Family Guy: Everything You Didn't Know

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show
that brings you the secret histories and little known fascinating
facts and figures behind your favorite music, movies, TV shows
and more. I'm not even gonna come up with the
old name pun intro things, because we're making up for
lost time on this one, and it's my fault. I'm
Alex Heigel and I'm Jordan run Talk and Jordan. Today

(00:29):
we're talking about one of the weirdest success stories of
the turn of the millennium, of findesecla Arts, a show that,
on its face, had little to differentiate itself from fellow
industry heavies like South Park or The Simpsons, but one
that nevertheless garnered a rabid fan base during its short
initial run and has mushroomed into a shared universe of

(00:49):
properties and a widely memed Internet presence. That's right, we're
talking about family guy. Jordan wan On, you take you
give me your thoughts on fit because I pitched this.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
I'm thrilled you did. This is a rare instance of
something from our youth that I actually actively engaged in
regular Okay, oh no, this was huge for me, if
you were in middle school or high school during this
show's run, Family Guy became like a second language with
your friends, like more so than Austin Powers, more so
than Anchorman. Is just endlessly quotable. And I'm really having

(01:24):
a hard time thinking of another TV show that had
that kind of impact on my social group at that age.
And I think a huge part of it was the
DVD release, which I know we'll talk about that great
length later. Yes, to my mind, it was the first
TV show that became a mega hit on home video.
In fact, I don't think I ever really watched it live, did.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
You no, Because well for the first like maybe the
first three episode.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Yeah, actually I think I watched the premiere ya.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
And then part of like Fox's Deep Free like made
it impossible to watch, and then it was just suddenly gone.
And then I think I caught it on Cartoon Network
one night. But I remember being so struck by it
that I was like downloading Family Guy bits from like
Khazah and LimeWire to have the memorize Oh same.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
I mean these DVDs, though, like they were ubiquitous in
a way that I feel like TV show comps never
had been before. I mean a lot of it. I know,
it was like a convenience thing because prior to this,
I tried to watch a lot of my beloved British
comedies like Faulty Towers or Monty pytheon were absolutely fabulous
years earlier, and they were because they weren't being broadcast

(02:33):
in the United States and I could only get them
on VHS, which had like at most three episodes per tape,
and they were big and clunky and expensive and really
hard to navigate because you just had to fast forward
until you found the episode you wanted to get to. Yeah,
it was not very user friendly, and so I just
remember having my mind blown that you could have an

(02:54):
entire season of a show.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yeah, Like it was crazy.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Yeah, that was nuts.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
I think pretty much right around the time that DVD
was really becoming a boom industry too, so like it
had not taken over from I mean I so my
benchmark is always like, I think The Matrix was the
last movie I owned on VHS.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Ah, okay, so that'll be ninety nine, So yeah that
sounds about right.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Yeah, yeah, well ninety nine or two thousand by the
time it made it to home media. But yeah, like
so for this to come out and then go out
onto DVD was like the next big step. And yeah,
I mean my mom, bless her got me these, like
she just knew that I liked the show and just
got me the box season of these for like six
seasons straight.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
This was like like if our parents' generation everybody's house
had like Rumors or something or like Asia or like
like everybody's house had Family Guy box sets.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
Well it was dorm rooms honestly for me, because it
was like when you look at the like so when
this I mean, we'll get to it later, but this
thing was behind the Simpsons and behind Chappelle's show, and
that pretty much defines fourteen to twenty four year old
guys humor for ten straight years of the culture, you know.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
And I think that's why it was so quota. In fact,
I know that was why it was so quotable because
it was the first TV show that you would just
I mean it kind of birthed comfort watching in a
way because I would watch these episodes over and over
and over again and do full scenes with my friends
just in the hallway at school. Yeah, for me, it
was more of a high school thing rather than a
college thing.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
No, No, I mean it was it was. It was
all through that. But then I brought them with me
to college. Yeah, so they would just I had like
six yeah, I mean like had six seasons of family guys.
It would just like which what are we thrown in
the PS two to like crash out on the couch
for Yeah, And I was already a Simpsons fan. South
Park hauld hit but like, I don't know, man what,
we can talk about this later, but South Park has

(04:45):
never really done it for me. But I was deep
into Simpsons at that point, and so I was too.
This one just hit me as like it's like meaner
than the Simpsons and has kind of the same rate
of pop culture stuff and like cut way gags and everything.
But I also feel like, you know, this show in
its prime tapped like a very actual surrealistic, absurdist streak

(05:09):
that the Simpsons never never did. Oh yeah, the Simpsons
was like essentially the Honeymooners. Then this was like my Python, Yeah,
which is something that like didn't it didn't. It didn't
conform to any of the acceptable rules, and there were
just all kinds of weird throw twos and subplots and
it just yeah, I mean it just hit me. I
definitely have not kept up with it. Yeah, no, no,

(05:30):
which is why it's so bizarre that you know, it's
been taken over by zoomers on TikTok over the past
three years, which.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
Is just I missed this.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
Yeah, so I'm excited to explain it to you, pal
oh good and all of our listeners.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
No, I was the same way with you. I was
a Simpsons guy, and then I saw advertisements for this
also on Fox, probably while watching The Simpsons.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
And it's funny.

Speaker 1 (05:54):
I remember at first thinking that Peter Griffin was just
like overweight Bill Gates, Like I really thought like some
kind of like parody or something which just really sets
it shows the sign of the times, if you will.
It would have been like what like late ninety eight.
And yeah, soon as I started watching Family Guys like
you couldn't go back to the Simpsons. It just to
me it felt like this was so much more potent.

(06:15):
I mean, it's the perfect show for like teenagers who
are just starting to have their attention span routed by
the Internet, you know what I mean, Like this oh
ninety nine, like we were thirteen or whatever.

Speaker 2 (06:28):
Yeah, and man, I you know, I don't want to
give him credit for this, but like this show honestly
was one of the first kind of early precursors of
what entertainment would be today. Yeah, or like the screen
experience today where it's like it's gonna move really fast,
there's gonna be a bunch of things that you miss.
It's because it's just overstimulating you from every angle. And

(06:49):
that's I think there's like a certain poetry that it's
become so TikTok as part of like Generation Z and
A and like the most generations for attention span and
dopamine and all that literacy, basic social uh, you know
niceties I have. I mean, I work in education and

(07:10):
so does my sister, and trust me, you all want
to die before Generation Alpha takes over, and probably most
of Gen Z respectfully. But yeah, it's interesting. I just
think it anticipated this, Like the way things work now
is so the flow of non sequitars that parade our

(07:30):
everyday life.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
Everybody knew that it was always a guy. It was
a guy in high school. Everybody knew that guy in
high school who everybody thought was hilarious. But then all
of a sudden, you just realize one day wait a minute,
you're just random, You're not funny?

Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah, you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (07:45):
Like that, Yeah, that's a common knock against the show.
That's what show writers from like the Simpsons in South
Park kind of accuse family guy of being.

Speaker 2 (07:53):
But it's so funny because all those guys were like
I mean, I don't know about the King of the
Hill writers room, but they were definitely like Harvard people
in the in the Simpsons writing room, And like, did
those guys not know about Dada? Did they do not
know about surrealism? Were they like not able to I
mean I think that, like I's very generous, well, but
they would. I mean, the Dadas were scatological quite a

(08:16):
lot too. They considered nothing like there's there's you know,
toilets as a significant part of Dada and surrealistic artist douchamp.

Speaker 1 (08:25):
Also, that's an incredible pairing, and I applaud.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
You for it, okay, And like it's obviously cringeness, it
like navigated its cringiness just by powering through. Yeah, Like
there was a point at which you would just like
I don't know, like if you like saw someone wandering
around your college dorm in like an oversized hoodie and

(08:48):
Family Guy pajama pants. You would be like avoid that person.
Oh that was just most you people.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
That wasn't me. Yeah no, I had crushed velve at
pants in college, of course. Yeah no, I that to me,
that was just everything. I was in a dorm where
everybody was in the dorm was really in the television
like that was they put all the like wanna be
TV writers into one dorm. That was like the theme
of my floor of my dorm, which in retrospect, I

(09:16):
can't believe I meant it out alive. But yeah, no,
that was just kind of everybody in my dorm.

Speaker 2 (09:21):
Okay, good to know.

Speaker 1 (09:22):
Yeah, so I kind of just stopped watching The Simpsons
after I got into Family Guy. And I don't know
if it was just because the Family Guy just kind
of took over for me, or looking back on it,
it almost seems like Family Guys started to ascend right
when The Simpsons started its long, slow decline. But I
know you're much more of a Simpson's head than I am,

(09:42):
so imagine you have thoughts on that.

Speaker 2 (09:44):
Yeah, I mean, it's hard to pin exactly when it
started declining. I think there were still some good episodes
every now and again around that time, but I'm more
interested in your perception of it versus south Park. South Park.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
I South Park got a weird relationship with because I
remember being in fourth grade, I want to say, And
I remember my I was in bed about to go
to sleep, and my dad came whirling in, and my
dad didn't get excited about a lot of things, and
I just remember him being like, you will never guess
what I just saw on this crazy TV show And

(10:19):
it was the Mister Hanky Christmas Special and he couldn't believe,
Like I have to imagine, judging from his reaction that
it was on par was seeing the Beatles on Sullivan
Like it was just so like I really, he like
shook me awake to tell me about this, but then
he refused to let me see South Park because it

(10:40):
was too cool for me. I have no idea. I
think it was like the only restriction he ever put
on any viewing for me ever my entire childhood.

Speaker 2 (10:47):
Yeah. Same, but I don't like, I mean, I still
put like this. Obviously, South Park is great. The Scott
Tenorant episode is one of the perfect episodes of television
of all time. Yes, yes, but I just couldn't fathom
why South Park Guy. Like, I can understand that like
a bunch of Ivy League like joke crafters in the
Simpsons room hated Family Guy, but like, where did the
South Park guys get off?

Speaker 1 (11:08):
Well, Okay, I think it's I mean, because it's Matt
Stone and Trade Park. It's just the two of them,
So I think they probably feel like it's these two
scrappy upstarts competing against the whole writer's room who are
making a boziz. I mean, I think Matt Stone and
Trey Parker even said like, yeah, they made a hell
of a lot more money Family Guy, whan we ever
did U. So I think they felt like it was

(11:29):
an unfair fight. And also, I mean, I hate to
say it like this, but like as a screenwriting major,
I will say I think that the plots of South
Park are much more ingenious. The humor is rooted in
not just the characters, but just the actual scenarios. And
I think that Family Guy does lean on the non sequiturs. Yeah,

(11:53):
and that's a huge crutch that carries you through both
in terms of number of laughs per episode, and it
was just eating up time. I mean, if you have
if a given Family Guy episode has I'm making this
up at eight minutes per non sequit or out of
a twenty four minute episode or twenty one minute Sure,
it's just less staff to craft.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
Yeah, and I mean, I'll admit.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
I think South Park smarter.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
I don't know about that. I do think like the
cutaways when I heard them explained as I think in
Seth Macfarland's terms, like as essentially writing a far side
comic strip, Oh wow, okay, like and just having this
idea of like how are we going to pitch like
some random absurd image or some like insane ten sections
of action that like can be communicated in an instant

(12:41):
like this and keep the pace of the show. I
think that's a very valid writing and exercise. I don't
think it certainly more than those idiots like farting around
in a room, you know, talking about like oh what
if Cartman had to poop? Like, come on, man, don't
give them credit as writers. You know you've seen eight
Days to Air that like the first like four days

(13:02):
of that show is them just like sitting around in
a room increasingly panicked as they don't have ideas, and
then they just I mean, yeah, man, but like I
promise you, yeah, but I just don't think. I mean, yes,
of course, but no, I don't know. I I think
I came to understand the Family Guy, the cutaway bits
and their their target of humor or like their specific

(13:24):
I came to respect that more than I did when
I was listening to people tell me how stupid it
was whenever they did that.

Speaker 1 (13:32):
I mean, it's very effective, I will say, I mean,
and just the ingenuity of a many I do admire
how Family Guy breaks the pain threshold with like long gags.
Oh yeah, like Peter fighting Ernie the giant Chicken for
like eight minutes or whatever the hell that was, Like
that's incredible, Like I admire those swings.

Speaker 2 (13:54):
But that's what I get back to saying that there's
a degree of good writing in there is because it
initially started so small.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
That's guts. That's not good riding, that's guts.

Speaker 2 (14:03):
Okay, it's guts, and its foresight to be like have
this like seeded thing where it's like, first it's just
like that chicken, pass me a bad cubon. So we
have like ten seconds of like a fight, and then
it gets occasionally referenced until it builds up to like
a full you know, they live fight in the alley scene,
so like which I also would be risky nuties if

(14:25):
I didn't tell you that south Park straight up copied
that entire scene for an episode, so they referenced it
in the.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
Same way the Family Guy referenced it.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
Yeah, well, I mean, we'll get into the south Park
episode later anyway. Obviously, because the show is nearing four
hundred and fifty episodes, multiple spin offs, et cetera, et cetera,
we are covering the launch of the show to its
initial cancelation and return, and then we're gonna wrap it
up with some of the meme culture stuff and some
of the controversies. So for anyone that expects us to

(14:55):
be a deep dive into the entirety of aired Family Guy,
turn off now and don't give me a one star rating.
So from the incredible luck that propelled creator Seth MacFarlane
straight out of art school to the world of animation
and then, in short order, his own show, to how
much the show's other adult animation peers hated them, to

(15:17):
controversial episodes that never aired, to the absolutely brain rotting
second life of the show. On today's social media. Here's
everything you didn't know about Family Guy. Did your high
school jazz band do a version of that song?

Speaker 1 (15:35):
What's on Family Guy?

Speaker 2 (15:37):
Yeah? No, Oh, we were not cool enough for that.
Oh my god. I had to hear that so much
when I was in the high school jazz band circuit.

Speaker 1 (15:43):
WHOA what'd you play it in jazz band space pace?

Speaker 2 (15:47):
Yeah? Anyway, Family Guy was created by a gentleman named
Seth MacFarlane, who, as anyone knows by now, is super
into forties and fifties music and road movies and also
TV from the late seventies into the eighties and show
tunes and show tunes. Yeah, he's like a half boomer,
half Generation.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
X, which is kind of why I feel like we'd
be friends.

Speaker 2 (16:09):
Yeah that tracks. H McFarlan was born in Connecticut in
nineteen seventy three and was apparently drawing by the age
of two. By five, he knew he wanted to be
an animator, but unfortunately, as he said on Inside the
Actors Studio, there was no information at the time. I
think my parents found one book on animation that they
scrounged up for me, and they got it from a library,
you know. Two Towns. Over Four years later, at the

(16:32):
age of nine, young McFarlane was publishing a weekly comic
strip called Walter Cruton that appeared in his local newspaper,
for which he was paid five dollars a week.

Speaker 1 (16:42):
Now, okay, I'm sorry. Even for a nine year old
in the eighties, that rate seems criminal.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
Five bucks. I don't know, man, times were different. You know,
crack was cheaper.

Speaker 1 (16:53):
Walter Krutze. Is that a Walter Cronkite reference or just probably? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (16:57):
Yeah, so, like, I don't know, I just I know we.

Speaker 1 (16:59):
Talked about this a little bit offline, but just get
this out of the way. Seth MacFarland. Is he like
some kind of can we say savant? Like he's definitely
like a very unusual talent, and not just from his influences,
like he was doing this at nine years old, Like
that's that's unusual.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
Yeah, there's like a single purpose to him that seems
weird when you consider how like lazy he's actually gotten
in not writing or working on like any of these
shows anymore and just showing up to do voiceover work.

Speaker 1 (17:29):
He's worth three hundred million dollars.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
Yeah, there's that too. Anyway, McFarland's eventual taste for courting
controversy showed up early A strip of the character kneeling
at the altar for communion and asking the priest can
I have fries with That earned him an angry letter
from a local priest.

Speaker 1 (17:45):
I feel like that's literally a Family Guy joke. I
swear I could hear Peter saying that.

Speaker 2 (17:49):
Yeah. In eighth grade, he made an animated film that
was very, very crude. In his words, you explained to
a IgM that I had a sense of exactly what
it was I wanted to do, but it was just
kind of tough. Even at the time, which was not
that long ago, no one was really able to tell
me how animation worked. Funny note about McFarland's early life.
He attended the Kent School, which was a Connecticut private

(18:12):
school where both his parents worked, and he said the
only reason he really went there is because they got
free tuition for him. But in nineteen ninety nine, the
Reverend Richardson W. Schnell Shell pardon me, then headmaster of
the Kent School, called Family Guy obnoxious and asked major
companies not to advertise on it, and subsequently McFarlane's parents

(18:36):
who were still working there in nineteen ninety nine resigned.
So I was like, man, that's love for your kid.
It's also like a weird.

