for you and the kids. Except for the jukebox in the bathroom. That was a gift for Peter. Yeah, from the American taxpayers. I am so mad I can't see straight. No problem. We got the money to get that fixed.

With enough left over for us to buy our way out of any trouble our kids might get into. Just like the Kennedys. You know, I feel like I don't even know you anymore, Peter. The man I married would never think he could fix a problem just by spending money. It's funny that the second season premiere is a similar story about the Griffins getting rich, but it's actually a story.

It's a full story. That's right. This whole thing, them getting rich, is completely wasted. It doesn't... It's nothing It's just forgotten by the end of it Maybe that was Let's try that again

It's a real episode That just like the Kennedy's line Can work for any rich family And then we get into the very Tacked on Super Bowl sillies As I call them Was this made knowing that the Super Bowl was in their future? Was it made to sweeten the deal? Like hey we'll be on the Super Bowl with the Super Bowl sillies, as I call them. Yeah, I mean, was this made knowing that the Super Bowl was in their future? Was it made to sweeten the deal? Like, hey, we'll be

on the Super Bowl with the Super Bowl bit. Based on the timeline of events, it wasn't confirmed, at least to the public, that it was getting it until, like, November. So, but I could see that being a late retake. But also, it could have just been, you know, they got whispered, like, hey, we think you're going to be the Super Bowl.

Let's do it. But ultimately, it's like two minutes of animation, which they could have rushed as soon as they found whispered like hey we think you're gonna be the super bowl yeah but ultimately it's like two minutes of animation which they could have rushed yeah as soon as they found out like let's do this it looks it looks right yeah uh one thing that also hurt it is they have jokes with madden and pat summerall but it's neither of them but they are in the simpsons episode that follows it directly that's right yeah it makes it even cheaper see they like end the episode commenting on it, right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's all, they get actual funnies with Madden and Summerall,

and this is just, John Madden screams about football too much, and Pat Summerall kind of has no character, too. Yeah. Just quietly describes it. He knows about crazy money plans. I like the phrase crazy money rain. That's funny.

It's not really a joke, but it's just funny to hear somebody say that. Be funny hearing that from the real John Mann, but also, you know, Family Guy was a new thing. They couldn't really get

too many celebrities. They could eventually get James Woods, and then fortunately they killed him off. Thank God. I miss liking that man. It's a very pre-9-11 joke

that Peter would be able to fly a blimp over the super bowl too yeah in a post-season four peter would just drop that wrecking ball on someone and kill them like they just do that i do like what he says america's great except the south it's also very ambitious that they wanted to draw a super bowl riot on the kind of budget they had i was thinking of that like you guys need to calm down a little bit. This is not happening. Like they draw an entire Super Bowl stadium's worth of people like rushing in from above. Like it's too much for this first episode.

That's why they do the blimp crash off scene, off screen, which they do on the back to the pilot. You see the blimp crash. And then we get a reference to the Fox slogan, just one Fox, just one gun. And I like how many shots go into that blimp before the act break it's funny when you go to back to the pilot that many shots actually hits the blimp so it's the same amount of excessive shots from that act break so uh we come back peter is in jail for what he did we of course get to drop this soap joke why wouldn't you do that you know uh and then is uh they're in jail i gotta say another thing

will farrell ripped this off he does the i call top bunk fat guy jumps on the bunk it smashes guy below it step brothers would do that like a decade i was wondering where i saw that uh outside of family guy i know i've seen it before i don't know if somebody did it before family guy but that step brothers ripped off family guy so it's not it's not just a one-way street there uh though it's unclear to me if uh so is peter in jail for the welfare fraud or the crashing of the blitz it's a melange of crimes i mean it doesn't matter yeah and uh apparently meg's collagen is wearing off it's not done like the make lip stuff is just bad and not done well back to her old drawing yeah her old drawing. But they have her touching her lips. I think they want some sort of effect or some sort of lip animation, but it's not happening.

