'Simpsons'-'Family Guy' feud escalates

'Family's' MacFarlane talks about 'Simpsons' 'slam'

 

Tuesday, July 12, 2005; Posted: 12:12 p.m. EDT (16:12 GMT)

 

NEW YORK (AP) -- "The Simpsons" took a shot at fellow Fox cartoon "Family Guy." So that series' creator is taking a shot right back.

 

Seth MacFarlane said an episode of "The Simpsons" where a Homer Simpson clone was identified as "Family Guy" dad Peter Griffin was "definitely a slam."

 

But since the "Family Guy" team dishes out plenty of its own insults, it should be able to take some, MacFarlane told Blender magazine.

 

"To me, Peter is much more similar to Ralph Kramden than he is to Homer, right down to his voice," he said, referring to the character from "The Honeymooners." "That's what I see. But because 'The Simpsons' and 'Family Guy' are really the only two shows of their kind of television, there'll be comparisons made."

 

MacFarlane said he was definitely influenced by "The Simpsons."

 

"I mean, in its prime, it was one of the greatest comedy shows of all time," he said. "But it's not the show it was. It can't be. You can't do 16 seasons and be consistent."

 

 

 

 

Either Seth's working the press or someone in CNN has just woken up from a coma. The Simpsons episode mentioned was years ago, and I'm sure Seth just didn't just recently get a bug up his ass from something that happened during FG's first run.

 

I mean, pretty much every animated show owes a debt to the Simpsons, even South Park paid homage in an ep called "Simpsons Already Did It" (and the Simpsons returned the compliment by having the South Park kids make a cameo).

 

 

This kind of stuff irritates me, Seth points out that the Simpsons isn't what it used to be (which at this point isn't even up for debate) and CNN reports it like he's planning to skull-fuck the Simpsons staff.

You look at both shows and it's clear that they've borrowed elements from each other. Peter's an insensitive at times buffoon. So is Homer. Homer has become more so in recent years, which made him seem more like Peter than the other way around. Simpsons also started using more of the pop culture humor after FG rolled around. But the Simpsons have still paved the way for shows like FG to even exist.

The Simpsons has slipped, but it's still a good show. I never have understood why people don't like it _at all_ now. I still think the current-era Simpsons is better than the first two and a half seasons.

I've just lost interest in it over the years but then I've been watching from day 1. To me it's just like watching a parody of the Simpsons anymore. And I miss the fact that there was a large element of reality during the early seasons.

They started injecting more over the top comedy around Season 4 or 5. I don't quite get the difference between those seasons and now, except for that some of the jokes aren't quite as funny as they were. And they're still good for occasionally putting out an episode like "The Last Temptation Of Homer" from Season 5 every now and then, and even in their glory years, those were never coming out constantly. How is "Homer Goes To College" any different than the Join-The-Navy episode, again, despite not being quite as funny?

The concensus seems to be once the focus changed from "look at Bart be mischievious" to "look at Homer be stupid" the quality of the show began to slip.

You mean where Homer joins the Navy or Bart's boyband tries to convince people to join the Navy?

 

I think that's also a problem with the Simpsons, they are recycling premises. Selma's had sham marriage after sham marriage, The Simpsons go to "Insert Country Here", Bart's lost his dog a number of times...

You mean where Homer joins the Navy or Bart's boyband tries to convince people to join the Navy?

The latter.

It's the 'net. There are no shades of gray. It's either great or a pile of shit. I've one one of the people to defend the show throughout the years when anyone would ramble on about it as if it were a cancer to TV. I don't really catch the new episodes anymore, but I refuse to jump on this total boycott some people seem to have going against the series.

I used to watch the Simpsons loyally for about the first 6-7 years, then between working and the show getting bumped around when Fox got the NFL, I got out of the habit of watching.

 

I don't think the show should be boycotted or anything, but now the show seems like a toy you played with as a kid but now that you're grown up it has no appeal anymore. I guess my sense of humor just evolved to the point I don't dig the show.

 

Besides, people seem to think the show will stay on the air as long as it wants to since they put Fox on the map as a genuine network.

I'm not boycotting it or anything that self-important. I don't like the new episodes so I just don't watch.

I just feel that the quality of the writing went down once they lost a bunch of the good writers around seasons 5-7.

 

 

They lost a whole crew of great writers after season 3 and several more in season 4 and 5, including Conan O'Brian, at which point they seemed to go from hiring SNL writers from the "good" recent years (1989-1993) to ones from the REALLY bad years (1994-1996).

 

Example- Conan was part of the show in the early 1990s and was involved in some of the great sketches of the time, such as the Five-Timers Club monologue and The Penis Sketch.

 

He went on to write Simpsons shows that were escapist yet fun, such as the Homer Goes To College ep. (His tenure at SNL was 1987 to 1991. His tenure on The Simpsons was officially for seasons 4 and 5, although he applied for Late Night early in season 5 and left when he got the show.)

 

 

Ian Maxtone Graham, OTOH, was an SNL writer from 1992 to 1995. The 1994-1995 season of the show was so horrible that it almost killed the show and wasn't shown in syndication until years afterwards because it was so immensely bad.

 

His tenure on the show included some true crap episodes, such as the one where they killed off Maude Flanders. (The episode was badly written even aside from the fact that they killed of a character just because they could).

 

 

His tenure has also been known for a rise in obvious in-jokes that aren't particularly funny. When the older episodes did in-jokes, they at least did it in a way that was somewhat funny.

 

Ex- Including a bunch of obscure jokes about Brown University (Graham's alma mater), such as Otto Mann the bus driver saying "I almost got tenure at Brown" vs. Sideshow Bob referring to Princeton as "clown college"

 

 

 

There was also a joke in a different Graham episodes about how Barney can only remember part of his two-month bender, which was "a guest lecture at Villanova. Or maybe that was a street corner..."

 

That's an obscure joke about the drunken nature of Villanova students that no one outside of a 50-mile radius of Philadelphia probably got or laughed at.

 

 

In short, the earlier episodes were more accessable, had more original jokes, and were a lot funnier in general, while the newer episodes tend to have recycled jokes and plots as well as a lot of obscure in-references that aren't particularly funny.