Speaker 1 (18:43):
Hill for the headmaster to to die on, like I've
never like it. Must have been pointed like did he
have it out for the McFarlands, Like that's a weird thing.

Speaker 2 (18:51):
Now. I feel like somebody was just like, check out
what one of our alumni is doing. And he was like,
oh my goodness.

Speaker 1 (18:57):
I said this in the Dead Poet Society episode. These
schools are evil. Take it from me. Prep school dropout.

Speaker 2 (19:03):
Yeah. Well, As McFarlane explained to Terry Gross on an
episode of Fresh Air in twenty eleven, a big early
influence on him was the Muppets, and in particular their music.
For me, the Muppets were more legit than anybody in
that regard, he said. The Muppets and even Sesame Street.
Joe Roposo, the great jazz composer, wrote so many great
songs for Sesame Street and the Muppets. Sinatra recorded Being Green,

(19:24):
Bing Crosby recorded Sing The Great Muppet Caper. Every song
in that movie is a great Joe Roposo song.

Speaker 1 (19:30):
I can't believe he's not shouting out Paul Williams Holmes
is incredibly rainbow connection them Street, I.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
Mean surely others. Well, therein lies the rub. McFarlane, as
most people know, loves mid century great American songbook crunersh
he sings on the show. He studied with Frank Sinatra's
old vocal teachers. He put out his own records and
toured with like big bands and cocktail shows. At one point,

(19:59):
when he was at Risdye, the Rhode Island School of
Design where he went to college, he thought about going
to Boston Conservatory to study musical theater, which talk about
two roads diverged in a wood. I think he would
have become like the evil Bizarro Lin Manuel Miranda had
he been, had he become a musical theater dork, Yeah, wow,

(20:19):
what a horrifying thought.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
Yes, quite, or he would have written, like you know,
if the South Park guys did Book of Mormon, and
I can imagine Seth macfarlan would have probably done something.

Speaker 2 (20:30):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:32):
The so called Disney Renaissance, which we talked a lot
about on this show, the incredible string from what eighty
seven to ninety five is generally it's it's the era
of that Little Mermaid Duty and the Beast, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (20:46):
I guess it really depends on when your cut off
or when they stop being good. Is yeah, Hercules has
shooters out there.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
I like Hercules, is okay. I think Mulom was like
the last good one in my memory. I remember thinking
that the one without all fulfilled Colin song Tarzan. I
remember thinking Tarzan was like, oh I don't like this
at all.

Speaker 2 (21:04):
Yeah, And I think like when I was, I think
like Hunchback of oshra Dam was another one where I
was like, this isn't good. Yeah. Yeah, although that one
I shooters too. I will say it's just because everyone
loves the priests like Horny Fire and Brimstone Song.

Speaker 1 (21:19):
Anyway, the so called Disney Renaissance was primed to make
a huge impact on young on Master McFarlane, I feel
like he would have been the can of kid that
would get off on being called Master McFarlane.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
Right, yeah, probably, yeah. Takes one to know one.

Speaker 1 (21:33):
He enrolled at the Rhode Island School of Design. He said,
I suppose I decided there that big bulbous eyes were important.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
If that's the some takeaway of his education.

Speaker 1 (21:45):
And He studied there with the intention of becoming an
animator for Disney. Then here comes the Simpsons. He told
MPR who said, hey, you could also do this. We're
rewriting the rule book with regard to what you can
do on television, and I was laughing. This was something
that actually was for me. In college, McFarlane did stand
up comedy, which I can't imagine that went well, especially

(22:07):
seeing well Oscar.

Speaker 2 (22:09):
He's not doing it now. Yeah, when you're insanely rich
and can virtually pay your way out of any debacle
and you still don't return to something you flopped at
in college, Okay, that's how you know you really sucked
at it.

Speaker 1 (22:23):
Yeah, so he did stand up. He appeared in student films.
He created a thesis called The Life of Larry, which
was basically a dry run for Family Guy, A thesis film.

Speaker 2 (22:34):
What did I say, just a thesis.

Speaker 1 (22:37):
A thesis film. I definitely think it was included as
like a bonus feature on one of the Family Guys.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
Yeah they're out there.

Speaker 1 (22:43):
Yeah, I've definitely seen it hilariously. At least one of
his professors at Risdy tried to deter seth MacFarland from
honing in on comedy. He told The New York Times
in two thousand and four. I just wanted to make
people laugh, and I remember taking a lot of guff
from my professors about that. I showed my storyboard my
film professor, and she said, I'm really worried that you're
wasting your time on what's essentially a lot of bathroom humor.

(23:06):
She said, this is the one chance to make the
personal film that you really want to make, and I said,
this is it.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
Yeah, man.

Speaker 1 (23:14):
One of Seth McFarland's professors submitted his thesis, the one
that one of the other professors thought he was wasting
his time on. Somebody else apparently at the school thought
it was great and submitted it to Hannah Barbara without
McFarland's knowledge, which is crazy. There was a competition Hannah
Barbara was having and McFarlane's thesis film The Life of

(23:35):
Larry won, and subsequently, in nineteen ninety five, McFarlane moved
to Los Angeles to work for the Legendary Animation Studio,
contributing the series Like Dexter's Laboratory, Cowan Chicken and.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
Johnny Bravo Forgot about Cowen Chicken Isn't that kind of
sweet that like a professor randomly picked. I mean, I
think part of the program was that people had to
be selected, but just the idea that someone was like,
I'm gonna I'm gonna do this for you and I'm
also not going to tell you. You know, that's kind of sweet.

Speaker 1 (24:03):
I like that.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
I would have enjoyed that support at any point in
my life. But you know, so what are we talking about.

Speaker 1 (24:14):
Interestingly, it wasn't McFarland's animation Chops that got him his
job at Hanna Barbara. As he explained to IGN, I
was actually one of the few people who got hired
into that program primarily because of writing. This is what
they told me after the fact. Certainly, my student film
was not the drawings were not anything special. They were
pretty crude looking. But you know, it was the content,

(24:34):
the jokes themselves, that were the reason they hired me.
And while out West, McFarlane also freelanced for Disney for
a time. It is beloved Disney, working on Jungle Cubs,
which I have no memory of, and ace Ventchara, the
animated series, which I deemly recall.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
Yeah, I have a dim memory of that. Yeah, I mean,
you know, One of the things that I do like
about him that this show made me respect more is
like he kept bringing in people from the kind of
animation community. Like there's a lot of people on this
show who he worked with at Cartoon Network and other places.
So you know, it's a family business. Come on, make

(25:09):
it a family guy. While working in While working in
Hannah Barbera in nineteen ninety six, McFarland created a sequel
to the Life of Larry called Larry and Steve, which
featured the bumbling, middle aged Larry and his highly intelligent
dog Steve. The short was broadcast in nineteen ninety seven
as one of Cartoon Network's World Premiere tunes, at which
point it caught the eye of a Fox exec who

(25:31):
initially wanted to run McFarland shorts as part of Mad TV.
Alah Howe. The Simpsons got its first start as shorts
on The Tracy Ullman Show, but McFarland actually had to
pitch Family Guy twice. He was introduced to Leslie Collins
and Mike Darnell, who ran Fox's alternative comedy department, which
must have been a thing back then, and he met
them through a development executive at Hannah barbera who was

(25:53):
trying to get Hannah Barbara back on primetime. So McFarlane
took a script and characters and he pitched this to
but the network had just shelled out for King of
the Hill and they were not sure how that investment
was going to pan out, so they passed so in
about a year, then, after King of the Hill made
its money back, McFarlane called Fox just to be like, hey,

(26:15):
any news, and Leslie Collins was like, yeah, come on
back in.

Speaker 1 (26:19):
So it's crazy, that's actually really nuts about That's actually
how I got my job at iHeart was that I
pitched them a show which we're still talking about making yees,
seven years after I pitched it to him initially, and
I was directed to somebody who wasn't getting back to me,
wasn't getting back to me, wasn't getting back to me,

(26:40):
and I almost just gave up. And then I said,
you know, I'm gonna try them one more time. And
then he was like, oh my god, I'm so sorry.
I completely like, I'm new to this job and I'm
totally swamped, totally overwhelmed. Let's have a call. And we
hit it off and became friends and he ended up
eventually just hiring me. There wasn't like a role. He
just made a role for me. And that's how I
got this job. And look at me.

Speaker 2 (27:03):
Now, and look and look at me now, Tom top
of the world, look at look at me now, look
at me. I'm getting paper. Ultimately, Fox gave him I
am grinding, I'm grinding, grindset, mindset. Ultimately Fox gave him
a proposal do a pilot for fifty grand. Wow. Yeah,
at a time when most half hour animated shows cost

(27:26):
close to a million dollars. And then they would see
the idea was that I animate this thing by myself.
Mccarlan told The New York Times. I spent about six Yeah,
it's awful. I spent about six months with no sleep
and no life, just drawing like crazy in my kitchen
and doing this pilot. About six months later, I handed
it in about forty pounds lighter, and they were laughing,
and they liked it enough to order thirteen. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:48):
These days, it costs I think around two million dollars
per Family Guy episode, and I guess that excludes talent fees,
because the main cast gets something like a quarter million
dollars an episode. And that figure I saw was like
ten year years ago, so I don't even want to
know what it is now.

Speaker 2 (28:02):
Initially, McFarland did most of the show's male voices simply
out of necessity. Stewie's voice comes from Rex Harrison and
McFarlane's love of Doctor Doolittle and My Fair Lady, while
Brian's is the closest to McFarland's actual speaking voice. Do
you know about the controversy with Stewie. Well, I was
going to get into the smartest boar on Earth thing,
but I didn't. I stopped caring.

Speaker 1 (28:24):
Oh well, id care?

Speaker 2 (28:26):
Yeah, I was gonna say, this is how we check
each other.

Speaker 3 (28:28):
You know.

Speaker 1 (28:30):
If that's one thing I'm good at, it's caring, Folks,
you know that it is.

Speaker 2 (28:35):
He's a wonderful lover with a pretty good dick, Folks.
If you're hearing this right now, that means I wasn't mad.

Speaker 1 (28:43):
Enough to cut it out. Interestingly, there was a comic strip,
I think it was a local Chicago comic strip that
was later turned into a series of graphic novels in
the early nineties, like mid nineties round ninety five called
Jimmy Corrigan the Smartest kid on Earth and this boy,
he's a boy with a big football shaped head, I think,
who invents things to escape from his mother. And the

(29:06):
creator of this strip, guy named Chris Ware, is quoted
as calling the similarities between his character Jimmy Corrigan and
Stewie as quote a little coincidental, to be simply well coincidental,
and Seth MacFarlane actually agreed, he said in that two
That's the three interview, although he claims he never saw
the comic strip before, he called the similarities quote pretty

(29:27):
shocking and added that he quote understood how where would
reach that conclusion.

Speaker 2 (29:32):
Yeah. I mean the reason that I don't, like fully
go in on him for this is that the world
of early nineties comic books was very cloistered, and if
he grew up, if Seth was in Connecticut and then
Rhode Island, the chances of him bumping into and then
reading an episode of an underground like alt comic were

(29:55):
pretty slim. So I think there's a degree of plausibility
that when he's like because even I mean, I was
a moderate comic book nerd, and I didn't learn about
all comics like ghost World, and you know, Jimmy Corrigan
and Love and Rockets until I got to college and
like took a course about the history of comic books.
Yeah cool, So I want to I want to grant

(30:18):
him a degree of like I hear you. Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 1 (30:23):
Seth did clear up another big bit of Stewie lore
in a two thousand and nine interview with Playboy in
which he confirmed that Stewie is gay and considered an
episode where he officially came out, which I don't think
they ever ended up doing, although, as you said, I
have tuned out of the last fifteen.

Speaker 2 (30:40):
Century of seasons. Yes, no, I I think that character
got so much more funny when he just turned into
like they, I mean, the early leg I'm gonna kill
like Lewis, I'm going to kill you like all that mother.

Speaker 1 (30:54):
Uh, Jim Morrison as Rex Erison or vice versa.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
Now I'm trying to remember the ones. The one quote
that I used to that I that I downloaded from Kazah.
Maybe it wasn't burned that well into my brain, or
maybe I've made room for it with for Jazzar Peggios.

Speaker 1 (31:13):
Were security number.

Speaker 2 (31:15):
Yeah. Yeah, Uh, that character got a lot funny and
when he was just sort of a foil to Brian,
like when they started just pairing them together in all
the Road episodes like that, that was a that was
smart of them.

Speaker 1 (31:27):
Yes, meanwhile, that's about Peter.

Speaker 2 (31:33):
I can't do Peter. I can't do that voice. Peter Meanwhile,
as McFarland told NPR, is very much the quintessential big fat,
loud New England guy who is very very good at
the core, big hearted, but just has zero self editing mechanism,
no idea what is appropriate and inappropriate, and you just
kind of have to forgive him because he doesn't know
any better. And I knew so many of those guys.

(31:53):
My father knew tons of those guys when we were
living back East. Specifically, McFarland has said that Peter's voice
came for security guards he would overhear talking on the
Risdy campus. Also U and this is hilarious, as The
New York Times rather drolly noted in a profile. McFarlane
has also mentioned as an inspiration a friend's father who

(32:14):
fell asleep and began snoring loudly during the critically praised
film Philadelphia, a drama about aids I need.

Speaker 1 (32:22):
Someone was watching Tree of Life that Brad Pitt like
three hour meditation on.

Speaker 2 (32:31):
Yeah, it's charismatic, it's beautiful, there's dinosaurs.

Speaker 1 (32:34):
Her mom sat there silently throughout the entire thing, and
as soon as it ended in the credits all she
stood up and went dumb and walked out of the room.

Speaker 2 (32:43):
That's pretty good our soul review. Oh was she wrong?
I who's to say? Who is?

Speaker 1 (32:48):
Who is to say?

Speaker 2 (32:50):
Art is subjective? That's why we love it, don't we, folks?
Except for my art, which is objectively correct. And I
will see you all driven before me one day.

Speaker 1 (33:01):
Family Guy's other biggest contributor is Alex Borstein, at the
time a breakout star on Mad TV.

Speaker 2 (33:07):
I forgot about that, A deeply racist character. Oh yeah,
she was like miss Kwan or whatever. Yeah, I forgot
about it, like fully doing Yellow Phase. Yeah, I forgot
yeah right now? Yes, yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:23):
She came via Fox except Leslie Collins, who asked boristein
to voice lowest quote for next to no money McFarland
joke to ign although it probably wasn't a joke.

Speaker 2 (33:33):
It was sketch comedy mixed in with the sitcom, and
it was so dense.

Speaker 1 (33:36):
She told The La Times in twenty twenty four of
what initially appealed to her about the show. Each episode
has so much in it, and I just knew it
was special and weird and made laugh out loud throughout.
By McFarland's estimation, Borstein did quote probably seventy five percent
of our female voices and also wrote for the show,
which I didn't know, helping to rain in the fraddy

(33:56):
sensibilities of the rest of the presumably male team. You
know why everybody in the show just rags on Meg
Griffin was because all the predominantly male writers realize that
they did not to write for a tech girl, so
they're just like just make fun of her.

Speaker 2 (34:11):
Every time someone started saying something that makes shut up Meg,
And God, that still gets me, dude. I'm sorry. I
know there's all kinds of gendered stuff in there and whatever,
but like, who lets you back in the house, funny
non moments of extreme cruelty.

Speaker 1 (34:28):
I mean, yeah, it's not a gender thing. I mean
I think about like, you know, Donny, you're out of
your element from Big.

Speaker 2 (34:34):
That's always funny to have one character irrationally furious at
another one.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
Yeah, that's just love, that's just comedy gold, that's just
good writing. Fellows's voice, Borstein explained to NPR in twenty fifteen,
it's a direct rip off of a cousin of mine
on Long Island. Her accent's a little different. She's Hungarian,
so it's Hungarian and Long Island mixed together. It's like
a cat dying.

Speaker 2 (34:57):
It's terrible. Yeah, that does sound quite awful.

Speaker 1 (35:02):
Yeah, Borstin and McFarland's heavy character loads meant a lot
of time in recording Boots. I usually do all one
character first, like I'll do Lois first, and once I
finished that, I'll go back through and I'll do Tricia
Takanawa or Babs or whatever. Borsting told bleedingcool dot com.

Speaker 2 (35:20):
You heard me, you read me.

