8. The Griffins Family Guy
In a couple of entries time, I plan on writing some spiel about sitcoms emulating the dysfunctional family trope re-defined by the Simpsons in the last two decades there's no better example of this than the Griffins of Seth Macfarlane's Family Guy. The similarities between these two families are obvious, right down to the parents-with-three-kids-and-a-pet-dog set-up. With Family Guy however, they take that dysfunctional theme and stretch it to its limits. In recent years, the production team for Family Guy have had trouble tempering their desire to write daring, controversial episodes with the need to create content that won't alienate the show's substantial fan base. The Griffins have always been a force of nature on account of their hare-brained sensibilities, but now the direction of a lot of their episodes look as if the writers have gone as far as they can within the normal parameters of their characters and have thus opted to take their established personality traits to an extreme that's more desperate than funny. All this of course has resulted in Brian- the martini-sipping, pot-smoking Democrat being mercilessly killed off and replaced with another talking pet to cultivate new family dynamics, much to the ire of many viewers. The sad thing about this situation is that the Griffins have historically been a very entertaining group to watch. Unlike the seamless, above-board humour of the Simpsons, we're invited to explore our dark sides vicariously through each member of the family at 31 Spooner St. There's Peter and Lois for instance, who could be good parents if the former didn't invest so much time in ridiculously expensive, short lived plans and the latter kept her hands off drugs and her daughter's boyfriends. Or there was Brian and Stewie's intercontinental adventures that saw them battling Nazis, flying planes and car-jacking defenceless civilians, among other things. In my humble opinion, Family Guy would do well to go back to basics and focus on fusing the surrealism of the Griffin's frenetic lifestyle with the cut-away scenes that provided an amusing and sometimes scarily accurate social commentary on popular culture. Although I too am angered by Brian's death, perhaps his sacrifice will allow them the opportunity to achieve this. In any case, axing Brian him was a huge gamble. I had a few gripes with his character, but he didn't deserve to go out the way he did and will be sorely missed.