Book Home Books Information Family Guy

Family Guy

Family Guy is an animated television series originally created by Seth MacFarlane for FOX in 1999. The show was cancelled in 2002, but after unprecedented positive response to DVDs and reruns on Cartoon Network, production of new episodes for FOX resumed in 2005. The title character is Peter Griffin, head of an Irish-Catholic, middle class family frequently beset by the consequences of his foolish antics. Family Guy's brand of humor is notable for the brief, frequently nonsensical cutaways and flashbacks to various points in history, geography, and reality involving the characters and their ludicrous actions (see "Structural and comedic approach" below).

Seth MacFarlane, the creator of Family Guy, also serves as a writer on the show, and voices many of the characters. The cast also includes That '70s Show star Mila Kunis, actor Seth Green, MADtv star Alex Borstein, and comedic actor Patrick Warburton.

Episodes
In keeping with the humorous tone of the series, most episode titles of Family Guy are parodies of popular television shows, movies, and mottos.

For the first half of the first season, the writers tried to work the words "murder" or "death" into the title of every episode (i.e., "Mind over Murder" and "Death has a Shadow"). On a DVD commentary, creator Seth McFarlane says that the writers stopped doing this when they realized they were beginning to get the titles confused.

The film
The first Family Guy film, due for release as a direct-to-video movie on 27 September 2005, focuses on Stewie seeing somebody he believes to be his real father and setting off on a road trip to find him. Originally three separate (though continuous) episodes as part of the fourth season, the DVD puts them together and includes additional materials. You can currently see a one minute scene from the movie here.