Twenty-five years, two cancellations, and countless uncomfortably long cutaways later, Family Guy has certainly cemented itself as one of the most recognizable comedy series of all time, and Stewie still hasn’t aged a day.  Whether you love it or hate it, it’s difficult to disagree Seth MacFarlane has fought for his show’s success and earned it.  I’m personally in the camp of people who enjoy the show, and, though she wouldn’t admit it, I think my mother lost respect for me when she found that out (my father, on the other hand, may have gained a little).  My favorite type of humor has always been jokes that are so stupid they somehow loop back around to being intellectual, and the Griffin family’s antics truly embody that to me.  

Family Guy is older than I am, and I wasn’t allowed to watch it as a kid for… some reason, so it wasn’t until the past few years I’ve gotten to discover the wonders (and often the horrors) of its 22 seasons.  Watching it through, it was easy to understand its popularity, and it was also easy to understand its unpopularity.  No one is safe from the wrath of a Family Guy cutscene.  From Ray LaMontagne to Jesus to anyone relevant in politics at any given time, Family Guy is not afraid to step on anyone’s toes… or kick them in the shins.  It’s no stranger to tackling inflammatory topics, but what I enjoy so much about the show is it doesn’t seem to take itself, or anything or anyone, too seriously. 

It reaches for low-hanging fruit, sure, but, more often than not, it takes that fruit and launches an upside-down curveball at the wall with it.  I’ve seen enough Family Guy to know to expect the unexpected from it, but, even in its controversial newer seasons, I still rarely know which version of the unexpected to expect.  It makes me and the lovely low-humor loving people I watch it with laugh out loud almost every episode, and, in spite of its silliness, it also makes us look at things from different perspectives.

It feels weird to think of Family Guy as a thought-provoking piece, and, realistically, I know it’s not that serious, but I really do find myself thinking as I’m laughing how I never would have thought of a certain thing the certain way the show has presented it.  There’s genuinely a lot of talent behind Family Guy.  Making people laugh is an art form, and coming up with new ways to make people laugh for twenty-five years can’t have been easy.  Is the humor lowbrow, silly, and sometimes formulaic? Sure.  But it’s also self-aware and unpretentious.  Family Guy doesn’t claim to be anything other than what it is, and there’s something noble in that.  Its formula clearly strikes a chord (and the funny bone) in enough people that its contract has continued to be renewed for a quarter of a century (isn’t that a frightening way to measure it?). 


Family Guy isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and that’s okay, but, for those who do enjoy it, it has continued to be a source of good, mindless fun for twenty-five years, and that is no small feat.