Speaker 1 (35:24):
I usually end up playing five characters in one episode,
so I go back through five times and do each
character separately. Oddly enough, Thorsten recalled the ign that at first,
between the pilot and the show's pickup, the network wanted
to get rid of me. She said, I had the
fight to keep my job. I had to re audition
for it, along with every female that ever stepped off
a bus in Hollywood. Seth Green, who was then more

(35:47):
known for his role on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and
presumably Austin Powers. Yeah, the first one came out in
ninety seven, so okay, around the same time, and Can't
Hardly was.

Speaker 2 (35:56):
Also in He was in Idle Hands, Oh Yeah, which
is a bad movie. Car Harley Waite's a great movie.
It's an even better replacement song. I'm pretty sure. I'm
pretty sure Paul Westerberg still gets royalties off that. That
might be why he doesn't feel the need to work
Seth Green.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
He was brought in to play Peter and Lois's son,
Chris pattering his distinctive voice on Ted Levine as Buffalo
Bill from Silence of the Lambs. That's incredible. I never
picked up on that. He apparently had been screwing around
with an impression of Buffalo Bill with a bunch of
his friends and they dared him to do it at
the audition, and apparently he ended up getting the role

(36:37):
because he was one of the only guys, if not
the only guy who didn't do a surfer dude voice.
Ah Sean Penn's character from Fastest Ridgemont High.

Speaker 2 (36:44):
I think he asked McFarlane, he was like, do you
mind if I just do something really weird, and McFarland
was like, yeah, sure, and so he was like, well
on your dad, Like I don't know that now we're
sure a great big fat woman. That's sort of That's
the closest I can get to Buffalo Bill.

Speaker 1 (37:03):
I used to be able to do it. I used
to be able to do it because there was a
guy went to college with who sounded just like Chris
in real life, and I used to imitate him and
then it occurred to.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
Me so weird.

Speaker 1 (37:13):
Yeah, the key was so weird. That was like the
thing he used to always say, and then I can't
do the rest of it.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
Also, like in every episode, at least one character just goes,
what the hell? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (37:24):
I know that's gotta be I asked McFarlan, ever comments
on that, because that is like a thing that keeps
coming up in like things you didn't know about family
guy posts. Yeah, it's in like every episode somebody does
the derivation of what the hell? Yeah, it's amazing.

Speaker 2 (37:38):
During one episode.

Speaker 1 (37:39):
I forgot about this until researching this episode, Seth Green
as Chris does, there's a whole bit.

Speaker 2 (37:46):
Where just call it the tucking bit.

Speaker 1 (37:48):
Yeah, Chris recreates the Buffalo Bill Goodbye Horses, dress up
from Silence of the Lambs.

Speaker 2 (37:56):
It's a great bit. It's a great bit, good one
to do at parties. Speaking of voice actors, I didn't
know this.

Speaker 1 (38:03):
The show initially cast Lacey Shabert, your beloved Gretchen Winters
for Mean Girls as the voice.

Speaker 2 (38:09):
Of miss a pretty pretty brunette.

Speaker 1 (38:12):
You love lazy Shber? I didn't.

Speaker 2 (38:13):
I didn't love Lacey Shepard such a crush on her.
I went to go see that and she lost in
Space movie where Matt LeBlanc is the good guy and
Gary Oldman becomes a bug monster. Was she Penny, Yeah,
if that's the character she was the girl? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (38:29):
Oh, I had a big crush on Penny as a kid,
because Penny was in the in the Silent Music too,
Angela cart right man speaking of like bad stuff that
we watched because we loved the women in it. I
watched Mikey Madison on SNL this weekend. Oh yeah, first
time I've watched the Asonal episode many many many years.

Speaker 2 (38:46):
Oh, the one where Morgan Wallen like walked off because
all those big city liberals were making him feel bad
about being a drunk racist.

Speaker 1 (38:53):
Yeah, I mean I think he took one for the
team and saw that otherwise the headline was going to
be that it was just a bad episode and didn't
want my sweet Mikey Addison too.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
Yeah. Yah, yeah, I'm sure he did that out of
the largest of his enlarge heart. Oh guy is such
a piece of shit.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
Is see the guy who threw the chairs off the
off like the deck bar in Nashville and like almost
killed someone.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
Yeah, and I'm pretty and he's like he was like
definitely on camera saying the saying the hard end. I
think he's just like he's like basically just like a
Southern like frat boy. Yeah, he's from Sneadville, Tennessee. What
do you think about that? Sneadville is not a character

(39:35):
from the lar Ax. Yeah, he got he got into
he he left Kid Rock's bar after breaking glasses in
it and started like just screaming at people on the street.
He was unmasked. He was like going around and unmasked
during the height of COVID in bars. Yes, and he

(39:56):
threw roof off of Eric Church another country. He just
goes in other country stars with better careers bars and
destroys their stuff. Yeah, he threw a chair, He threw
a chair off the roof. Oh yeah, he was out
and he was outside of his place in Nashville when
someone filmed him saying, take care of this piss puss
pussy ass mother and then drops the N word.

Speaker 1 (40:19):
When you say his place, you mean his home or his.

Speaker 2 (40:21):
Yea, his home. He and his label donated five hundred
thousand dollars to organizations including the National Museum of African Music,
Rock A Dance Racism, and the BNAC. So, I guess
we don't talk about that anymore. That guy sucks. Come
to my bar, buddy, I won't even wait for you
to get drunk. Drop your ass just for beauty.

Speaker 1 (40:39):
Piece of call your bar God's country.

Speaker 2 (40:42):
I should should not, well, every bar is God's country
to the faithful among us alcoholics.

Speaker 1 (40:51):
Was I talking about Jordan Lazy Shaber Lacy Shabert, Yes, yes,
so I had no idea. She was the voice of
Meg for the entire first season, not just the pilot,
the entire first season. Actually no, she wasn't the voice
on the pilot. Seth MacFarlane's sister because he had no money,
got his sister to be the voice of Meg, and
then the rest of the first season was Lazy Saber

(41:11):
and then she ended up leaving after the first season,
but there was no drama involved.

Speaker 2 (41:16):
I wanted there to be so much drama involved. Yeah,
it was literally just like she was like I was
a child and already on one TV show.

Speaker 1 (41:24):
So she was on Party of five. I forgot about that.

Speaker 2 (41:26):
Yeah, just she's like I needed to go to school. Uh.

Speaker 1 (41:29):
Meilacunas had no such concerns.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
Yeah, right, fifteen dude, was she like trafficked tier? I
don't know how she actually wound up on.

Speaker 1 (41:39):
Is Aston Kutcher really into like anti human trafficking stuff?

Speaker 2 (41:43):
Well yeah, I mean then there's also the fact that
he like definitely started courting her when she was like fifteen.

Speaker 1 (41:49):
My favorite story about me Lacunas and I have one
was that she got was that she got her job
on that seventy show and the producers were like, are
you aeen? And she said, I'll be eighteen on my
birthday and she was fifteen, and she was like, yeah,
I will be eighteen on my birthday, not my next birthday.

Speaker 2 (42:10):
But clever girl. That somehow worked.

Speaker 1 (42:14):
Somebody must have checked. I don't know. It's a great story.

Speaker 2 (42:16):
I love that print legend.

Speaker 1 (42:18):
Yes, yes, but yeah, she was already working on that
seventy show when Fox asked her to audition to play
the voice of Meg. I'm family guy. She was fifteen
years old, working on getting her driver's permit and I
never heard this, but still battling her native Russian accent
for certain pronunciations. That's crazy to me.

Speaker 2 (42:35):
Yeah. I don't know how they got around it as
much on that seventies show, but like there's a whole
bit where they were talking about her trying to get
the word electricity right because she kept saying electricity.

Speaker 1 (42:45):
It is crazy to me. I know, like very well,
like maybe half a dozen people who moved here in
their like mid to eighteens from other countries and barely
spoke English, and now they speak flawlessly without an accent.

Speaker 2 (42:59):
I don't underst standard.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
And I've was trained in eight years of French, as
I think, were you, And it's like nope.

Speaker 2 (43:06):
Yeah, yeah, but that was our fault, from picking the
lamest romance language. What are you gonna do with that?
What are you gonna take your French language? Go order
at a restaurant? French hate the French, hate you for
even trying. Yeah, like, what's the point As you meditate
on that, We'll be right back with more too much

(43:27):
information after these messages. What we're talking about again?

Speaker 3 (43:43):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (43:44):
Oh more voices?

Speaker 2 (43:45):
Oh yeah. So, rather than have McFarlane or Borstein imitate
voices for the volley of cutaway jokes that the show
is known for, production deliberately made it a bit to
track down actors from not just you know, regular anonymous
voiceover guys like the guy who played Roadblock on G I. Joe,
but also like George Went from Cheers. Director Dan Povenmeier

(44:06):
told I g N that when they first reached out,
George Went was like, why didn't you guys just pull
this from Cheers? Because it's it's exactly the lines I
said in the show. And he was like, I mean,
I'm happy to get paid. But they literally brought him
in to do it for just one line. I love
that too. McFarlane got another utility hitter in his old

(44:26):
Rizzie buddy Mike Henry, who he tapped for the show's pilot.
Henry voices Herbert, who's the old man in the walker. Oh,
I'm gonna get you what I'm gonna get you? A
little Pigley ass. You get your ass back. Here's some bitch.
That's that's I think.

Speaker 1 (44:46):
I think that's the one, right, I know, it's exactly
the one.

Speaker 2 (44:49):
Yeah, get you a little pig ass back here, some bitch.

Speaker 1 (44:53):
You know, the popsicles guy.

Speaker 2 (44:56):
Jess is gonna go. Oh, Jess is gonna go out,
makes his peeps and poops. God. Well he does that,
and then he does Bruce the performance artist, who is like, oh, absolutely,
I can do Spider Man. I can pretend, like, you know,
go on a costume and shoot them with my web
fluid and pretends the kids are all just you know,
the little buds cut up in my web.

Speaker 1 (45:18):
Isn't Vincent Price doing the like steamed salmon in the
dishwasher pit. It sounds like Vincent Price.

Speaker 2 (45:25):
Yeah, a little bit, a little bit. And then he
also does until twenty twenty one, for reasons that should
now be obvious. He also voiced Cleveland. The show filled
out the rest of its voice talent with regular celebrities
and comics like Patrick Warburton is Peter's neighbor Joe, Jennifer
Tilly is Joe's wife Bonnie, and Norm McDonald as Death

(45:46):
replacing Adam Carolla, who sucks and then death replaced nor McDonald.

Speaker 1 (45:52):
I know, I'm sorry. He is one of my favorite people.
I am so sorry. I'm sorry, but it was right there,
and you know what, he would have done it.

Speaker 2 (46:00):
That's true, that's true, he would have. I just saw
this bit of him recently on talking to John Stewart
about the Crocodile Hunter, and John Stewart is like, please
don't make me laugh at this right now, man.

Speaker 1 (46:11):
Please, because it was like the week it happened, right.

Speaker 2 (46:13):
Yeah, He's like, how much it would have been sucked
to that it was a he was the Crocodile Hunter
and a sting ray got him, like at the Alligator
the Crocodile meeting the next week, and Carl's like, that
one should have been us. I almost had him shut up, Joe, No,
you didn't, is he? Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel

(46:34):
like a genius.

Speaker 1 (46:35):
Well yes, I feel like I've never encountered a celebrity who,
instantaneously after their death was appreciated on such a vastly
higher level than he was when he was alive. Yeah,
nobody realized what a genius he was until like all
the compilation videos after he died.

Speaker 2 (46:54):
Yeah, I think comedy fans did. I mean, he was
like big in the community and my absolute favorite. I
think it's him Corolla as death instead of Norm MacDonald.
But don't make me chase you. I got flow, Joe.
You don't think I can have flow Joe. You don't
think I can run you down and then immediately trips
and falls. But a number of other industry veterans with

(47:14):
some surprising resumes also helped to give voice to co Hog.
The town is named after kind of edible clam, which
appears right next to Quagmire in the dictionary, So I
think we know where he got the name for that character.

Speaker 1 (47:26):
But he said edible clam, which is a really great
name for a band o ediple clam and.

Speaker 2 (47:32):
Like a disorder. Yeah yeah. John G. Brannon, the creative
the Jerky Boys as mort Goldman and Horace the Bartender,
I think brought on solely because Seth Macfarlande liked Jerky Boys.
Carlos alas Raki, who I must remind everyone, is the
voice of Rocco from Rocco's Modern Life, The Talk about
Chihuahua and spy Row the Dragon. In addition to his

(47:52):
work on Reno Naima Wan. I think his first appearance
is as mister Weed, Peter's boss at the Factor also
does other voices. Laurie Allen, who's been playing Pearl Crabs
on SpongeBob for nearly thirty years, is also a utility
voice actor on Family Guy. Phil Lamar, who's one of
the most prolific voice actors in Hollywood. Nw Borstein from

(48:14):
Mad TV ems also the voice of Samurai Jack. This
is interesting, Butch Harmon, the creator of The Fairly Odd
Parents and Danny Phantom also came over to do vo
work randomly. I think that's like another animation insider connection,
because there's two connections to Fairly Odd Parents in Family Guy.
One is the show's creator, Butch Harmon, who also created

(48:38):
Danny Fantom, does voices on Family Guy. But then one
of the show's two composers. I don't know who they
have now, but when they first started and for a
long time, the guy's name is Ron Jones. He was
also on Fairly Godparents. So there's some kind of a
connection there, or at least McFarlane liked the show.

Speaker 1 (48:53):
That would make sense. It kind of looks like twisted fifties.

Speaker 2 (48:56):
Yeah. Fun fact that I also just learned. Couldn't think
anywhere else to put this the recurring Portuguese fishermen characters.
There is actually a large Portuguese American fishing community located
in southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Speaker 1 (49:09):
You found this, but I'm stealing this because I love
it so much.

Speaker 2 (49:12):
Please for IMDb.

Speaker 1 (49:14):
A number of actors have made their last appearances on
Family Guy. These include Waylon Jennings in two thousand and one,
All he's not really an actor, Carol Channing in two
thousand and six. She didn't die until like ten years later.

Speaker 2 (49:26):
Too.

Speaker 1 (49:27):
Well, she was like super old, was like one hundred. Yeah,
Roy Scheider from Jaws and all that Jazz and my
favorite Bob Fossei movies. And William Woodson in two thousand
and nine. Robert Lojia, who I totally.

Speaker 2 (49:38):
Forgot, was dead in twenty thirteen. This is a nasty
way for me to find out.

Speaker 1 (49:43):
Lauren Baccall and Dennis Farina in twenty fourteen, and Frank
Sinatra Junior in twenty sixteen. I can't believe he was
on on Carrie Fisher in twenty seven Yeah, we.

Speaker 2 (49:54):
Didn't really talk about the Star Wars episodes, but obviously
that's its own unique niche in the Family Guy universe,
which is funny. The coolest thing about them is that
they were completely above board, Like they got permission from
Lucasfilm to do them, but then Seth MacFarlane and like
some of those showrunners, went up to Skywalker Ranch to
screen them for George Lucas and apparently he found them hilarious,

(50:16):
So I think.

Speaker 1 (50:17):
Yeah, he was a huge fan and he basically gave
him carte blanche to do whatever they wanted indefinitely.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
Hell yeah, Hell yeah.

Speaker 1 (50:24):
Disney owns Star Wars now and Disney owns twentieth Century Fox,
So I guess, yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:29):
Yeah, I guess that parody will never see the light
of day, is what we guess.

Speaker 1 (50:36):
Oh, here we go, we cannot speaking of beloved properties, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:41):
Who could forget Batman himself Adam West playing Adam West,
the mayor of co Hog. McFarlane met West when he
also played himself on an episode of Johnny Bravo that
McFarlane written, I think he was a mayor, Yes he
was also Yeah, McFarland told the club, I think he
likes playing into what he's known for, even on a

(51:02):
casual basis. He's a really fun guy to work with
and genuinely gets comedy. It's not the type of situation
where you just bring someone in to make fun of themselves.
The character we've created is kind of this alternate universe
Adam West, where he's the mayor of this town, and
we deliberately have not made any references to Batman because
we like keeping that separate. It's the obvious place to go.
The show did retire the character when West died in

(51:24):
twenty seventeen.

Speaker 1 (51:25):
That was one of my favorite bits of all those
early seasons of Family Guy. I mean the bathroom bit
where he's like slinking through the hallway and he sees
the three bathrooms men women, Adam West.

Speaker 2 (51:36):
He starts to go in the Anam West. No, No,
we'll be expats five that back. It's so good. Yeah.
And then it's funny too because they initially had named
the high school in the show James Woods High, and
then James Woods out of himself as like a Trump freak,
and they renamed it Adam West High.