I think Chris is lying about, what happened with me when your armpits cry stinky tears? That sucks. Bad joke. Shitty. But of course, Stewie has a very current joke to make in 1999. Oh, no. Hello, Mother. Well, hi there, sweetie.

You know, Mother, life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get. Your life, however, is more like a box of active grenades. Now, I offer you one last chance for deliverance. Return my mind control device or be destroyed. Oh, you just want your toy back okay here you go honey yes well victory is mine ah damn you all that's nearly as old as the philadelphia joke so yeah so like and that's

just such a sweaty setup like he has a box of chocolates. Then he says the Forrest Gump line. He's like, well, but your box of chocolates. You know what's in your box of chocolates? Well, let me tell you. Just takes so fucking long. I know. And of course that explosion happens off screen. Wouldn't want to draw anything too tough.

No, no, no. That sucked. It just sucked. So Lois then finds out that he's been arrested they go to the courthouse and uh then you can see quagmire behind lois he's drawn all wrong but it technically is quite he's almost there and uh we get peter's trial here's the the first part of it this court will come to order well you know i figured the sooner i cast a check the sooner they uh catch their mistake look why are we making a federal case out of this mr griffin don't you think you should have You know, I figured the sooner I cast a check, the sooner they'd catch their mistake.

Look, why are we making a federal case out of this? Mr. Griffin, don't you think you should have alerted the government of such a gross overpayment? Well, I was going to call them, but my favorite episode of Different Strokes was on. You know the one where Arnold and Dudley get sexually molested by the guy who owns the bike shop? All right, now I want you boys to scream real loud at my ass. And everybody learns a valuable lesson. Mr. Griffin, have you learned a lesson? Oh, yeah, stay the hell away from that bike shop.

Look, everybody, I feel really bad about what I did. I just, I don't know, I just thought of one chance I'd ever have to give my family the things they deserve. I guess I screwed it up. I cheated the government, and worst of all, I lied to my wife. And she deserves better. I'm sorry, honey. Mr. Griffin, I think your words have touched us all. I'm sentencing you to 24 months in prison.

Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, yeah. I just caught the guitar sting in that for the first time. I only heard it in the clips. So, I mean, that's just like a seminal family guy joke. Oh, yeah. The Kool-Aid man popping out of the wall. They did it a few times.

It's funny. It was. That was the best joke he did, though it really was. Like, you remember when Kool-Aid man did that? Well, he did it here. I think it did cement this show in everyone's mind. Like, I think until this moment, no one cared. And this is the joke that everyone took home with them.

Yeah. And that it was a new era of comedy. Not only six sexual assault jokes per episode, but we're going to start talking about the 80s, friends. Yeah. It's time to talk about the 80s. The Simpsons writers were too old to remember the 80s, but Seth MacFarlane was young enough to do that.

So he had the edge there. I'll give him that. But boy, that... Okay, let's dig in. First, we had the first appearance of D give him that uh but boy that okay let's dig in first we had the first appearance of dignified q blackman oh that's his name that would be his confirmed his name in a 2018 episode okay but uh voiced by phil lamar uh who's also uh ollie the weatherman oh geez what a funny character that is of course there's going to be a child molestation joke but uh through the lens of a very special

episode of different strokes which is only the only thing it did was uh teach guys how to do jokes about child molestation that's it so wow there are two 80s references in the scene then i've heard clips of that episode i mean if you're going to make this joke there are more specific things to reference like them watching like the naked cartoon characters or drinking wine or whatever happens in that episode like if you're gonna go there at least be accurate instead i recommend you don't go there but sure no instead they just make up a thing about yelling into a man's ass like it's just it sucks it just sucks and it's a subject matter that if you're not gonna be funny don't fucking bother like yeah sucks so i do think this shows how different

it was from the simpsons that that kind of speech in a season one episode of simpsons actually would have been the happy ending and but now they're already doing what simpsons was doing by season four which is undercut that happy ending with a cynical joke yeah it's like now you're going to jail lois for defending your husband. For some reason. Yes, but fortunately, Stewie, with his stupid device, saves the day for some reason. My husband may be a bit thoughtless at times.

