Confound you, Comedy Central!

[robodog]

And they kind of ruined Brian's character. what was once a deadpan snarker that was a voice of reason turned into an obnoxious mouthpiece for whatever bug that was up the writers' butts that week. And when people complained and started to hate the character rather than revert him to his old likeable self they just turned him into a punching bag who gets crapped on all the time.

 

[Drtooth]

I didn't really mind Brian being the character they used to rant about stuff. I remember seeing the American Dad episode about Bush with commentary... THAT was really ranty and you can tell Seth was really ticked off the entire commentary. Brian did it way too much. He's far better in episodes where him and Stewie go on adventures. They gave him a crapload of depth in the bank vault episode. But I really hated when they turned Peter into a child. it was cute the first couple times, but they do it every episode.

But the thing that was really missing was the tone of the show. The Simpsons was basically supposed to be part based off of Matt Groening's life part parody of 1950's sitcoms... Family Guy was basically a parody of late 70's early 80's type sitcoms, and everyone learned a lesson with tongue firmly in cheek. Even the cutaway gags made more sense (and were much quicker), and the 1980's cartoon parodies were usually confined to something Peter was watching on TV. The show got renewed and seemed like where it was when it left off, then the gamers and AS viewers took over the show, they dumped the 80's cartoon references for dumb stuff... The show has recently gotten somewhat better, but I really miss those first few seasons.

 

[Teheheman]

The first few seasons of Family Guy, I feel, were less 4th wall breaking. They were less "Just like the time where I was the magic mirror for Kevin Federline" and more "Like the time where you got drunk off the communion wine at church". They were more realistic cutaways to things that could have actually happened rather than just random cutaways to things in Peters imagination or things that are pop culture references. The Simpsons did that kind of thing too but they didn't do it every single episode and if they DID do it, it was more of an imagination kind of thing or in pictures on the wall and not just cutting away to something random. They saved those for clip shows lol.

Daniel

 

[Drtooth]

The Simpsons did that kind of thing too but they didn't do it every single episode and if they DID do it, it was more of an imagination kind of thing or in pictures on the wall and not just cutting away to something random. They saved those for clip shows lol.

Naw... they just kept making Homer stupider and made him take up different jobs.

Thankfully they toned that down recently.

 

[robodog]

Both Homer and Peter tended to get dumber as their respective series progressed.