Speaker 1 (51:57):
So I didn't realize that, and James Woods was like on.

Speaker 2 (52:01):
The show, right, Yeah, he was in before that too. Yeah,
And I think they just cut ties with him. I
think like Seth, you know, Seth MacFarland is a pretty
like you know, Northeast middle light blue Democrat, so a
lot of his like Brian, Like Brian driving around in
a preas with like a Hillary Clinton bumper sticker on.
It was like a bit of a self own I think.

Speaker 1 (52:20):
Yes, yes, writer and co executive producer Steve Callahan told
IGN in twenty twelve, for the first couple months of
production on Family Guy, we didn't have offices and we
were crammed into one room that was sort of being
borrowed from King of the Hill, who.

Speaker 2 (52:35):
Hated them, who hated them.

Speaker 1 (52:37):
It was like we were caged animals in there because
we would spend ten twelve hours a day in this
one room and with a cast in hand. Twenty four
year old Seth MacFarland became television's youngest executive producer probably
still certainly, Yeah, I don't think young people are getting
in a network TV now. And the first episode of

(52:57):
Family Guy aired on January thirty, first, ninety nine, after.

Speaker 2 (53:01):
The Super Bowl. Am I remembering that right? Yes? I
I remember watching that. Yeah, Yeah, that's why it had
such a crazy share out of the gate. It did
really well for a little while.

Speaker 1 (53:11):
Twenty two million or something, which is hysterical. I think
got to like number thirty three on Nielsen's that week,
which and for twenty two million these days is like
the sum total of people watching network. Yes, these early
Family Guy episodes went with dramatic titles like Death Has
a Shadow and Mind Over Murder, and these were tributes

(53:33):
to McFarland's love of radio thrillers from the nineteen thirties
and forties. Nerd though, in his own words, it got
confusing and stopped being funny, so we stopped.

Speaker 2 (53:45):
I appreciate the candor.

Speaker 1 (53:46):
Yeah, I think. I also read that he wanted every
episode to touch on death in some way.

Speaker 2 (53:52):
Interesting I did, But good for him. Everything is touched
by death, and you know it's coming for all of us.
And as soon as you get right with that, soon
you can move on with your actualization whatever that might be.
That was just a PSA that has nothing to do
with the show.

Speaker 1 (54:06):
Well, higel, moving on from death, let's talk about one
of your other great loves.

Speaker 2 (54:11):
One thing that said Family Guy apart was the depth
of its music. Yes, each episode uses a fifty to
ninety piece orchestra. That's insane.

Speaker 1 (54:20):
Start.

Speaker 2 (54:21):
There were two guys behind that. One of them is
Walter Murphy. And unless you already know this, not in
a thousand years would you be able to name the
one hit wonder He wrote.

Speaker 1 (54:30):
I actually knew this, but I will yeah, okay, flex God,
sit down, be humble.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
Drop the Kendrick sample in there. He wrote a fifth
of Beethoven, which is that really annoying thing that comes
on AM radio on long drives that is like you're like,
why are there like hats and like octave bass under
this Beethoven thing? Walter and Murphy Baby That's Why became

(55:25):
a huge hit as a single in nineteen seventy six,
and was subsequently featured on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack
the following year, which itself was a giant hit. Murphy
repeatedly tried to cash in on that formula. He made
a showed more of disco fied classical. Oh yeah. Go
to his Wikipedia page. The man did not know actually
when to let it go.

Speaker 1 (55:46):
They were good.

Speaker 2 (55:48):
I did not listen to them. It's like musical theater,
Like I like disco and I like classical music. When
you push the two of them together, they both become terrible.
Murphy was approached by McFarlane, who had the concept for
the Family Guy opening sequins and its lyrics. He said,
we're going to start with this all in the family reference,
and then I wanted to cut away to a big,
like show tune style Broadway number, and I have the lyrics,

(56:10):
so I think it's funny. Murphy in an interview said
something like I sent my first version to him and
he said, make it swing more, so I did, uh,
And then he recorded the voice actors and himself doing everything.

Speaker 1 (56:24):
He does a great version of You Make Me Feel
So Young The Sanatcha song, Mmm like as Stewie. It's
really good.

Speaker 2 (56:32):
He did say it was easier to sing in character
because it like it makes you less self conscious.

Speaker 1 (56:37):
That was how I had to learn to sing. I
had to when I wanted to do the theatrical productions
in high school and I specifically said I don't want
to sing, but I would like to be in them,
and they said, well, too bad. You have to. If
you want audition, you have to sing as part of
the audition. And I desperately wanted to be involved because
all the girls I liked were involved, and that was
of course knows what you did, yeah, And so I

(56:59):
was so sky. I come from a long line of
non dancers and may we were afraid of singing, like
It's like an actual like phobia of my father's.

Speaker 2 (57:08):
And I sort of inherited it.

Speaker 1 (57:10):
And I was so nervous that I listened to a
bunch of probably like was seth MacFarland did a bunch
of like fifties and sixties krooners, like Bobby Darren and
Harry Nielsen album where we did a bunch of like
the Great American songbook stuff, And so I just listened
to all that, and then I just imitated them at
the audition, and I did so well that I kept

(57:31):
getting singing parts for the rest of my high school
experience and would spend the pre show time in the
bathroom throwing up because I was so nervous. So I
kind of backfired, and I don't think I did it
anyone in the drama club no, So all in all
was a massive fail.

Speaker 2 (57:44):
This is a pretty Lore Jordan Lore heavy episode. Already,
I'm liking this. We'll see if we can get you
down to like a traumatic memory from grade school by
the time, we're done. Okay. The biggest problem with recording
the initial theme song was that Fox hadn't drafted a
budget yet for the show's music, so they did it
with one trumpet player playing all the trumpet parts, the

(58:06):
trombone player and the sax player, and then Murphy played
everything else. We got some background singers to come in
and sing, and then I gave that to Seth and
he recorded the rest of it. McFarland toldt NPR. We
had to fight pretty hard to do a theme. It's
a tradition that's kind of going away, and part of
that is the networks are worried that people don't want
to sit through the same thing week after week, and
so shows are being discouraged from writing themes once they

(58:28):
had more money. Murphy offered to re record this song,
but McFarlane said it was perfect as it was. However,
he did re record Stewie's line in the song in
later seasons because too many people thought the character was
saying ef and cry instead of laugh and cry. Nicely done,
and yes, of course the opening is all in the
Family of reference an homage, said McFarland. Fucking loved All

(58:51):
in the Family as well he should. It's one of
the best sitcoms ever made. Yes. Either way, Murphy has
scored three hundred and sixty six episodes of the show,
so it's just approaching four hundred and fifty, so aload
of them, as well as mcfarlan's hit surprise movie Ted
and for some reason, Agent Cody Banks. Another Family Guy composer,

(59:14):
Ron Jones we mentioned at the top, came over from
Fairly Odd Parents scored the show for its first twelve seasons.
Jones was mentored by Leilo Friggin Schiffrin while he was
a student, and also graduated directly into a job for
Hannah Barbera, where he wrote the Smurfs theme for them.
He also wrote Ductales for Disney, which is like an
all time bang banger, and hilariously was the composer for

(59:39):
the first four seasons of Star Trek the Next Generation.

Speaker 1 (59:44):
One thing that immediately dogged Family Guy was the Simpsons
comparisons on their faces. Both shows are about working class,
nuclear families with the same structure, though in Family Guy
the dog talks. Are there any characters that speak in
Simpsons that shouldn't? I think I can think of.

Speaker 2 (01:00:01):
No, I don't think so, but what I was going
to say is important to note. Also, these shows ripped
off the Honeymooners, right well every sitcom, yes exactly, but
like yeah, but like a borish like you know, a
lot of sitcoms didn't rip off Witched, where the husband
was like well adjusted and handsome. They all went for

(01:00:23):
the slovenly guy. That's true from the er slob himself.
Jackie Gleason, Baby.

Speaker 1 (01:00:29):
Is he a good guy? I could imagine we were
a new friend of the pod who put us straight
about how Jack Benny, who I thought was a Capitol
B couple g bad guy along the same lines as
Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. He let us know that
Jack Benny was one of the nicest guys in Hollywood,
And so I retract my statement. I bet you he

(01:00:49):
would know about Jackie Gleason. I would imagine he would
be a tough guy who uh Gleason.

Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
Yeah, yeah, it's not great. He had an affair with
us secretary.

Speaker 1 (01:01:01):
I mean that's far for the chorus.

Speaker 2 (01:01:02):
He had multiple affairs.

Speaker 1 (01:01:05):
They were still in the acceptable range for mid century
celebrity scumbaggery.

Speaker 2 (01:01:10):
Yeah, I mean, I don't know if he ever like
beat up a guy or was racist, but you know
he was he Philandered.

Speaker 1 (01:01:17):
I had a story that Tony Orlando told me he
was on one of the shows that I work on.

Speaker 2 (01:01:21):
Of Tony Orlando and Dawn.

Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
Yes, this is a story of SETH mcfarli would love.
When Tony Orlando got his network TV show in the seventies,
the first guest that they were able to get was
Jackie Gleeson, which is a huge get because he was,
you know, a huge star and this was this new singer,
had like two hits and now he's the sort of
untried TV guy. To get like one of the biggest
figures in TV history to come on, it was phenomenal.

(01:01:44):
I guess jack Quite was quite exactly. It was credit coup.
And then Jackie came in and was just kind of
a nightmare. And then he and then he said some
not nice things to Tony's backing singers known as Dawn,
who were both people of color, and oh.

Speaker 2 (01:01:58):
So he was racist, that was the gist of it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:01):
And Tony told him off and basically like yelled at
him and told him get off a set.

Speaker 2 (01:02:04):
And then good for Tony Orlando.

Speaker 1 (01:02:06):
Jackie was like chilling out in his dressing room trying
to calm down. Then he sent word out that he
wanted to speak to Tony, and Tony's going in there, thinking,
oh my god, this guy's gonna shank me. And he
goes in and Jackie apologized that was wrong, and then
they became friendly. And then from that point onward, after
every episode of the Tony Orlando Show, Jackie would call
him and give him affectionate notes and they became friends.

Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
That's cute. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, he learned not
to be racist in front of a person of color.
Is Tony Orlando a person of color? Can I say that?

Speaker 1 (01:02:39):
I think he's He's a Greek father and a Puerto
Rican mother.

Speaker 2 (01:02:42):
Yeah, that counts. We'll run him into the constitution. Oh well,
hell are we?

Speaker 1 (01:02:48):
I have no idea where we are now to start
a new section.

Speaker 2 (01:02:52):
Oh we haven't even gotten there yet. Oh oh okay,
Simpson's a family guy.

Speaker 1 (01:02:55):
That was it, okay. McFarlane has always been opened about
his love for the Simpson telling ign I love the Simpsons.
I could have transitioned that better. Sorry, And it sort
of laid the groundwork, sort of paved the way for
subsequent animated shows, they sort of established the new method
of doing primetime animation, but unfortunately this feeling wasn't mutual.

Speaker 2 (01:03:17):
As McFarland explained to The.

Speaker 1 (01:03:18):
Av Club in two thousand and five, apparently the Simpsons
team hate our guts.

Speaker 2 (01:03:22):
I'm not sure why I've.

Speaker 1 (01:03:24):
Said this before, but that show at its best is
up there with the best episodes all in the Family,
Mary Tyler Moore and Dick Van Dyke. I was reading
a quote from one of the writers from a lecture
that he gave, and he said, quote, the Simpsons staff
hates Family Guy for a sath. That's got a sting.

Speaker 2 (01:03:39):
Although they he and Matt Groening did like a panel
interview many years later where they were like talking about it.
But it's kind of funny because I don't even think
Matt Graining was involved in the writing at this point.

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):
No, yeah, no. One of the earliest examples of this
beef that you can find is from Simpsons writer and
show owner Al Jean in a two thousand and three interview.
I wasn't a big fan of Family Guys, he said,
to be honest, I thought it was a little too
derivative of The Simpsons, to the point where I would
see jokes we did on The Simpsons, or a critic
on Family Guy, they should be more original. Rich Appell,

(01:04:12):
who was a writer and became a showrunner on King
of the Hill before becoming a showrunner on Family Guy,
was in the writer's room for The Simpsons when it
was canceled. I remember being a writer.

Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
Because The Simpsons has never been canceled.

Speaker 1 (01:04:24):
It never will be. Yeah, it will be limping through
until the asteroid comes. I remember being a writer at
the Simpsons when the Family Guy was canceled, and then
I thought, good riddance. He told the La Times in
twenty twenty four, there's only so much nipping at your
heels you can really indulge. Writer Mike Rice wrote in
the twenty eighteen book Springfield Confidential that quote. When Family

(01:04:47):
Guy debuted ten years into the Simpsons run, our younger
writers were incensed. It's just vulgar, it moves too fast,
it's nothing but pop culture references. I had to laugh.
These are all the things people said about The Simpsons
when it began. Staff would complain endlessly about Family Guy.
He continued managing the whole two completely contradictory opinions. One,

(01:05:08):
it's exactly like our show. And two they do things
we'd never do. The latter is where the show's charm lies.
He continues, I'm a jaded old TV writer, but that
show somehow manages to shock me on a weekly basis.
That might be We're touching on this at the beginning
of the episode after watching Family Guy, the Simpsons never
really shocked me again, I think that maybe it was part.

Speaker 2 (01:05:29):
No, But I mean, I think that a lot of
people are missing the the very like the important cultural
context that like, when The Simpsons first came out, it
was a moral outrage. I mean the fact that Bart said,
like what the hell, and like eat my shorts, told
his dad to eat my shorts. Like people were fully
like the Reagan nights that were, you know, still breathing,

(01:05:49):
were like fully in a moral panic about this. And
so it is funny that he says it's the younger
writers who came in about it, because yeah, they probably
felt like it was beneath them, but they hadn't been
there when that show was the punching bag.

Speaker 1 (01:06:04):
You know, was it Barbara Bush or Nancy Reagan who
called out Marge Simpson in a speech and then somebody
from the Simpsons Show wrote a letter as Marge that
was like very sweet, like.

Speaker 2 (01:06:16):
You know, I I don't know anything about that. Oh
oh wait a minute, I need to pull this out.
I know Barbara Bush. I think Barbara Bush had talked
a lot about the bar Was Barbara Bush? Yeah, she
talked a lot about the Simpsons. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:06:27):
It was a note to Barbara Bush obstensively from Marge Simpson.
Dear first lady, I recently read your criticism of my family.

Speaker 2 (01:06:34):
I was deeply hurt. Heaven. Those were far from.

Speaker 1 (01:06:36):
Perfect, and, if truth be known, maybe just a wee
bit short of normal. But as doctor SEUs says, a
person is a person. I try to teach my children Bart,
Lisa and even little Maggie always to give somebody the
benefit of the doubt and not talk badly about them,
even if they're rich. It's hard to get them to
understand this advice when the very first lady in the
country falls us not only dumb, but quote the dumbest

(01:06:59):
thing she ever said. All, ma'am, if we're the dumbest
thing you ever saw, Washington, must be a good deal
different than what they teach.

Speaker 2 (01:07:05):
Me at Current Events group at the church.

Speaker 1 (01:07:08):
I always believed in my heart that we had a
great deal in common, each of us living our lives
to serve an exceptional man. I hope there is some
way out of this controversy. I thought perhaps it would
be a good start to just speak my mind with
great respect.

Speaker 2 (01:07:22):
Marge Simpson that manages like a shocking number of like
very subtle jabs. Yes, Starbush, I mean again.

Speaker 1 (01:07:30):
All those Simpsons writers are all Harvard educated, Like, yeah, yeah,
Barbara Bush wrote back, Dear Marge, how kind of you
to write, I'm glad you spoke your mind thought dot dot.

Speaker 2 (01:07:40):
I foolishly didn't know you had one.

Speaker 1 (01:07:43):
I'm looking at a picture of you depicted on a
plastic cup with your blue hair filled with pink birds
peeking out all over. Evidently you and your charming family Lisa, Homer,
Bart and Maggie are camping out. It is a nice
family scene. Clearly you're setting a good example for the
rest of the country. Please forgive a loose tongue warmly,

(01:08:03):
Barbara Bush.

Speaker 2 (01:08:05):
I mean, that's certainly one of the stupid things to
ever come out of the White House.

Speaker 1 (01:08:09):
But oh so, ps Homer looks like a handsome fella.
Oh god, well, and minus five for making us think
of Barbara Bush's tongue.

Speaker 2 (01:08:19):
Also, yeah, man, people were stupid back then. Just this
was the bread and circuses that kept us from focusing
on you know, all the all the like, the encroachment
of neoliberal economy that we were about to wreck our country.

