MacFarlane never met a genre he didn't like, and he generally sees no problem with combining them all. Outside of his straight-up Western parody, his stories exist in a sort of plastic reality that's not quite your life and mine and not quite fantasy/science fiction, either. In the MacFarlaneverse, you're equally likely to meet Patrick Stewart, Captain Picard, Stan Smith's boss as played by Patrick Stewart, or just a narrator. This desire to have it all works against him when he's trying to be serious. Ted 2 mixes its gutter-minded comedy with long, earnest speeches, as if being extra serious will make up for all the raunch. The movie dares to compare Ted's struggle with the struggle for same-sex marriage, which would've been tacky even if it had anticipated the Supreme Court decision made the day of the film's release. No one really comes to a MacFarlane project to see a serious courtroom drama, and trying to be one, even for a few moments, is like watching Jim Carrey trying to do Shakespeare.
T Campbell has written quite a few online comics series and selected work for Marvel, Archie and Tokyopop. His longest-running works are Fans, Penny and Aggie-- and his current project with co-writer Phil Kahn, Guilded Age.
