The observation that comedy dominates the sphere of adult animated media and that such comedy is often reliant on the vulgar has an element of truth to it. 

 

But this is where the conversation usually ends and there’s often an undercurrent of disgust at said vulgarity. Implicit in this disgust is a desire for a return to the restraint of children’s programming and this breeds an association between the absence of vulgarity and maturity. Such assumptions, however, are bullshit. 

 

Would River of Fundament be half as powerful without the scene of Ptah-Nem-Hotep explaining the sacred nature of the feces he uses to fertilise a garden? 

 

Would Southland Tales be half as absurd without the scene of two SUVs having sex? 

 

Even something as aesthetically mediocre as Family Guy can inspire interesting conversations. 

 

For example, I would argue that at times it is morally indistinguishable from the shows that it is ostensibly satirising. The joke is often less about confronting the naïve falsehoods of the family sitcom with reality but rather that the same pat conclusions are reached with more blood, conflict, insults, and pop culture references. 

 

In the hands of a more canny auteur than McFarlane, I think this would have potential to be interesting. The show takes place in a shifting landscape where the very mechanics of the world can change from scene to scene as well as episode to episode – in “Farmer Guy”, Fox pays for Peter Griffin to buy a farm and yet this seemingly infinite well of money is not mentioned later in the same episode when financial troubles threaten to relieve the Griffins of possession of the land. Meanwhile, in “Meg Stinks!”, Peter funds his adventures by robbing banks. 

 

The show thus constantly reinvents the basis of its reality, presenting conflicting accounts not just of minor details but of things crucial to the show’s very functioning. The show also displays a kind of moral hypocrisy or schmaltziness at certain points – “Life of Brian” glosses over the flaws of Brian Griffin as a character, another episode has inspirational music play as Joe Swanson condemns a police officer for harassing our heroes while admitting that he himself knows of and has used the tricks the offending policeman utilised and the characters can act like children but still have their (rather trivial) moral revelations treated with utmost seriousness. 

 

The show straddles the line between intellectual childishness (manifesting in incuriosity and smugness) and the reality it presents (an ugly, consumerist America filled with flawed individuals who regularly partake in ruthless acts for their own amusement). 

 

It critiques and excuses its characters in equal measure, making the critiques feel utterly toothless.

 

How much more interesting would Family Guy be if it had more awareness of the central hypocrisy at the core of its presentation and so had more of a Brechtian edge? 

 

The dissonance would be intentional so as to awaken people to the ugliness of the narrative being satirised (e.g. the American nuclear family believing itself to be encroached upon by evil while itself being an originator of such moral decay – “Farmer Guy” would be an example of such a message but the episode does not delve enough into the negative consequences of the Griffins’ actions to truly utilise the dissonance between the glib presentation and dark subject matter as an aesthetic or critical tool. 

 

The family victimises rural America through contributing to the drug trade but remain psychologically unscarred and escape scot-free. This could be a good starting point for critique but their invulnerability is taken as a given and the audience is still expected to empathise with them.) 

 

Instead, it simply reproduces these ugly narratives. 

 

The shifting landscape could also be used as an aesthetic tool to promote alienation,  preventing traditional narrative investment. 

 

Or, inversely, the constant cheating and violence could still be exaggerated but carry a kind of psychological weight. This would make the show a black comedy that nonetheless invites people to laugh at that which one would not normally laugh at – proving that despair and laughter can co-exist just as horror film-makers often prove that ridiculousness and the grotesque interrelate. 

 

Both of these, however, would risk alienating people and so Family Guy simultaneously seeks to disturb while pulling its punches – it is too disturbing for the prudes and yet it is too blunt and idiotic in its handling of critique. Its only appeal is to individuals who accept its normie-friendly worldview and share its contempt toward that which is different. 

 

It is not so much a cynical show as a gleeful attack on the segments of society its writing team despises. It has no room for sadness or complexity and so cannot rise to the level of soul-crushing. 

 

Even this basic critique is beyond the level of most Family Guy discourse. Rarely do people talk about what the show does and how. 

 

Instead, the focus is on its low technical quality or poor messaging – what of the origins of these symptoms? Why is the messaging consistently poor? How does the amateurish technical quality clash with the ambitions of the program? 

 

While professional critics can and do think about these things and do often praise great adult works, young people tend to listen to internet critics over professional ones. The corporate stranglehold over animation leads to a lack of distinct filmic auteurs – these are replaced by showrunners beholden to greater deadlines, collaboration and restrictions. 

 

Television is a fundamentally commercial medium and even the few good television shows are often held back by this. 

 

Something like Lone Star’s cancellation two episodes into its run wouldn’t have been possible in the filmic medium (either the film would be made or it wouldn’t). 

 

The problem with television isn’t simply the commercialism but the low expectations of the audience and the sheer volume of output. Each show demands far more time than a film and there are many of them.