(01:08:43):
And this is where you fade me out. As you
mentioned earlier. Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons, did.

Speaker 1 (01:08:53):
A panel interview alongside Seth MacFarland in a twenty fourteen
issue of Entertainment Weekly. In this interview, Granny Grimmembered's initial
reaction to Family Guy. He said, my first take was,
oh my god, he got competition and they're out flanking us.
This show is wilder and harsher and nastier. We used
to get in trouble. We used to be the cause

(01:09:14):
of the downfall.

Speaker 2 (01:09:15):
Of the United States. And then speaking to.

Speaker 1 (01:09:17):
MacFarlane, he said, you guys completely have your own style.
At the very beginning, you were accused of copying us,
and we were accused of copying you. So I stopped
watching your show just because I didn't want it to
be in my head. But they took this rivalry on
air at certain points. It's got vicious.

Speaker 2 (01:09:36):
Yeah Yeah. The first on air shot across the Bow
appeared in two thousand and two Treehouse of Horror episode
on The Simpsons, the camera pans across the field of
clones Homer has created with a machine, and hidden among
them is Peter Griffin. Then, in the two thousand and
five episode The Italian Bob, there was a gag where
the Italian police leafed through a handy book of American crimes,

(01:09:56):
on which the third page read Plagiardismo with a drawing
of peace others were weighing in. In the final episode
of Clerks, the animated series, Kevin Smith added a deliberately
unfunny comedy writer character who was seen studying a book
titled How to Write Cartoons by Seth MacFarlane and then
pitching an extremely stupid homophobic idea. Yeah, Kevin Smith, because

(01:10:18):
you've got so much to stand on. South Park took
much more pointed aim at Family Guy, though, and they
are two part season ten special Cartoon Wars in which
Cartman attempts to get Family Guy canceled by claiming that
a new episode will include a depiction of the prophet Mohammed, which,
for those of you lacking context, you did not do

(01:10:40):
in Islam, and that was one of the reasons for
the terrorist attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie.

Speaker 1 (01:10:47):
Hebdo my correct with that? Jordan's correct? Yes, that's correct
in twenty fifteen, I believe.

Speaker 2 (01:10:52):
Yeah, well we'll wear an it.

Speaker 4 (01:10:55):
This isn't what I signed up for. I like Family Guy.
Why do we have to get off the air forever?
You should like show your sense of humor is just
like Family Guy. Don't you ever ever compare me to
Family Guy? You hear me, come out, compare me to
Family Guy again, and so help me. I will kill
you where you stand. You just want Family Guy off
the air? Do you have any idea what it's sech

(01:11:16):
everywhere I go? Hey, Common, you bess that Family Guy?
Hey you said to human reminds me of Family Guy. Common.
I am nothing like Family Guy When I make jokes
there inherit to a story, deep situational and emotional jokes
based on what is relevant and has a point, not
just one random interchangeable.

Speaker 2 (01:11:32):
Joke after an Eventually, in the courts of this episode,
it gets revealed that the Family Guy's staff writers are manatees.
Using a random sentence generator controlled by idea bles that
are lowered into their tank to create the show's signature
cutaway gags.

Speaker 1 (01:11:46):
I love this episode so much.

Speaker 2 (01:11:48):
I mean, it's funny. Yeah, I don't know, man, I
just never caught into South Park. I kind of always
just felt it was, uh, it just felt like bullying.

Speaker 1 (01:11:56):
That's interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:11:57):
I don't feel that that show ever. Like their attitudes
that became a parent and everything were just like, you know,
like we're the smartest guys in the room. We can
say this, and we can say that and whatever. And
I just never I don't know. I'd be hard pressed
to articulate it further than that.

Speaker 1 (01:12:14):
They're the Becker and Fagin of a turn of the
century comedy misanthropes.

Speaker 2 (01:12:19):
Yeah, except I'd like to see them make you can't
buy a thrill. Putts is playing around with instruction paper, Yeah,
doing child's voices into their sixties. That show's still on, right.

Speaker 1 (01:12:33):
Oh yeah, good for them. I don't think they're even
all that old as fifty five.

Speaker 2 (01:12:38):
Okay, time is a cruel mistress. South Park show runner
Trey Parker told The New York Times in two thousand
and five, we kept running into people that are just like, oh,
you guys do South Park. I love that show and
Family Guy that's the best. You must love Family Guy,
and we were like, no, we really hate Family Guy. Still,
in the same interview, Matt Stone admitted they completely ignore

(01:13:00):
so it's fine. It's a one way war, to which
Parker then added, they're making a lot more money than
we are, so I don't think they care very much.
In the wake of the South Park episode, Parker claimed,
when we did the Muhammed episode, we got flowers from
the Simpsons people because we ripped on Family Guy. Then
we got calls from the King of the Hill people
saying you're doing God's work ripping on Family Guy.

Speaker 1 (01:13:20):
That's great.

Speaker 2 (01:13:21):
The worst of Family Guys responses to this was admittedly
a bit much. Yeah. In the September two thousand and
seven episode moving out Parentheses Brian's song, the show threw
up a fake bumper ad and the lower third of
the screen, which is one of those like you know
they'll scroll of the lower third of the screen will

(01:13:42):
have like a network animation promoting another show, and this
was promoting The Simpsons featuring March As the regular episode.
The Family Guy episode continues, there's an entirely separate plot
happening in the lower third animation, in which Quagmire attempts
and then apparently succeeds in sexually assaulting Marge, who then,

(01:14:05):
apparently converted by this experience, invites him back to the
Simpson house in Springfield. So then they cut away to
the Simpson House entirely seen in exterior, and then the
dialogue and sounds suggest that when Homer discovers them, Quagmire
shoots him and then the rest of the family. There

(01:14:25):
is a long pause after four of the gunshots, implying
that it took him a minute, but he did indeed
shoot Maggie the baby, Yes, the baby. Needless to say,
this was widely decried, although McFarland defended it on the
DVD commentary for the episode, calling the scene a little
shot that Fox told him he couldn't do. He had

(01:14:45):
that Fox was afraid of Simpson showrunner James L. Brooks,
and not us.

Speaker 1 (01:14:50):
I think I read that that didn't actually make it
to air, It just became I'd read that. Yeah, there
were two versions of every show made, one that was
broadcast and one that was for streaming in DVDs.

Speaker 2 (01:15:00):
Yes, but I mean, at this point, they didn't know
that there was going to be a dB deally, so
they I understand why he was angry that it had
just been cut completely. And yeah, I mean it's a
bit much, but it is proportional to family guys, you know. Deal.
You know, of course they were going to take it
somewhere that was horrifyingly dark. Yes, and you know, to
me again, it's not that it's like that it was

(01:15:24):
a rape joke. It was the fact that it was
a rape joke that culminated in the gun murder of
a chot of a baby yea, and several children. Several children. Yes, yeah, uh,
you know, somebody's got to go there.

Speaker 1 (01:15:38):
But on the flip side, you've got some great facts
about Quagmire.

Speaker 2 (01:15:41):
For me, I did did you know that Quagmires based
on Bob Hope that I didn't know.

Speaker 1 (01:15:46):
I knew he was supposed to be like an anachronistic
fifties guy, but I didn't know he was specifically Bob Hope.

Speaker 2 (01:15:51):
See. I think he was a little bit supposed to
be more of like a seventies swinger, like an eg
Bob Hope character, you know. But I think that large
jaw is probably the most identifiable part of that.

Speaker 1 (01:16:03):
An episode where Peter and his friends get a look
at Quiguire's driver's license. He apparently was born in nineteen
forty eight, which means that he's like pushing eighty. That's weird,
and the secret to his youthful appearance carrots. He said,
some of the ways you can expect and some of
the ways that you could also expect because it's Family Guy.

Speaker 2 (01:16:26):
Eventually, the Simpsons Family Guy crossed over to a full
on crossover special in twenty fourteen.

Speaker 1 (01:16:32):
I had no memory of this. I thought it would
have been a bigger news story.

Speaker 2 (01:16:34):
Oh, I definitely had stopped watching any of this stuff
by then. What was I doing in twenty fourteen, I
was playing a lot of shows. I don't think I
was watching any I mean this is I didn't have
a TV. I stopped having a TV when I moved
to New York, you know. And I wasn't spending a
lot of time watching streaming unless I passed out in
front of it. Simpsons writer Mike Rice thought that Matt

(01:16:56):
Groening and James L. Brooks would want more control over
the episode, but the pair told the Family Guy team
good luck with the crossover. We'll watch it when it airs.
Rice added in the end, everyone from both camps loved it,
except for maybe Seth McFarlane. The running theme of the
episode was that Family Guy stole everything from The Simpsons,
and they made this point over and over and over
and over. Apparently at some point Seth told the staff

(01:17:18):
guys enough On the flip side, you know Seth's favorite
Family Guy bit. I remember this bit seeing it written out.

Speaker 1 (01:17:25):
It's when Lois looks back on all the food they've wasted,
and they cut to Peter trying to feed Tom Selick
peas from a spoon through the TV screen and.

Speaker 2 (01:17:35):
When it changes characters.

Speaker 1 (01:17:37):
None for you, Higgins, you had yours?

Speaker 2 (01:17:39):
Hey, Hey, none for you Higgins trying to steal time
Shalick food.

Speaker 1 (01:17:44):
No, No, you've had yours. We don't have time to
touch on literally every time someone said Family Guy went
too far. This joke's about Terry Schivo, Sarah Palin's sung trig, transphobe, homophobia,
domestic violence, the Boston Marathon bombing.

Speaker 2 (01:18:03):
What have you, and the rest and the but I well.

Speaker 1 (01:18:09):
Heigel want to highlight how furious the right wing TV
morality group, the Parents Television Council war at Family Guy.
In May two thousand, in an email, the Parents Television
Council launched a letter writing campaign to the Fox network
to persuade the network to cancel Family Guy. This is
before it was canceled the first time. Family Guy made

(01:18:30):
the PTCs two thousand, two thousand and five, and two
thousand and six lists of worst primetime shows for family viewing,
with over forty Family Guy episodes listed as worst TV
shows of the week. I think forty four to be exact,
which is a record for the watchdog Agency. This was
due to profanity, animated nudity, and violence, and the series

(01:18:53):
was also named the worst show of the two thousand
and six two thousand and seven season by the PTC.
They all filed multiple complaints, but the FCC that's kind
of the thing that the PTC does.

Speaker 2 (01:19:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:19:06):
For the show's one hundredth episode special seth MacFarland interviewed
people who hated Family Guy, hiding the fact that they
were speaking to the show's creator. I kind of remember this.
Representatives from the PTC were among those interviewed. But here's
the craziest thing about the relationship between the PTC and
Family Guy, though McFarland once slammed the PTC as quote

(01:19:27):
literally terrible human beings rotten to the core, but in
twenty fifteen he invited PTC president Tim Winter to talk
things out.

Speaker 2 (01:19:35):
Winter took over as president in two thousand and seven,
and after a twenty fifteen episode of Family Guy featuring
one of the stupidest jokes ever to grace the show,
and this is the joke, Peter had surgery because he
wanted to have quote two wieners. He lifts his hospital
gown after the operation, swivels his hips with his back

(01:19:56):
to the and everything covered by the backside of the gown.
Viewers here and Peter remarks, uh, oh, that was the original.

Speaker 1 (01:20:04):
I don't get it.

Speaker 2 (01:20:05):
He's original wiener Ye. Another one added. The joke is
that instead of the new one, the original fell off.
Oh that's oh.

Speaker 1 (01:20:16):
Oh. I thought it was the sound of them bumping
into one another and I didn't get it.

Speaker 2 (01:20:21):
No, sorry, Yeah, there's a sound of something thunking on
the floor. I could have sold that. Let me just
take that whole thing over again. It's kind of funny
that you're explaining this joke to me. Okay, I'm going
to keep that. So after that, McFarlane wrote a letter
to Winter inviting him or two writers of Winter's choosing
to quote write an episode of Family Guy the way

(01:20:43):
you think Family Guys should be written.

Speaker 1 (01:20:44):
That's an incredible challenge, Yeah, it is. Winsor ultimately declined
the offer, but wrote back to McFarlane explaining that the
PTC's goal was to raise awareness about how some subject
matter may be harmful the children, and pointed to at
least fifty eight jokes about sexual violence on Family Guy
in three years don't last, asking McFarland, what is the

(01:21:06):
cumulative impact on children who watched those programs?

Speaker 2 (01:21:09):
Probably less than being sexually abused. Whatever, Sorry, McFarland told
the La Times.

Speaker 1 (01:21:14):
I was properly humbled, and I figured that I ought
to give him a call. The pair met and sat
and talked about media.

Speaker 2 (01:21:20):
It's like you and me.

Speaker 1 (01:21:21):
Yeah, McFarlane told Winter that quote, my parents let me
watch Animal House, Caddyshack, Stripes, these R rated comedies when
I was seven. I had a very strong family unit,
and so there wasn't much damage that was done from
those films. But when your kids being raised by TV,
it could be a different story and The two eventually
hit it off so well that in twenty nineteen, when
The La Times cover the story, the pair were.

Speaker 2 (01:21:44):
On a texting basis with each other.

Speaker 1 (01:21:46):
McFarlane told the paper for this interview, I think it's
a healthy, necessary thing for the PTC to exist in
the same world as what we're doing. And also apparently
the PTC loved McFarland's Star Trek parody The Orville, and
instead of urging advertisers to boycott the show, as they
had done with Family Guy, they encouraged advertisers to buy

(01:22:06):
space on the rival show. Also in twenty nineteen, McFarland,
along with executive producers Alex Sulkin and Rich Appel, made
an announcement that the show would begin refraining from gay jokes.

Speaker 2 (01:22:18):
It took that long, Yeah, so some progress. It's hey,
it's a marathon, not a sprint, right, What is progress anyway?
I've heard all these stories about it, but I don't
really see a lot of it. Time will tell if
McFarlane will have a similar moment of accord with Jana
Lana Trova, a regional deputy for the Russian city of Cheliabinsk,

(01:22:41):
who criticized Family Guys season twenty one finale, for as
Wikipedia hopefully puts it negatively, portraying the city as contaminated
by radiation and its local citizens as drunkards and drug
users dissatisfied with life. Family Guys first two at bats
on the air worked put it charitably, mismanaged. It official
premiered after Fox's broadcast of Super Bowl XXXIII on January

(01:23:04):
thirty first, nineteen ninety nine, too, as we mentioned earlier,
twenty two million viewers, but then it wouldn't return to
the air until four months later. That's insane, amazing idea.
Make space for this after the fucking Super Bowl and
then wait four months to let anybody see it again.
But Fox did slot it between The Simpsons and The
X Files and the networks then flourishing Sunday night lineup.

(01:23:27):
After its first season, as you mentioned, it was ranked
thirty third by Nielsen with nearly thirteen million viewers by
Harry Nielsen, Yes, by beloved kruner Harry Nielsen. Unfortunately, Fox
decided to move it to Thursdays at nine for its
second season, which put it indirect competition to Fraser, which,
as the elder among you may remember, was not a

(01:23:48):
smart move. At the turn of the century. Fox's response
to this was to remove Family Guy from its schedule
and then just start airing episodes irregularly. Then, a year
after its premiere, they moved it to Tuesdays in March
of two thousand, where it was then in place to
be walloped by the juggernaut of Who Wants to Be
a Millionaire, which was reaching its critical mass at the time.

(01:24:10):
Based on that, Fox announced Family Guys first cancelation in
May of two thousand at the end of its second season,
before abruptly announcing in July that they'd actually ordered thirteen
more episodes for a third season. Of course, Fox decided
to bring the show back in November of two thousand
and one on Thursdays at eight, bringing it into direct
competition again with NBC and ABC, who were at the

(01:24:33):
time airing Survivor and Friends respectively in the same time slot.
Just like literally the sideshow Bob gag of stepping on rakes,
Like stop putting a show that people have only had
a little love against these ratings juggernauts man. Anyway, Fox
continued to toy with the show scheduling during its third season,

(01:24:56):
moving it around to different time slots with little or
no notice. I think there was like a brief website
at one point that was like when you can see
Family guardments, yes, and that just had the expected effect
of tanking its ratings. And then when it came time
to unveil its two thousand and two fall lineup, Family
Guy was noticeably absent, with the network announcing the show

(01:25:18):
had been canceled. Days later.

Speaker 1 (01:25:19):
They did the same thing the rest of the development
like around the same time. Well, it's not that hard, no.