He may even be downright, well, stupid. But I know he only accepted that money because he wanted to be a good husband and father. But what he needs to remember is that we love him, and no matter what, I'll always stand by him. I love you too, honey. That was very moving, Mrs. Griffin. Okay, you can go to jail with him. What?

24 months in prison, eh? Unacceptable. Intolerable as it may be, I'm completely dependent upon those wretched drones for sustenance. Let us see how the iron constitution of American justice fares against the divide. Just do it already. Speed this up. Too much talking.

Is that your boy? What? Oh, yeah, that's Stewie. Gosh, I can't separate a kid that young from his father. It's unjudgmentally. That's funny. Oh, hell, you've learned your lesson, right I can't separate a kid that young from his father. It's unjudgmentally. That's funny. Oh, hell, you've learned your lesson, right? Yeah.

All right, you're off the hook. Oh, wow, can you give me my job back? No. Yes. All right. That's funny. Yeah, yeah, that's fine. There's no reason a judge can't give him his job back,

but they need to get back to the status quo. So he's like, yes, I can. They kind of play both ways of like, did Stewie's thing actually work or did it not then at the end of the scene you'd see no it does work it does i do like the uh the phrase unjudgmentally yeah that's a fun word that's a simpsons made up kind of word reflecting upon this episode it's so weird for this pilot where there are a lot of pilot presentations where they just throw it out and like let's make our episode one of the series now that's accepted now for this pilot where there are a lot of pilot presentations where they just throw it out and like, let's make our episode one of the series now that it's accepted. For this, for

whatever reason, she's like, let's take the pilot presentation and then graft on an ending. It just feels like there are way better season one episodes than this that are trying to tell a story. There's no story here at all. But Bob, if you're looking to save money, isn't it easier just to redo the third of the episode?

And then you'll figure it out later. redo the third of the episode and then you'll figure it out later but the important thing is you saved money for fox broadcasting it's so stupid so then we end the episode with them watching tv some more they watch bloopers and practical jokes which i think was barely airing in 1999 yeah and dick clark and mcmahon now dead yeah long dead long long dead and And Scott Baer should be attacked by more bears. I agree.

And then we get to a real shrug of an ending here. Oh, it's good to have you home, Peter. Ah, honey, I knew everything had turned out okay.

I sure am gonna miss being rich. Oh, don't worry. I got a way to get money. Not another welfare scam. No, no, no. Minority scholarship. Ha! money not another welfare scam no no no minority scholarship no no no are you insane okay i mean uh uh sexual harassment suit

no no absolutely i mean uh uh okay uh disability claim it's weird that of all the things he says that are objectionable, this is the point in which his family decides to respond. Yeah, yeah. I feel like what this joke really is, it's a joke about how they can't pitch anything better. So they're like, well, then how about the joke about how we're trying to pitch something as a good ending?

Yeah, like a lot of this episode is just like, let's do all four of our jokes instead of choosing a joke to go out on in this case the pitching process is seen in the ending that's that's very astute i like that observation henry and these jokes about scams they're all the things that uh a certain classist bigotry informs of like well as we all know minority scholarships they just get all this free college i i'm a white guy i don't give free college as we all know people lie about being sexually just get all this free college. I'm a white guy. I don't give free college. As we all know, people lie about being sexually harassed. So that's what Peter will do. It all fits in the same web of white guy fears that are all bullshit expressed

through Peter, which again, I don't want to put too much meanness on Seth MacFarlane, but at the very least, he was a dumb 25-year-old who thought that those were the things that were real problems. I mean, my opinion says the 24-year-old are online. I hope no one sees them ever. Oh, for sure. Yeah, bad news. Now, I'll give it to Family Guy, though. They were way worse to George W. Bush than

The Simpsons were, which was the right call. Yes, yes. Yeah, though they... But yes, the minority... So, in the original Super Bowl airing, minority scholarship thumbs up. That was where the episode ended. They cut the other jokes there, which honestly, it probably should have just done that. Yeah.

