Family Guy Season One
Product Description
To the ranks of shows too brilliant and outrageous for prime calculate (The Ben Stiller Show, Andy Richter Controls the Universe), add Seth McFarlane's Family Guy. This animated series, which debuted after the 1999 Super Bowl, simply sparked too much controversy and offended too many sensibilities to survive (Entertainment Weekly dubbed it the Appalling Show They Just Keep Putting on the Air). That the Fox network also played hackysack with its schedule, ensuring viewers would not be able to find it, sealed its fate (it was cancelled in 2002). This boxed set containing all 28 episodes from the first two seasons is payback for the show's devoted cult following, who may be went to echo the words of infant Stewie Griffin, the megalomaniacal 1-year-ancient bent on matricide and world domination: Victory is mine! The dysfunctional Griffins of Quahog, Rhode Island, invite comparisons to The Simpsons. The testicular-chinned father, Peter Griffin, is a clueless oaf in the Homer mold. Peter, what did you look excellent me last night? questions his long-suffering partner Lois in one episode. That I wouldn't drink at the stag party, he answers. And what did you do? she questions. Drank at the stag part--oh ho ho, I nearly walked into that one, he cackles. Other family members contain teenage daughter Meg, a reckless high school social pariah; 13-year-ancient son Chris, a chip off his father's blockhead; and Brian, the family's sarcastic talking dog. But this series' right inspiration is football-pated Stewie (voiced by McFarlane, who earned an Emmy), who was born to be a Bond villain once he escaped his mother's ovarian bastille. Family Guy recklessly ventured everywhere The Simpsons feared to tread. In one episode, Meg's one and only friend turns out to be the member of a suicidal cult. In a further, Death (voiced by Norm McDonald) becomes an unwanted houseguest. Each episode plays quick and furious with surreal flashes (in one episode, Peter turns his household into a puppet) and pop-polish references and TV, show, and commercial parodies that invite continual viewings. Freed from its own family-hour bastille and the whims of dim network executives, Family Guy can be appreciated at last on its own profane, sacrilegious, and irreverent terms. Welcome to the DVD family, Griffins. --Donald Liebenson