Speaker 2 (01:25:26):
No, yeah. McFarlane though, I think is quite sweet about it.
He said it wasn't He didn't blame it on Fox.
He said it was an issue of overconfidence. They felt
that because the show was doing so well on Sunday
nights after the Simpsons, that it could do well anywhere.
Obviously that wasn't the case. But really, to their cred
despite all the scheduling problems, the fact that they did

(01:25:47):
stick with it after that up to fifty episodes. As
much as they're maligned by fans for misscheduling us, they
really did like the show and there was a lot
of support for it.

Speaker 1 (01:25:55):
Family Guy ultimately earned its historic comeback thanks to Cartoon Network,
who picked up the rights to the show Dirt Cheap
and began airing reruns of it during their late night
Adult Swim programming block.

Speaker 2 (01:26:07):
Dude, if I had a time machine, man, I would
just go back to watching Adult Swim just being high
Maneah twelve ounce mouse.

Speaker 1 (01:26:20):
Yeah, it's never a big aquatine. That was never really
my thing.

Speaker 2 (01:26:22):
Oh I liked aquatine? Yeah I did. I'm not ashamed
to admit it. I'm not. I don't let him tell
me what to do.

Speaker 1 (01:26:33):
What else is on at that time?

Speaker 2 (01:26:35):
Did you pick that up?

Speaker 3 (01:26:36):
No?

Speaker 2 (01:26:37):
This is one of my favorite random bits from Arrested Development,
where Jeffrey Tamber has been locked in the attic and
Jason Babman finds him having a tea party with like
the dolls they've been left up in it, and he
says something. He's like, he's like rambling on an advice
and he's like, you know, Michael, you just you're too
enthrall to these women, Like with these broads here, you know,

(01:26:59):
I whine them and I dine them, but I don't
let them tell them what to do. Pause. I don't
let them tell me what to do. It looks back,
so good.

Speaker 1 (01:27:12):
I do.

Speaker 2 (01:27:13):
Rest of it.

Speaker 1 (01:27:14):
I thought we've talked about this and you said you
weren't into rest of the development because you thought it
was a little too like nudge nudge, wink wink with
the audience.

Speaker 2 (01:27:21):
I do think that as a criticism, but I also
think it's one of the Uh. I think it's up
there with thirty Rock and like prime era cheers as
like laughs per capita. Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. You
don't agree though, because you still haven't watched thirty Rock.
Oh yeah, because you have, you're still salty about it
from oh my gosh, that's becoming a theme this episode.

(01:27:44):
From your time at NYU in the screenwriting program, Well
it was this.

Speaker 1 (01:27:47):
They made us like dissect scripts from it. And it's
just because they're funny as well. Sure, but it's just
if there's a way to make something not funny, it's
to just forensically examine it.

Speaker 2 (01:28:00):
Suddenly it became homeworks as we do. Okay, that's that's fair. Continue.
I don't know point I was making.

Speaker 1 (01:28:07):
These family got reruns on Adult Swim, a basic cable network,
end up beating both David Letterman and Jay Leno's late
night shows on CBS and NBC. Among the coveted eighteen
to thirty four demo. Not surprised about Jay Leno. I'm
surprised about Letterman.

Speaker 2 (01:28:23):
Yeah. Letterman was always the guy that they could count
on for the younger demographic. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:28:28):
The Family Got reruns also provided a staggering two hundred
and thirty nine percent boost the Cartoon Network's ratings. That's insane.

Speaker 2 (01:28:36):
Yeah, what must have been the reaction when those figures
came in other than like are these right? Yeah? I
mean two hundred and thirty nine percent They earned their
bonuses that year.

Speaker 1 (01:28:48):
I'm trying to think about, like what I would have
watched on Cartoon Network.

Speaker 2 (01:28:51):
I mean maybe it was like Flip Bravo. It would
have been Johnny Bravo, and they had a slate, they
had a slate before that, but Adult Swim was just totally,
you know, unprecedented and like unexplained too. I just remember
like surfing around and like the logo would come up
with the little cool music stingers, and I would just
be like is this And then like Family Guy would

(01:29:13):
come on, or Twelve Ounce Mouths would come on, or
any of those shows, and I remember being so captivated
in the staying up to watch that like every summer
really because they you know, anyway, I digress. This isn't
about my childhood, Jordan, It's about yours.

Speaker 1 (01:29:29):
But it was weird. It was like the network aged
up with us, Like it started when we were kids
and aired relatively kid friendly shows in my memory at least,
and then as we hit like late middle school, early
high school, it started skewing a little older. It was funny.

Speaker 2 (01:29:43):
Yeah, I mean, I haven't delved super into the history
of adult Swim, but I think it really was just
kind of a like pie in the Sky thing where
they were like, I don't know, most of our audience
doesn't stay awake this late. Does anyone here want to
try and do something with this? And that's what happened.

Speaker 1 (01:29:59):
It's probably like what's Snick was for Nickelodeon when they
had kind of the more older skewing are you Afraid
of the Dark type stuff?

Speaker 2 (01:30:06):
Oh yeah, but Snick didn't have Aquitine Hunger Force where
Danzig shows up, or like twelve ounce Mouse where it's
like a paper mache mouse who's also like a violent
mercenary for hire. I mean, stuff was really out there.
It was mecapse on the old Swim it was, but
that was a little later. Yeah, okay, yeah is also great?

Speaker 1 (01:30:28):
Yes? Is that?

Speaker 2 (01:30:30):
Then't say Tom the Satanic Priest is droning on and
on and on and on and totally monotone, and then
Nail sating. I just think there's there's a hilarious moment.
You have to cut all this because this is not
making it tear. I don't I don't want to be
part of something. It's just two guys talking about bits

(01:30:52):
from shows. But I'm gonna cut it right there.

Speaker 1 (01:30:57):
Okay, we're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be
right back with more too much information in just a moment.

Speaker 2 (01:31:10):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:31:17):
So simultaneously with this phenomenal performance on Cartoon Networks Adult
Swim Fox released Family Guy on DVD with its first
box set.

Speaker 2 (01:31:27):
I imagine the first season.

Speaker 1 (01:31:28):
Coming in only behind The Simpsons and Chappelle's Show in
sales for all time.

Speaker 2 (01:31:34):
That's wacky.

Speaker 1 (01:31:37):
That record still I mean, of course the record still
holds because we're streaming it. Record is never gonna be broken.

Speaker 2 (01:31:41):
I'm not sure if it did, it might have something
else might have squeaked in, but they were certainly on
the tail end of the era to amass such a record. Yeah,
and to be like, man, I mean like do you remember,
how do you actually remember how huge Chappelle show was? Yeah,
to come in second to that, like yeah, wild for
a show that you know, Fox canceled Idiots.

Speaker 1 (01:32:03):
It is funny to me how the things that were
huge at a given time in history. I was talking
about this with my dad not too long ago, that
are still remembered as huge, you know, Beatles, pet sound like,
the things that are all those classics, and then the
things that were huge at the time but then just
didn't make it through and we're just kind of memory hold.
I feel like Chappelle's show, people don't well. I mean

(01:32:24):
I know that there's a lot of yeah, he did.

Speaker 2 (01:32:26):
A lot about himself. Yeah, but I know, I think
it's just that everything once it's really that you can
trace that to the Internet, I think, because it's it's
you know, things got so much more fragmented and people
just stopped depending on like the big studios to like
dictate what movies were going to be big or like
what shows to watch, and it just I think like

(01:32:47):
that was like early dial up, you know, Internet message
boards and fan clubs were like the end of the
monoculture more than the speed of the Internet was or anything,
because it was just like something could have made ten
million dollars, like however many million dollars at the box office,
like had a huge smash hit, like all of these
like small legal dramas or stuff that movies that you

(01:33:08):
don't remember from the early nineties that were massive financial hits.
And then just because they didn't get a foothold in
the Internet community from the nascent Internet community and then
subsequently social media. Uh, that's it their memory. Hold, it's crazy.
I mean, if you look up box office stats for like,
I don't know, let's uh, let's pick a random or
in the nineties box office ninety nine, give it a

(01:33:30):
ninety nine. No, I want to do something earlier before.
I want to do pre Jurassic Park. I wanna say
ninety two, which I think was the year of Terminator two.
But yeah, well, Sister Act was the third highest grossing
movie that year, which, like, I think Sister Act has
been a little bit memory. Hold the Hand that Rocks
the Cradle, how about that eighty eight million domestic number

(01:33:51):
nine at the year end list? Remember anything about that? No,
Hand the rocks Creole guess what was number ten? No
idea Steven Siegal's Undersea rem there anything about that.

Speaker 1 (01:34:01):
I mean, it's got Steven Skall. That's all I need
to know.

Speaker 2 (01:34:04):
Yeah, Fried Green Tomatoes. Oh, that's something called Far and Away.

Speaker 1 (01:34:08):
Nope.

Speaker 2 (01:34:09):
Fifty eight mil domestic?

Speaker 1 (01:34:10):
What are the top five? I mean I've seen in
the top five?

Speaker 2 (01:34:13):
Oh, Batman Returns with a Weapon, three Sister Act Home Alone,
two and Wayne's World. Yeah, I mean ninety two? The
second ninety two. The Fugitive made one hundred and seventy
six million dollars. Does anyone remember The Fugitive other than
John mulaney making a joke about how convoluted the plot
of this Fugitive actually is. Oh, I thought, Oh, here's
a better one. Number three The Firm, Oh was talking

(01:34:33):
about the Firm? Wow, that movie made one hundred and
fifty eight million dollars in the United States in nineteen
ninety three. Who's talking about the Firm? Indecent Proposal one
hundred and six million? Yeah, people do they? Yeah? In
the Line of Fire starring Clint Eastwood, one hundred two million.
This is some sick com Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:34:53):
I think it was a succession where the brother says
something that was like, I'm going to make you an
indecent proposal, and she's like, you've definitely ever seen that movie?

Speaker 2 (01:35:00):
Have you? Okay, sorry, let's get this back on track.

Speaker 1 (01:35:05):
Let's get it back on track with Steve Feldstein. Steve
Feldstein will get a SAT name with Steve. He was
the then senior VP of Fox's Home Entertainment. He told
The New York Times, once we made DVDs available Family Guy,
the response was incredible. Were we surprised about the response.
I'd be lying if I said no. The DVD sales,

(01:35:26):
he added, led the network to take a second look
at the show. Yeah, No, were there any like actual
stats for numbers of like how much they sold in
that period?

Speaker 2 (01:35:35):
Oh, sales of the DVD set reached two point two
million copies.

Speaker 1 (01:35:41):
That's nuts, That is nuts. And they were like, what
forty bucks apiece?

Speaker 2 (01:35:45):
Probably around maybe something like that. Yeah. Wow, So like, okay,
almost one hundred million in DVD sales. That'll make you
take a second look at to show you canceled.

Speaker 1 (01:35:54):
Yeah. McFarland told The La Times that he took Family
Guy's entire early struggle in stride, mostly out of lack
of experience, He said, I had nothing to compare it
to because it was the first show I'd ever pitched
and it got picked up. I thought, oh, I guess
this is normal, which it certainly is not. When it
got canceled, I was like, Okay, well I guess this.

Speaker 2 (01:36:13):
Is normal too.

Speaker 1 (01:36:15):
But it wasn't like they were kicking to the curb.
It was we still want to be in business with you.
My deal with twentieth Television Animation never expired over those
two years. It was about to expire, and then they
picked the show up again. McFarlane went into further detail
about the moment that he learned the show as resurrected
in an interview with IGN. He said, they literally called
me out of nowhere. The head of twentieth called me

(01:36:35):
to come into his office for a meeting, and I
didn't know what it was about, and he just kind
of threw it on the table. We're thinking about putting
this thing back in the production and I just about
fell out of my chair. I thought that maybe we
get a chance to do a special or a direct
DVD movie of some kind, But as far as new episodes,
there was no precedent. It had never happened, mainly because

(01:36:56):
it requires a network to say, Okay, we screwed up.
Fox deserves some credit for saying, you know, we canceled it,
but now we see it's making some money, so we
want that money.

Speaker 2 (01:37:09):
I do love that quote.

Speaker 1 (01:37:10):
Yeah, I remember when it was announced. I remember that
was like a big deal.

Speaker 2 (01:37:14):
I don't think I remember when it happened. I just
remember like reappearing. So I don't know. I didn't have
I wasn't part of the letter writing campaigns. I didn't
care about I didn't care about anything that much.

Speaker 1 (01:37:23):
So I wasn't part of that either. But I remember
what it was announced. I was like, oh my god,
this is great.

Speaker 2 (01:37:28):
It was great.

Speaker 1 (01:37:29):
It was great, and what a time. It was a
time of innocence, a time of confidences.

Speaker 2 (01:37:37):
Long ago.

Speaker 1 (01:37:38):
It must be are you just ripping? No, it's it's bookends.
It's my favorite Simon A. Garfunkle song.

Speaker 2 (01:37:44):
Oh you so ach got me got his ass? Whose gas?
We got our Garfuncle dude. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:37:58):
Fox ended up ordering thirty five new episodes of Family
Guy in May two thousand and four, making the show
the first to have been brought back by DVD.

Speaker 2 (01:38:06):
Sales and likely the last Yeah Oh Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:38:11):
DVD sales were not the only measure, though, there was
a robust fan campaign to bring the show back that
even picked up notice overseas. The Guardian, which is based
in the UK, remarked on the situation in two.

Speaker 2 (01:38:23):
Thousand and five.

Speaker 1 (01:38:24):
Protests involved over one hundred thousand signing a petition promising
to boycott all Fox TV and every product They advertised
nearly bankrupting a business by sending diapers and some less
than subtle letters.

Speaker 2 (01:38:39):
It was they nearly bankrupted the diaper business, to be fair,
because they were like sending so many to headquarters to
Fox at one point, why were they sending diapers because
of Stewie? Oh you fool?

Speaker 1 (01:38:52):
Oh okay, that's good, that's medium funny. McFarlane told the paper.
It was the largest fan campaign anyone had ever seen.
Funnily enough. Neil Goldman, who went on to executive produced Community,
another show brought back by extensive fan action, was working
on Family Guy during the campaign and recalled Fox gradually
becoming annoyed by the cases.

Speaker 2 (01:39:13):
Of diapers mailed to the studio.

Speaker 1 (01:39:16):
And added that even the online diaper company was asking
people to stop.

Speaker 2 (01:39:20):
And that's what the problem was was because there were
not that many places doing online delivery at in this era, right,
so they were like they found like one place that
they could game so that it wouldn't come back to
them and like use anonymous stuff. And the company was like, please,
these aren't being accepted and we can't keep up with demand,

(01:39:42):
Like stop doing this.

Speaker 1 (01:39:45):
That's amazing. I've never heard that.

Speaker 2 (01:39:47):
The show naturally commented on the cancelation in North by
North Cohog the first episode of its revival. I remember
this gag, and I remember it being hilarious. Yes, Peter
breaks the fourth wall by explaining to Hi his family
that their show is back, but that Fox had to
cancel them in order to make room for Dark Angel,
Titus Undeclared Action, That eighty Show, wonderfulse fast Lane, Andy

(01:40:09):
Richter controls the Universe, Skin Girls Club, Cracking Up the Pits, Firefly,
Get Real, Freaky Links, Wanda at Large, Costello, The Lone Gunman,
A Minute with Stan Hooper, Normal Ohio, Pasadena, A Harsh
realm Keen, Eddie the Street, The American Embassy, Cedric the
Entertainer Presents the Tick, Luis and Greg the Bunny, all
of which were canceled during Family Guy's brief hiatus. That

(01:40:33):
was good.

Speaker 1 (01:40:34):
I do remember that.

Speaker 2 (01:40:35):
Family Guy, however, was not invincible upon its triumphant return.
In a number of cases, celebrities whose works have been
the topic of the show's many cutaway gags have sued,
like Carol Burnett. I didn't know about this. I guess.

Speaker 1 (01:40:47):
There's an episode with a scene where Peter and his
friends visit an adult book store and Peter has concerns
that the store will be dirty, but then Quagmire says
it's pretty clean. Carol Burnett works part time as a janitor,
and the camera pans to a cartoon version of Carol
Burnett in one of her best known roles, mopping the
floor as her character the Charwoman. Actually it's funny.

Speaker 2 (01:41:08):
Yeah, I think it was just just named the charge
Woman Charwoman.

Speaker 1 (01:41:12):
Since Family Guy did not get Carol Burnett's permission, she
sued twentieth Century Fox for two million dollars on copyright
infringement claims.

Speaker 2 (01:41:20):
The lawsuit also.

Speaker 1 (01:41:21):
Alleged that the TV show used an altered version of
the Carol Burnett Show theme.