That also, that feels like such a writer's room joke of, he says minority scholarship, which is a bad joke to end on. And then my credit will come up because it'll be a joke about how I came up with a bad joke that funny guys right yeah i mean like the character literally winks at you right yep yeah with his uh big uh brady bunch afro on basically uh but yeah boy what a sucky episode of the fucking show i've i've probably watched i don't know 100 episodes of Family Guy in my life there are now 328 sorry 329 goodness to date

and I haven't I've enjoyed many of them but I hate a lot of it I especially hate the early stuff and this is just a rancid pilot

I just don't like knowing what I know about TV and having watched good pilots of both Futurama and King of the Hill around this time

that aired we've revisited them with our podcast. This is inexcusable. I'm like, how can you make, how can this be your pilot? How can, I guess when they saw South Park, they thought, oh, unprofessional is the new way to be. Who cares if it's badly made?

Who cares if things don't work? The crudeness and the crassness and the unpolishedness is part of the appeal. Maybe that's why they decided this could be the pilot. And also, the rest of the show only needed to be ready for april this had to be ready in january so you don't even get a second run at it like it's just like knowing how perfect the futurama pilot is compared to this and king of the hill king of the hills pilot is one of the best pilots ever yeah like it's so good i guess the last thing i'll say is like i am less hateful overall to family guy now but after watching this where it has like maybe three jokes that made me laugh

i completely understand why 15 year old me was like this show sucks this is just ripping off simpsons and i also think futurama definitely deserved this slot more than Family Guy. And I wish we lived in the universe where Futurama premiered after Super Bowl 33. It could still be going on on Fox, on Cartoon Network. Who knows? But yeah, Futurama deserved that slot, damn it. It did. But I guess this is sort of a, in case you're new to Talking Simpsons or our network in general, you might not know about What a Cartoon.

And we do this every week on What a Cartoon. We normally like the things we talk about on what a cartoon and we have talked about family guy we picked an episode of family guy we liked yes we did we did so like if you like us talking about different shows with the same approach of clips and research and history and stuff check out what a cartoon you can find it wherever you find podcasts and this podcast as well as what a cartoon are supported by patreon and wonderful patreon subscribers who help me and bob do this full-time support us at patreon.com slash talking simpsons where for five dollars a month you get to hear every episode of talking simpsons and what a cartoon a week at a time and ad free plus you can listen to all those mini series we talked about

like futurama and king of the hill and coming soon, more Futurama, guys. And we have a premium podcast, too, don't we, Bob? That's true. So for $10 a month, if you sign up at that level, you'll have access to What a Cartoon Movie. What happens is every month we talk about a movie, often for upwards of three, often four hours. And that movie is determined by the patrons. The most recent one is the Cowboy Bebop movie, Knock on Heaven's Door.

But so far, we've done at least like 10 at this point. We're almost reaching the one year anniversary of What a Cartoon Movie. So if you sign up today at the $10 level, you'll also get all of the $5 rewards, but you'll have over 24 hours at this point of What a Cartoon Movie podcast. Stay up all day.

Don't sleep. Listen to all of them in a row. You'll be so informed about cartoon movies. And again, that's at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. Yeah. So I've been one of your hosts, Bob Mackie. Find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. I also have another podcast.

It's Retronauts. Every Monday, occasionally on Friday, go to retronauts.com and look for Retronauts in your podcast machine. It's a classic gaming podcast, and I think you'll like it. Henry, how about you? You can follow me, Henry Gilbert,

on Twitter at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. That way you'll stay informed on all of the new events in the worlds of talking simpsons and the what a cartoon podcast whenever new stuff goes live on the patreon or on the free feeds i'm sure to tweet about it follow me there one more time at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g thanks so much for listening folks we'll see you next week for the simpsons episode sunday cruddy sund. We'll see you next week for The Simpsons episode. Sunday, cruddy Sunday. We'll see you then. Oh, God.

It feels like there's accountants cranking ad machines in my head. Dick, you ever wonder what's outside those walls? Say now, that's dangerous thinking, Paul. You best stick to your work. Ha, okay.