On Family Guy 2.0 and sucking

Family Guy sucks. Or rather, Family Guy 2.0 does.

See, the show, as of its miraculous fourth-season-and-beyond renewal, is not the same beast it once was. Wether it be the new writers, the amount of time the veteran writers have been working on other stuff, or the reasons I will list below, it has changed for the worse. It is still technically Family Guy, but it's a new version. A 2.0. And as many will say, an upgrade does not always mean better performance.

Family Guy has always had a high amount of non-sequitor cutaways and flashbacks. Anyone who denies that is mixed up. But that doesn't excuse 2.0for absolutely skyrocketing their rate of appearance. Not only that, but they have leaned less toward being funny and clever and more towards being straightforward nostalgic bits for children of the 80s. And when I say straightforward, I am being literal- many of the pop-culture references play themselves completely straight with no joke other than the fact that so-and-so is randomly appearing. I never thought I'd say this, but Robot Chicken is coming up with more clever nostalgia-based jokes than Family Guy now. And that is not a good thing.

Hey, look, it's Evil Monkey! He's funny, right? Well, not after whoring him out so that he now appears in every other episode instead of every 10-15 or so. Not only that, but 2.0 has inexplicably decided to ressurect one-joke characters who never made additional appearances before and beat them into the ground. Herbert the pedophile. Greased-up Deaf Guy. The vaudeville players. And so on. And this is in exchange for Joe and Cleveland's sons vanishing without a trace. Smooth move.

When the writers run out of stock characters and references to use for jokes, they do the cheapest thing they can think of: drag a scene out endlessly with endless "Ummmmm....."s and "......Huh....."s. These scenes are not just torture; they're insulting.

I never thought I'd be analyzing Family Gut's plots, but there is no longer any effort put into them. The last new episode that I will watch for now went like this:

- Peter starts publishing erotica with funding from Lois's dad, who gets sued and loses all his money due to the books.
- Without any mention of the erotica, things turn into a sketch show of sorts as Peter and Carter go through various wacky (And very, very drawn-out) sketches to earn money.
- In the last 40 seconds of the show, Lois's mom, who married Ted Turner, walks in and says she earned half his money from divorcing him. The end.

Also, at 3 random points, there are scenes of Stewie doing Olympic training. There is no setup for this, and no real resolution. It's there, once again, just to pad time- they had the material but didn't bother writing an episode to fit it in.

So in the end, Family Guy is now just a vehicle. A vehicle for worn-out characters and catchphrases, old cartoon references for those who don't know better to laugh at, and characters who show off little of their old personalities. But Seth MacFarlane and company could hardly care. They get paid, so what difference does it make? God forbid they try and make something worth watching.

Something to think about and someone to remember

A funny thing happened today while I was in the supermarket parking lot. A haggard but friendly-looking man approached me near my car, and explained that he was just laid off from his job and was scrambling to get $115 to pay his rent, and was looking for donations. Because I'm a horribly compassionate person when it comes to this kind of story, and because I had just bought Kingdom Hearts 2 the day before (Great game, by the way) and had no must-buy-right-away items, I pulled out $10 and wished him luck.

Now, this man could have very easily been a liar and a con. He also could have easily planned to grab my wallet when I pulled it out. He didn't do the latter, and I'll never be able to disprove the latter. And yet I did what I felt was right because of both the situation and my conscience. If there was so much as the chance that I was really helping someone in need, I hopefully did the right thing. What would you do?

On a much, much, sadder note, tomorrow is going to be a very tough day. Sometime before 10 AM, Nellie, our beloved golden retriever of almost 10 years, will be put to sleep to end her sad battle with cancer. This is a sorrowful and tough experience, no doubt, but I am at least looking on the positive aspects, such as the fact that Nellie has lived a long and happy life, given and recieved much love, and is promised that the last thing she sees will be me holding her and telling her how much I love her.



1996-2006

NINTENDO SIXTY-FOOOOOOOOOUR!!!!!!

NOW WE CAN RENT GAMES FROM BLOCKBUSTER!

A tote bag of miscellaneous ramblings

3 AM, work tomorrow morning, and still not sleepy. Curse you, Sunkist, for making your orange soda so tasty.

Something that I didn't elaborate on in my admittedly crazy post on games and animation as art was that something that is still holding games back from being truly immersive is the ever-elusive goal of attaining total immersion. By this, I mean how there is still much fine-tuning to be done in games to make them look less glitchy and more realistic. I'm still seeing cinema scenes where character's heads clip through their collars. As smart as ragdoll physics are, there are still many incidents with them that make deaths look just silly. And, of course, there's the immortal problem of a lot of dialogue being given looped body animations and flapping mouths instead of lip sync. Wether or not this problem will ever become much less noticeable really depends on how much the industry grows and how much time and money a company is willing to spend.

But enough rambling. Let's talk about stuff everyone else cares about.


While I attempt to get the hang of Ghost Recon on the 360 (my first go at trying a realistic squad-based game), I am getting hooked on the newly-released Arcade game Astropop. The visuals and soundtrack are very slick, and the gameplay structure is both very original and challenging. And while many puzzle games offer different playable characters, this is one where the one you play as actually makes a difference- all four characters have different special attacks to charge up that can blow up blocks in an emergency. The game has also been out on the original Xbox's Arcade and the PC, so go try out a demo.



In making Wario Ware Tooned 4, I am continually frustrated by my utter inability to make decent-looking backgrounds. I've basically been forced to stick with stylistic UPAish stuff because I can't do any better- perspective and I have a long and bitter history. On the other hand, the episode is shaping up to be better-written and better-paced, and once again co-written by the very funny Sean of kisland.net. Still no clue of the release date, as not even all the voice recording is done.

I finally got around to purchasing Laputa/Castle in the Sky, and it is still my favorite Miyazaki movie. So I am excited that it will finally get some real nationwide exposure by airing on Toonami next Saturday. If you haven't seen this movie but like any sort of animation, or film in general, watch this. It is perfectly paced, genuinely exciting, and skillfully animated. The only problem is the English dub, something even Mark Hamill couldn't save.

There's a small fortune to be made cleaning out your shelves for eBay selling.

A plea to all those involved with Futurama

Please, if there's a possibility that the show will be revived with new episodes, DVD movies or whatever, do not go around telling everyone until it's going to happen. Yesterday, Billy West said the next season was almost ready to start production- then retracted it today. This is at least the fourth time this has happened, and many fans are being let down hard by all the false alarms.