Speaker 2 (01:41:25):
Song, which it probably did to set off the gag. Yeah,
but that's not all that is not all Jordan Police
Academy actor Art Mitrano sure also sued over a scene
in which Jesus, like the Son of God, mimics Mitronto's
bit of performing magic while humming Fine and Dandy from

(01:41:47):
the nineteen thirty musical of the same name. Burnett's was
rejected right when the judge.

Speaker 1 (01:41:52):
Yeah, this case was tossed out.

Speaker 2 (01:41:54):
Yeah. Yeah. Burnett's case was talked out while Mitranto's was
settled out of court. I don't know anything about that
guy's bit, but it is a case when the gag
got too specific.

Speaker 1 (01:42:04):
Oh yeah, he's like doing some lame magic thing with
like his fingers and now I remember it.

Speaker 2 (01:42:12):
Okay, okay, okay, okay. But the show had moments that
Fox didn't back in court or anywhere else too. When
You Wish Upon a Weinstein, that was an episode that
succeeded in getting under Fox's skin. In the episode, Peter,
desponding over his money problems, praised for a Jewish person
to come and help him. He becomes friends with the
wildly caricatured Jewish man Max Weinstein or Max Goldman? Did

(01:42:36):
Max Goldman or Max Weinstein? I thought it changes? I
guess it's Weinstein.

Speaker 1 (01:42:39):
The name of the show is when You Wish upon
a Wine Stea.

Speaker 2 (01:42:42):
I remember that he becomes friends with the wildly chricatured
Jewish Max Weinstein and then attempts to convert Chris to
Judaism when he sees how successful Max is. Fox executives
initially stopped it from airing in two thousand, but it
was broadcast on Cartoon Network in two thousand and three,
and then after the network could see it wasn't that
big of a deal, it aired on Fox in two

(01:43:04):
thousand and four. Funnily enough, during Hanukkah. On the DVD extras,
there's a commentary track to this episode, featuring various crew members,
writer Ricky Blitt, and director Dan Povenmeier among them. I
found an article that was written about at the same
time as this that cited comments from that commentary track
without naming who said them. One, there's a few people

(01:43:26):
at business affairs at Fox who should absolutely be ashamed
of themselves, and I found it offensive. We could make
fun of every ethnic group but one which we've sure
learned that over the past couple of years, haven't we.
Also in the commentary, someone notes that seventy percent of
the show's writers are Jewish anyway. That episode also contained

(01:43:47):
a song I Need a Jew that used the melody
to when You Wish Upon a Star. A few years later,
in October two thousand and seven, the Born Company publishing house,
the sole owners of the copyright too when You Wish
Upon a Star, fired a lawsuit against several Fox Divisions,
cartoon network, McFarland's company, Fuzzy Door Productions, McFarland himself, and
composer Walter Murphy, claiming copyright infringement over the song, seeking

(01:44:11):
unspecified damages and to halt the program's distribution, claiming that
the offensive nature of the parody damaged their song's potential earnings.
The case dragged on for eighteen months before a judge
ruled that it was protected by a parody and that
there was no copyright infringement, So suck on that the
Born Company.

Speaker 1 (01:44:31):
However, there is one Family Guy episode that still isn't available.
I didn't know this until reading this.

Speaker 2 (01:44:37):
I mean, it's probably it's out there. It's out there
on the internet, but not officially.

Speaker 1 (01:44:42):
The intended season eighth finale partial Terms of Endearment, which, yeah,
as some of you may have Guessed is about abortion
and contains frank discussion.

Speaker 2 (01:44:52):
And jokes about such.

Speaker 1 (01:44:55):
Owing to this, the episode was never aired on either
Fox or Cartoon Network, wasn't put on the season eight
box set, and isn't available to stream on Hulu. It
is apparently for sale on Amazon Prime, however, as part
of a Family Guy package, and was aired in the
UK in June twenty ten. Then Fox Entertainment president Kevin
Riley told The New York Times that unsurprisingly, the decision

(01:45:17):
came down to money. It's an extremely fragile subject matter
at an extremely fragile economic time, Riley said, of all
the issues, this is the one that seems to be
the most of a hot button, particularly at that moment
in time. The economy was really struggling and there were
a lot of very tough conversations going on with clients.
Riley continued, it's very hard on the Family Guy's scale

(01:45:39):
to say this one was more offensive than anything else
they tackled, while allowing that he thought the subject was
quote handled well, but quote one felt like it could
cause trouble and it was just not worth it. The
episode's writer, Danny Smith, also told The Times that the
script didn't make waves among the admittedly mostly male right.

(01:46:00):
He said, we've had more spirited debates about whether or
not we should state whether Santa Claus is real.

Speaker 2 (01:46:06):
I read that they did a table read of this
once it got shut down, and that it was well
received at the table read when wherever they did it with,
you know, I guess it passed some audience's smell test.
But do they have audiences for table reads? They do
them well, they'll do them, they'll do them sometimes they'll
do them as an event. But it was during COVID

(01:46:29):
when it started just being like a virtual thing that
people did because it wasn't a table read for like
rehearsing it. Do you want to come to see the
Family Guy cast do a table read of this episode?
I would like to see that. That'd be cool. Yeah,
that would be fun for me.

Speaker 1 (01:46:44):
But Farland also gave an eerily prescient quote in that
aforementioned New York Times article saying people in America they're
getting dumber. They're getting less and less able to analyze
something and think critically and pick apart the underlying elements,
and more and more ready to make a snap judge
regarding something at face value, which is too bad. You
really see, you know, his love of Archie Bunker and

(01:47:06):
all in the family. In something like this where you
wouldn't be able to have a character who says a
bad thing on air, even though the character is saying
the bad thing, is meant to demonstrate how ridiculous his
beliefs are. The fact that he said the bad thing
on air.

Speaker 2 (01:47:21):
I mean, it's part of what I've heard. I saw
to get termed depiction as endorsement, oh, which is like
become a watchword lately because apparently, like the Zoomers, there's
all these people who get super angry on Twitter when
like they're like, you expect me to watch this movie
where this character does this, this and this, and it's like, yeah,

(01:47:42):
it's a movie, the character is a bad person. It's
not really actually happening, you know. So this idea of
like just because it's depicted, it's offensive and terrible, where
it's like you're completely ignoring the point that the movie
is trying to make about either the character or the issue.
But I thought that was just put rather succinctly. I
liked it. Depiction endorsement by depiction.

Speaker 1 (01:48:05):
I like that. I never heard that.

Speaker 2 (01:48:06):
Well, now put on to a lighter subject.

Speaker 1 (01:48:09):
Yes, nine to eleven.

Speaker 2 (01:48:12):
What is it and what can it do for you?
You better keep that one.

Speaker 1 (01:48:19):
We're about to get to a fairly well known bit
of law about Seth MacFarlane on September eleventh, two thousand
and one, who's booked to fly from Boston to Los
Angeles on American Airlines Flight eleven, but it's travel agent
had mistakenly told him that the flight left at eight
fifteen and not seven forty five. He talks about this
a lot, pretty much, everyone asks us about this. Here's

(01:48:39):
what he told MPR. I'm a perpetually late person. In
every flight that takes off, you have to figure that
somebody's going to miss the flight or somebody's late. And
on top of that, who knows how many times a
day we've had similar close calls? Is the one I
had this morning crossing the street. If I'd cross five
minutes later, I would have been hit by a car.

Speaker 2 (01:48:56):
Who knows so?

Speaker 1 (01:48:57):
In my case, obviously the day itself was a tragedy
in a disaster. But if we're just talking about my case,
it doesn't strike me as something that I'm attaching an
unbelievable amount of significance to because of those reasons, because
I missed a bunch of flights, I disagree in this scenario,
that would stick with me.

Speaker 2 (01:49:17):
Well, Jordan, maybe one day you failed to make a
flight that'll be hijacked and then we'll see how you feel.
Can anyone do that, Jamie, Jamie, Jamie can arrange it.
Can we arrange that for Jordan?

Speaker 1 (01:49:27):
I can tell you right now that would that would
stick with me. Well, I told you the story about
my aunt.

Speaker 2 (01:49:33):
Right. You're telling a lot of stories on this episode,
so I know.

Speaker 1 (01:49:36):
I'm sorry everybody. I know we've got I.

Speaker 2 (01:49:39):
Think you should tell the story about when the plane
you were on started to go down.

Speaker 1 (01:49:44):
Oh that was bad. I've told that story. Oh yeah,
I wrote I wrote a love note on an airsickness
bag to a girl I like the time. Yeah, that
was bad.

Speaker 2 (01:49:53):
It was more about the guy next to you who
grabbed your hand and was screaming.

Speaker 1 (01:49:57):
That was a different No, He's just that was a
different flight when the turbulence was really bad. I hate
to fly, I really hate to fly, and apparently so
did this man because he just kept grabbing my hand.

Speaker 2 (01:50:08):
Total stranger.

Speaker 1 (01:50:08):
We hadn't spoken to each other the entire flight, and
then when I looked at him with a quizzical look
in my face, he said, I'm just gonna hold your
hand as a statement of intent.

Speaker 2 (01:50:20):
Is that happens to you, Yeah, it really is. Yeah. No,
I don't know, man. I mean, like, I try not
to read into shit like that because that'll make you
go insane.

Speaker 1 (01:50:32):
You know. I think I think it's his atheism peeking through,
he said to the av club. I'm not a fatalist.
I'm not a religious person. What I felt more than
anything else was gratitude towards my travel agent for screwing
up my itinerary. It didn't change my perspective on what
I do or anything like that. I couldn't really let it.
If anything, I started drinking more, which, speaking of which

(01:50:53):
I thought, I read he was hungover and that was
why he was running late and missing the flight. But
I guess two things can be true at the same time.

Speaker 2 (01:50:59):
Yeah, exactly. But no, I told you.

Speaker 1 (01:51:01):
My grandmother very very Catholic, so she would kind of
try to reject anything that sort of smacked of the occult.
But she would claim that she would have these these
kind of psychic visions or dreams and she had a dream.
So the night before her oldest daughter was supposed to
go with friends on.

Speaker 2 (01:51:21):
A college to Oh you told me this story.

Speaker 1 (01:51:23):
Yeah, Well they were going to go on a college
tour and with friends, and the night before my grandmother
had a dream of Jesus on the horseback riding up
to her and shaking his head and somehow intimato, don't
let She somehow took this to mean that she shouldn't
let her daughter go on this trip. And so the
next morning, when like my aunt or daughter was about

(01:51:44):
to leave, she's like, no, you can't go. I'm sorry,
I just have a really bad feeling. And my aunt
was all pissed off and went storming off to her room.
And then later that day, the car that her friends
were driving in was hit by a semi on a
bridge and went off the bridge and everybody in the car.
I don't know if they drowned or died a blunt
force impact or what, but they all died.

Speaker 2 (01:52:04):
Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:52:05):
I've had a few instances of my life where those
things that you know, kind of can't be explained that
I don't I don't have strong feelings on what was
at play. But I have to admit that it was weird,
and I find this weird. I find it weird that
narrowly miss.

Speaker 2 (01:52:19):
You're perfectly You're perfectly entitled to.

Speaker 1 (01:52:23):
But you know what, it wasn't my experience to have,
So Seth can feel about it anyway he wants.

Speaker 2 (01:52:28):
That's right, right, that's right. I'm just reminded of the
one Anthony Gizelnick joke that I liked, which was, you know,
my mother was actually supposed to be on one of
the flights for nine to eleven. I think, yeah, to
delay it's a delayed burn, which is one of the

(01:52:48):
things I like about it. Am I talking to you?
Talkingou what's going on?

Speaker 1 (01:52:55):
Yeah? But what's interesting about Seth macfarlan and nine to
eleven other than this flight thing, was that Family Guy
had aired a gag about Osama bin Lauden two years
before the nine to eleven attacks, which I had no
idea who Osama bin Laden was before September eleven, two
thousand and one. So that's shocking to me.

Speaker 2 (01:53:13):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, well, you're about to explain what
what I wrote, So do that you think it's a joke.

Speaker 1 (01:53:20):
In the first of Family Guys tributes to the Bing
Crosby Bob Hope Road to Blank series, in which they
joke about Osama bin Laden distracting airport security by singing
I hope I get it from a chorus line. That
episode was broadcast in May two thousand as part of
the show's second season. I can't believe, like it's just

(01:53:42):
such a weird target for.

Speaker 2 (01:53:44):
It is it is, But you know, because I am
having disease, I went the extra mile and figured out
why exactly, Oh.

Speaker 1 (01:53:50):
Tell us, tell us, I would love to know why.

Speaker 2 (01:53:52):
So Family Guy is on a ten to fourteen month
production schedule, meaning that for a joke to air in
a May two thousand episode. I think this gag would
have originated when the FBI added bin Laden to the
ten most Wanted Fugitives list. They did that because of
his involvement in both the nineteen ninety three World Trade
Center bombing and the August ninety ninety eight bombings of

(01:54:13):
US embassies in East Africa, but this happened before bin
Lawden's attack on the USS coal which ramped up his
notoriety in the United States, particularly that happened in October
of two thousand, so a little over four months after
this episode aired. So Seth MacFarland had clocked Bin Laden

(01:54:34):
from before Bush, did you've made it there before I did?
I was going to say, Seth MacFarland had been Laden
on his radar long before Norad did, and then before
being turned off by George W. Bush. Yours was better? Well,
that was more succinct. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:54:53):
I know we could accused of patenting ourselves on the
back and laughing at our own jokes, but folks, if
we can't amuse ourselves. Folks, we're doing this in a vacuum.
We have to laugh at each other otherwise, otherwise what
do we have. If we were doing this on stage,
we would probably laugh less at each other because we've
got the crowd out there that gives us that feedback
We need to have feedback to, like play off of,

(01:55:15):
or else we're just reading. Yeah. So this gag was
included in the episode when it was aired pre nine eleven,
but obviously in the wake of the attacks, it was
cut from re airings and also from the DVD. MacFarland
told IGN in two thousand and three, the more I
feel this question, the more I feel like it should
have been left in the joke. My argument was, well, look,

(01:55:35):
I missed that flight by ten minutes, and I'm okay
with putting it on. It's an interesting piece of entertainment history,
and it was made two years before nine to eleven. McFarland, however,
did not support the joke remaining on air after the
nine to eleven attacks. He said that episode reaired or
was supposed to re air, not too long after September eleventh,
and in that context, I fully supported them cutting that

(01:55:56):
joke out. It would be suicide to air that, especially
for people who hadn't seen the first airing and didn't
know that it was an old joke from years earlier.
They would think that we made it the joke after
September eleventh, and that would have just been disastrous. This
isn't the only time that the show has predicted in
quote something. A two thousand and nine episode joked about
Bruce Jenner's vagina, six years before Jenner announced their transition

(01:56:19):
to Caitlin. What is the context.

Speaker 2 (01:56:21):
I don't know, and I don't want to know. Yeah, yeah,
but just they made a joke about Bruce Jenner's vagina
and then one day she got one, and she's very
brave for it, despite still being like a southern California Republican.
Were you people when that Vanity fair cover came out? No,

(01:56:42):
it was a couple of years before. Oh man, Yeah,
that was like a bomb went off in the office.

Speaker 1 (01:56:46):
One thing that threw a wrinkle into Family Guy's equal
opportunity offenders stance was Disney's acquisition of twentieth Century Fox
in twenty nineteen show on Our richa pel Toil the
Hollywood Reporter that Disney owns so many properties that I
will find myself making legal arguments that I know are
winners about parody and why we can get away with
certain things. But then the question becomes, well, that may

(01:57:08):
be rich, but Marvel doesn't want to see its character
portrayed in this light. And I've sometimes said, well what
if we just air it and see what happens, and
they'll answer, no, that's not how we work.

Speaker 2 (01:57:18):
Finally, as those of you on TikTok and those of
you who get your TikTok content via Twitter or Instagram
may know, Family Guy has had a startling second life online. Jordan.
I mean, my fourteenth year of professional writing was this year.
I don't know where you're at But I don't really

(01:57:39):
recall Family Guy being huge in like meme culture in
like the early days, like twenty twelve, thirteen, twenty fourteen.
I don't remember it being part of the like meme
ecosystem at that time. I guess I agree with you.
That was early days, and most a lot of it
was still just like you know, bad luck Brian or

(01:58:00):
like success Toddler, like clenched fizz Toddler. Like. It was
that more than people like trying to remix pop cultural stuff.
But man, this TikTok stuff is really out there and
I'm looking forward to explaining it to you. But give
us a little background. First.

