The Top 10 Times Family Guy Crossed the Line:
Before you ask......yes, this IS inspired by Watchmojo.com's recent list and if you enjoy reading this, I reccomend you go check it out.
1. The joke about winetasting at Michael J. Fox's house. Making fun of celebrities doesn't bother me, it all depends on HOW they make fun of them. Making fun of a celebrity for doing/saying something stupid, their attitude, even their looks isn't offensive to me in the least but when they start briniging real people's disabilities into it. Yeah, I definitely have a problem with that. I'm not the only one saying this either as even some of the most diehard Family Guy fans I know have claimed that the episode bothered them as well.
2. Terri Schiavo:The Musical. Again, this one is listed for the same reason as above. Making fun of handicapped people is by far one of the easiest ways to get under my skin. This one was especially rude and made me stop watching the show for a while......although I just recently started watching it again and while the majority of episodes are funny to me, this scene is definitely worth skipping over.
3. The scene where Peter has a flashback of making fun of his college buddy Bob back in high school. Peter and his friends are shown mocking Bob while he's standing next to his mothers gravestone at a graveyard, laughing, pointing, and saying
"Hahaha!! Bob misses his mommy!!". This scene bothered me on a personal level due to bad timing. The first time I watched this episode was the 20th anniversary of my Grandma's unfortunate death. Naturally, I spent most of the day sad about how I never got to meet her, my mom even made a tribute to her beloved mother by making one of her recipes for dinner. So that evening, to get my mind back into "happy mode" I decided to watch Family Guy (a show that usually never fails to make me smile
on rough days) but seeing that unexpected joke where Peter makes fun of the death of another person's mom definitely didn't help me feel any better considering the circumstances I was going through let's put it that way.
4. This one isn't offensive but just overly gross:The scene in Brian & Stewie where Brian is forced to eat Stewie's poop. He then throws up for about 5 seconds and Stewie proceeds to force him at gunpoint to eat his own throw up "for dessert" afterwards. While we don't actually see the poop and vomit on screen thankfully, the sound effects are very disgusting and it's quite hard to watch such extreme toilet humor unfold right before our eyes with no background music or cutaway gags to lighten the mood.
5. While I'm a very strong Christian, the religious jokes on the show don't generally bother me. That being said, there was one specific religious gag that made me a bit upset. It was the one where Peter was watching The Passion of the Christ and jokingly said,
"I can't believe this guy is just lying there taking it! If it was me, I would've done something about it!" and it cut to Peter dressed as Jesus getting whipped by a Roman soldier. He looks over at the soldier and says,
"Stop it........now!" the soldier then puts down his whip and runs away. Making Jesus say and do silly things like Family Guy does in plenty of episodes is one thing but portraying him as a wimp who couldn't even say "Stop" rather than a man who endured all of that pain and torture
out of His love for us is backwards in every way.
6. The Elizabeth Smart joke. For those who aren't familiar with her, Elizabeth Smart was a real little girl who was abducted and raped. Family Guy somehow thought it would be "edgy" to mock the horrifying things this poor little girl witnessed but I know one thing.......I definitely didn't think it was the least bit funny. I really hope her parents or even Elizabeth herself who has thankfully now gotten over the trauma never saw that clip because it's very sickening to think that anyone would exploit a little girl's trauma like that for a cheap laugh.
7. Peter Griffin Junior was apparently's Peter's first son who died after his dad shook him to death for crying too loud. I'm sorry but how is anything I said in the last sentence even moderately funny? Tragic circumstances are inherently unfunny but this gag in particular felt rushed and lazy. If they had at least attemped to make an actual joke out of it it could've been somewhat darkly comedic but leaving it at simply "Look, there's a dead baby" makes it seem more tragic than anything else.
8. Another one that is more gross than offensive:The entire episode where Stewie gets himself pregnant with Brian's babies. The thought of an male infant getting pregnant with a dog's puppies thanks to some weird machine and then giving birth through his nose is twisted in more ways than one. The only thing I liked in the episode was the Top Chef:Looney Tunes Edition cutaway. Calling Sylveter's dish "Sufferin' Succotash' was extremely clever.
9. Nearly all of season 12 was needlessly gross and uncomfortably weird & disturbing. The blood, gore, poop, and vomit jokes were taken up to eleven, some of the violent scenes seemed like they would be more at home in a horror movie than an animated sitcom, and it had some bizarre borderline nightmarish surreal sequences that would put Pink Elephants on Parade to shame.
10. The Rocky Dennis joke from "Petarded". The only reason this is #10 is because Seth confirmed in an interview that he didn't know Rocky Dennis was a real person and though he was just a made-up movie character. Additionally, I don't really care for the episode title either as it as obviously a reference to the awful "R-word".
Honorable Mentions:
-Screams of Silence:The Brenda Q story. To be honest, I kind of enjoyed this episode. It potrayed domestic violence in a serious and dramatic way rather than making a crude joke out of it. The scene where Quagmire gives the long, heartfelt speech to his sister almost makes me tear up. Plus the cutaways in this one are just genius. IRAQ LOBSTER! lol
-The Margo Kidder joke. Making fun of a celebrity having a mental breakdown probably isn't the best idea but the rest of the episode was nothing but an all out laugh fest, so I could forgive the writers for inlcuding that one slighlty questionable thing.
-The Epicac drinking contest one. Personally, I REALLY like this one. If anything Lois's
"WHO WANTS CHOWDER!" line at the end of the scene makes the entire thing worthwhile.
The Top 5 Times Family Guy Didn't Go Far Enough:
Now it's time for the scenes that were more of the "Meh" category for me. Yup, the groaners that felt rushed, lazy, or WAY too silly.
1. The Xenomorph from Alien talking in a weird voice for no reason. I know who the Alien character is so it's not a matter of whether I get the reference or not. While it did make me laugh in a "What the heck did I just watch?" kinda way, it's still hard to imagine how this one actually got on the air because the only people who are entertained by such simplicity as funny voices are little kids who would probably be too scared of the Xenomorph's design to laugh.
2. Stewie claiming that he was attacked by an owl and an eagle. After making this statement, he makes a very awful pun by saying that the owl was in caHOOTS with the eagle. That one really made me role my eyes as it felt more like an Annoying Orange joke.
3. Stewie as Ferris Bueller. I get the reference but I don't think it's funny because they literally just copied the scene frame by frame from the movie. That's not a parody, that's bordering on copyright infrigement.
4. Any of the REALLY long gags. Conway Twitty, the chicken fights, Peter falling and going "Owww!" for five minutes, you name it. All of the cutaways of that nature just annoy the crap out of me. I can see where some of people might think they are funny but Family Guy wares me out with those jokes.
5. Brian and Stewie visiting "the dimension where everybody constantly has to poop,". Really!? That isn't even 2nd Grade humor! Did they hand the script to a seven year old that week and ask him to write whatever he wants? Because there's no way an adult thought it would be clever to right something so puerile.
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