5. From Outrageous Yet Heart-Warming To Just Plain Shocking
At its outset, Family Guy was a more shocking version of The Simpsons. Yes, both owe a lot to The Flintstones, but Family Guy's beginnings were closer to the yellowish folk from Springfield than the prehistoric family from Bedrock. However, Family Guy was always a little more adult than The Simpsons. A little more shocking. It's why the show worked so well on Adult Swim when it debuted back in 2003. However, most episodes still had an underlying moral or lesson to them. "To Live and Die in Dixie," "A Hero Sits Next Door," "Chitty Chitty Death Bang" - all of those classic episodes were essentially little morality tales in the end. Love your family, put them first. Don't judge a book by its cover. What happened to those in later seasons? They just wound up lost along the way, in favour of eating poop from a diaper, herpes, "shocking" sex jokes (Peter losing his memory and cheating on Lois, Lois having a porn star past, etc.). It's not that we mind shocking; the show was always shocking. It's just that it seems to have lost what made it work in the first place, the emphasis on family - even if it's a messed up family - and the lessons that came with it.
Primarily covering the sport of MMA from Ontario, Canada, Jay Anderson has been writing for various publications covering sports, technology, and pop culture since 2001. Jay holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Guelph, and a Certificate in Leadership Skills from Humber College.