Speaker 1 (01:58:14):
Family Guy's online profile was raised considerably after November twenty fourth,
twenty thirteen, when The Family Guy killed off Brian. Fans
of the show responded to Brian's death with calls to
bring the character back alive bring him back Alive, including
a change dot org petition titled Seth MacFarlane and Fox
Broadcasting Company Bring Brian Griffin Back to Family Guy, and

(01:58:37):
a Facebook petition named Petition to Get Brian Griffin Back,
and a similar protest that took place on Twitter under
the hashtag bring back Brian.

Speaker 2 (01:58:46):
It's like hundreds of thousands of people, by the.

Speaker 1 (01:58:49):
Way, I mean, they all must have known that this
was no. Three weeks later the show ret conned it
or fixed it. I'd never heard that word.

Speaker 2 (01:58:58):
Oh really, no, oh man, redcn is. I think it
first came out of comics because they're always just bringing
people back by some mean or another, but really crossed over.
I think more popular culture when like with like all
of these franchises and recasting actors and like Marvel stuff
where they're like, oh, yeah, that guy we like set
up to be a way bigger deal in that early

(01:59:18):
movie that we haven't followed through on it anyway, Like
turns out he went back to his home planet and died.
It's so yeah, retroactive continuity, redcarm okay.

Speaker 1 (01:59:29):
Perhaps obviously given the lead time of the show's production,
McFarlane tweeted that the writers had never intended to kill
off Brian permanently. He would say that the plot was
intended to remind viewers to never take those you love
for granted, because they can be gone in a flash.

Speaker 2 (01:59:44):
How did Brian die again? Hit back car? Oh yeah,
had he come back? I didn't watch these I was
not watching the show by this point, but I read
the Wikipedia. Stewie finds a version of himself with a
time machine and forces that version of himself to go
back and time. I'm in save Brian, Okay, all out?

Speaker 1 (02:00:02):
Yeah, I didn't realize this until researching this episode. William H.
Macy was initially floated as the voice of Brian, but
he was turned down because this was you know, in
the early days. They had but fifty thousand dollars to
make an episode in one room, and they didn't have
the budget seth MacFarland was getting his sister to voice Meg,
and he was doing all the rest of the voices.
McFarlan later, that's a great quote, it is.

Speaker 2 (02:00:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:00:27):
McFarland later said, what kind of an arrogant must I
have been to look at this great actor and say
I think I can do this better?

Speaker 2 (02:00:33):
Yeah? I mean that was a common tactic with shows
around this area. Like, you know, they cast Danny DeVito
in the in the second season of It's Always Sunny
because they wanted to bring in a celebrity to anchor
the show. They knew it was good and wanted to
keep it up, but they were like, you need a
recognizable face. In here, a number of standalone gags became
enduring meme templates that people still use as well. If

(02:00:54):
you're on Twitter, you'll see the Peppers Farm remembers one
the cutaway gag in which has a segment on local
news called what really grinds My gears? I remember that
the phrase I need an adult, which actually dates back
to like these anti child abuse PSAs in the eighties.
That's certainly where McFarlane remembered them from, but it was

(02:01:15):
resurrected by the show early in like the year two
thousand and also, Damn Nature, You Scary. Apparently, Google interest
in the show peaked between October two thousand and eight
and March two thousand and nine. This is interesting it
coincides with the show's seventh season, which featured holdover episodes
from the sixth season, which was cut short due to
the two thousand and seven two thousand and eight Writers

(02:01:36):
Guild of America strike. Although Fox aired episodes in defiance
of Seth MacFarlane, which he got very mad about. That
season also included an episode that inspired the Venezuelan government
to ban Family Guy for twenty is the name of
the episode in which Brian attempts to legalize pot in Cohog.

Speaker 1 (02:01:53):
That's the one where they do like a stoner version
of the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang song me Ol Bamboo
if I remember correctly.

Speaker 2 (02:02:01):
Sounds about right. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:02:03):
As a result of that episode, High Times the esteemed
marijuana publication stowed upon Brian Griffin. It's Stoner of the
Year title in two thousand and nine. Anyway, the show
is also banned in Indonesia, Vietnam, Iraq, Egypt, Taiwan, South Korea,
South Africa, and Malaysia.

Speaker 2 (02:02:23):
South Korea.

Speaker 1 (02:02:24):
Actually that surprises me, Iraq not so much.

Speaker 2 (02:02:31):
Yeah, I mean it's weird considering I think, like I've
definitely seen like Korean people rolling around with really cool
outfits with like Peter Griffin on them.

Speaker 1 (02:02:39):
So isn't it animated there too? Oh?

Speaker 2 (02:02:42):
I mean so much stuff is yeah over there because
it's non union jobs. What was I talking about? Oh? Yeah?
But this is interesting though, because I think it peaked
in search Oni in between October two thousand and eight
and March two thousand and nine. Jordan, you used to
work for Celebrity Rag like I did. What is that season? Oh?

Speaker 1 (02:03:01):
Yeah, that's a ward show season.

Speaker 2 (02:03:03):
Yeah, So the seventh season was nominated for a Primetime
Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series that year, making Family
Guy the first animated series to be nominated in that
category since The Flintstones in nineteen sixty one in one,
and it has since won eight more Primetime enemy.

Speaker 1 (02:03:21):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (02:03:22):
But yeah, I mean that makes sense why people would
be looking for it during award show season, being like, Wow,
did this really break this record? Blah blah blah blah blah. Anyway,
finally we're getting into TikTok, so the show's current prominence
as part of it, or at least where I've been seeing.

(02:03:43):
I don't know if it's still used on TikTok, but
where I started seeing its surface on TikTok was in
like twenty two to twenty three, and that is indeed
when it started. It's going to get deep and weird,
so bear with me. A lot of this has to
do with copyright strikes, like how people would avoid people
would put post clips like show clip roundups to YouTube,

(02:04:03):
will like insert random audio at points or different non
sequarters to throw off the copyright bots. But beginning in
mid November twenty twenty two, Family Guy clip channels on
TikTok began using a series of videos that showed a
man putting various objects, including cigarettes and carrots, into a

(02:04:24):
metal pipe as part of the repair process, and while
under or over in a split screen format family Guy clips,
so you're getting this bizarre two screen rendering of something
completely unrelated and family Guy clips at the bottom. So
there were least three prominent family Guy accounts that did this.

(02:04:46):
The first posting was on November ninth, twenty twenty two.
It got over twenty six thousand plays in a month.
And then because the popularity of those search terms of
family Guy pipe, TikTok's algorithm actually glitched, so it wound
up suggesting the phrase family Guy pipeline incident, which is

(02:05:08):
a corruption of those search terms in everybody's related search
bars and comments. So everybody started being like, what the
hell is the family Guy pipeline incident? And they start
searching for it more so it becomes this whole or
boros of like a predictive search algorithm glitches, and then
more people start searching for that term than the original

(02:05:28):
search thing, so that I think started it. And then
thanks to the helpful folks over it know your meme.
We can actually trace the progression of Family Guy posting
over the next two month, as like you would track
a spore, fungus or something. So November twentieth, twenty twenty two,
TikToker Popperball nine posted a Family Guy clip video featuring
multiple layers of other videos layered across it to deliberately

(02:05:51):
do a kind of meta reference to how people evade
the platform's copyright claim system, and then over the course
of twenty two days, that video got three point nine
million plays. December second, twenty twenty two, another TikTok poster
hosted the first known Family Guy jump scare video, which
is it features just normal clips from the show and

(02:06:12):
then all of the sudden, like a scary face will
come out and scream at you and the volume will distort.
Although they did one that just said George Bush did
nine to eleven that I really liked, and then from
there that mutates into what we call overstimulation content or
a subset of ADHD posting. This is a trend with

(02:06:33):
like these poor zoomers whose brains have been fried from
jump with phones. They post the same split screen format.
It'll either be a screen recording of their phone where
Family Guy is playing on one half of it, and
then they're playing Subway Surfers or another like low cost
mobile game in the other half of the phone. So

(02:06:54):
they either post screen recordings of that or they post
pictures of themselves doing that while watching TV. And this
is the craziest thing. Subway Surfers became like the mobile
game of choice for this meme structure which I remember
playing in like twenty eleven. That became popular because there
was a guy who was using TikTok's text to voice

(02:07:16):
feature to narrate content from Reddit and to avoid copyright
strikes from Reddit or seo creeping, he posted it in
the split screen format while Subway Surfers or Minecraft played
in the background. So this guy is using Subway Surfers
to duck Reddit copyright or Reddit strike claims by spamming

(02:07:38):
Subway Surfers in the background. And then the same guy
sees how popular Family Guy is becoming and becomes one
of the original accounts posting Family Guy Subway Surfer clips
in December of twenty twenty two, so that from mid
November to December twenty twenty two, this thing has already

(02:07:59):
become a trend, a trend people are tweaking, and a
trend people have now built on by showing how they're
unable to pay attention to anything. Then I mean, this
is this is what I find. So it's fascinating from
an academic standpoint because it's just like it's like the
study of culture. It's like how this stuff or viruses,
like how this stuff would you know, move through these

(02:08:20):
move through these ecosystems. So I don't know if you've
seen the boring or long as hell phrase like this
move this funeral, boring, boring a hell? Have you seen that?

Speaker 1 (02:08:33):
I am like a new born child hearing all.

Speaker 2 (02:08:35):
This, So like a ton of TikTok slang, which I
don't think we should let these kids get away with.
Boring ass is taken from aa VE or African American
vernacular English, Like half of TikTok slang is stolen from
Black people used to say it's supposed to sound like
ass with like a stereotypical quote black scent. So instead

(02:08:56):
of seeing boring ass that they avoid the curse by
saying boring as. So you can find instances of it
being called but people say boring at and like Twitter
in two thousand and nine, but the zoomers really glommed
onto it in early twenty twenty two and they started
calling things goofy ah. And then when this whole Family
Guy thing is reaching on TikTok is reaching critical mass,

(02:09:20):
there's someone just posted an instagram of a guy watching
Family Guy on his phone in a theater that was
playing Avatar The Way of Water, with the text movie
long a Hell.

Speaker 1 (02:09:32):
That's medium funny it was.

Speaker 2 (02:09:34):
And that one was actually reposted on Facebook pretty quickly thereafter,
and that contributed to this massive combo of like x
long or boring a Hell where people were like at
funerals watching Family Guy or childbirths, like watching family ey
clips on their phone and posting it saying like this
funeral boring a hell. Like you know, eventually there's all.

(02:10:00):
It turns back around and spreads to the wider Internet
where people who get paid to write about this stuff,
which if you were still doing that, congratulations on your
golden parachute from Slate dot com. Ah. This whole phenom
of overlapping multiple screens, over stimulating content, and microscopic attention

(02:10:20):
spans was termed sludge content or what wed in the
good old days, we call it posting. I think they
still call it that, But it's this idea that like,
there's so much low grade content circulating on social media
and any screen that by like combining as much of
it as you can into one thing, you're creating new

(02:10:41):
sludge content. So you'll see these like videos where people
have overlaid like multiple different clips from different shows or movies,
something else is going on in the background, and then
a bunch of people wrote these thin pieces about why
it was bad. But this is kind of insightful, and
this is what I think is interesting. MacFarlane, Seth Creed
and Rich Apple were doing that La Times group interview

(02:11:03):
about the show, and they were asked about the TikTok popularity,
and McFarlane said, it almost seems as if the show
was made for TikTok, the cutaways that were in some
cases maligned, and then he says, but these are the
hardest things to do, These are the hardest things to write.
To go in and essentially write a Gary Larson farside panel,
how many times a day that had to have a beginning, middle,

(02:11:24):
and end in the space of anywhere from three seconds
to fifteen to twenty seconds, and that was something we
were doing in nineteen ninety nine, in the early two thousands.
Now they just fit in like a glove. I think
in many ways, TikTok validated the structure of the show,
which again leads me to believe he is some kind
of He's like from the future or something man, because
that makes so much sense to me that like stuff

(02:11:47):
that they like, ADHD, cutaway gag, random stuff that they
were constantly being shown basically predicted modern social media.

Speaker 1 (02:11:56):
I mean, here's something that I don't necessarily I really believe,
and I haven't thought enough about it to really make
this client.

Speaker 2 (02:12:03):
But how much what we do on this show, maybe how.

Speaker 1 (02:12:07):
Much of it is that Family Guy's humor and structure
of those cutaway jokes just primed people's brains to create
content in that way, and that led those sort of
short form video platforms to gain popularity.

Speaker 2 (02:12:22):
I think a lot of these kids were solely coming
at this like they discovered Family Guy. I'm not I
obviously don't know. I haven't interviewed any of them.

Speaker 1 (02:12:30):
Yeah, the courts won't let you.

Speaker 2 (02:12:34):
Also good, you know. The novelty was that it was
like an old animated show that like they probably were
not that familiar with that suddenly became this vehicle for
all of this extraneous, weird content that they could do.
I don't know. I, like I said earlier, like thinking
about this and putting credence in some of the things

(02:12:54):
that he said about it, I'm really like he may
have predicted like the entirety of post nine to eleven
culture in a bad way. I want to stress all
right now I'm losing my voice, so we gotta wrap
this up because I have I do have an impression
I want to do for you, Okay.

Speaker 1 (02:13:12):
Family Guy was the cornerstone from which the Seth MacFarlane
empire was launched. He created American Dad off the successive
Family Guy spun off The Cleveland Show, and used a
barely modified version of Peter Griffin's voice as the surprisingly
successful Mark Wohlberg Because a foul mouth and a debauch
Teddy Bear movie. Ted McFarlane also used the show's success

(02:13:32):
as a springboard for his own musical aspirations, singing big
band cruider music, hell yeah, which you know who among us?

Speaker 2 (02:13:40):
Really? Yeah? Honestly.

Speaker 1 (02:13:43):
The site Fast Company did some quick back of the
Napkin math of McFarland's Empire in two thousand and eight
and estimated it was worth or at least has generated
about two billion dollars. That's billion with a bee. And
this was before Ted in its sequel and apparently prequel
streaming show launched that year.

Speaker 2 (02:14:00):
Now it came out last year.

Speaker 1 (02:14:01):
Oh came out last year?

Speaker 2 (02:14:02):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (02:14:03):
Oh wow?

Speaker 2 (02:14:03):
Okay, so Ted still has legs. Who knew?

Speaker 1 (02:14:06):
I didn't?

Speaker 2 (02:14:07):
I didn't. Good straight man answer to that. In the
La Times piece that I mentioned, McFarlane, who is now
only a voice actor on the show, as I mentioned,
was questioned about how long the show would continue. He answered,
at this point, I don't see a good reason to stop.
People still love it makes people happy, and it funds

(02:14:28):
some good causes. It's a lot of extraneous cash that
you can donate to Rainforest Trust, and you can still
go out to dinner that night. There was a time
when I thought it's time to wrap it up. At
this point, we've reached escape velocity. I don't know that
there's any reason to stop at this point unless people
get sick of it, unless the numbers show that people
are just we don't care about family Guy anymore. But
that hasn't happened yet.

Speaker 1 (02:14:48):
Oh souls take on his creation, which honestly kind of
seems about right.

Speaker 2 (02:14:53):
Well, I got a questioned for you, Jordan, Yes, how you?
How you coming on? That podcast? Will going on for
next week? Hmm? Got a couple of got a couple
of pages and a.

Speaker 3 (02:15:05):
Google doc for mem nice little, nice little three act
structure for a narrative podcast to do. Working on the
the big podcast, maybe the Beach Boys. I know you've
been working on that one for three years. Gotta we
got a compelling main character protagonist, gonna be some obstacles
for him to overcome.

Speaker 2 (02:15:23):
Whose story boring there? Been working on that for quite
some time. We aren't talking about that three years ago.
Been working on that whole the whole time.

Speaker 3 (02:15:30):
Nice little nonive beginning, middle, and then some friends become enemies,
some memories.

Speaker 2 (02:15:34):
We got friends at the end of the day. Your
main character is richer for the experience. Yeah, I look
forward to listening to it.

Speaker 1 (02:15:43):
The best part was it got so high pitched that
I could no longer hear it through that.

Speaker 2 (02:15:49):
This has been too much information. I'm Alex Hagel.

Speaker 1 (02:15:52):
And I'm Jordan run tag. We'll catch you next Time.

Speaker 2 (02:16:00):
Too Much Information was a production of iHeartRadio. The show's
executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtog.

Speaker 1 (02:16:06):
The show's supervising producer is Michael Alder June.

Speaker 2 (02:16:09):
The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtog
and Alex Heigel.

Speaker 1 (02:16:13):
With original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra.

Speaker 2 (02:16:17):
If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave
us a review.

Speaker 1 (02:16:20):
For more podcasts on iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows

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Jordan Runtagh

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