Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

It's funny, I've got a few years on you, and I have such a different memory of that show (to be clear, still schlock).

In the early 2000s, Family Guy was this kind of white whale. It had been canceled after 2-3 seasons. It was a thing you had to find on DVD or pirate. The audience was dipshit teenage boys who liked something transgressive without thinking much beyond that. There are a lot of those, and adults who act like those.

It was simpsons-ish, but more dark and crass, back when TV was a much smaller world. The revival in 2005 was a big thing. We only had so much TV. I think I binged Scrubs in HS.

It wasn't good, just crass and rude and often funny in crass and rude ways. It was different, and I use the word transgressive again. Perhaps if it had just stayed a cult thing, we'd see it differently.

But it turned out to be a money machine. Looking around our culture, a LOT of folks like crass and transgressive for the sake of crass and transgressive. And it's super easy to make, actor never age out.

Do you remember THE CRITIC and DUCKMAN animations from the mid-90s? Only airing for 2-3 seasons? These shows are still sort of white whale in the sense they're maybe on DVD or truncated on YouTube like I found them after dismissively growing out of shows like Family Guy and South Park somewhere between the time I could buy cigarettes and the time I could buy booze.

Their short life and somewhat obscure broadcastings established both as a cult thing and we do, in turn, see them differently; both are treated like scarce commodities deserving more respect. Retrospective criticisms of both are very favorable, often labeled as ahead of their time, and I agree, because when I first came across both, I was struck: So, this is where Family Guy learned to execute its more cheaply done pop-culture references and this is where South Park learned how to stage its satire.

Though critically favorable, The Critic and Duckman commercially failed where Family Guy succeeded in not dumbing itself down to what a twelve year old might find "edgy." They walked so Family Guy could (stupidly) run, so to speak.

One person I'd pinpoint as contributing a lot to bad TV is Mary Ellis-Bunim.  I believe she's the person behind the Real World from MTV back in the day.  In particular, her style that has spread to many of the crap shows on TV now is the splicing stock footage between segments or scenes.  It's literally just garbage filler that adds up to minutes of a show, seconds at a time. 
I hate when bad ideas spread like wildfire.

They have DVD sets of all those old movies in collections by actor - a good gift for elder statesmen. 


Here, dad, here's 7 John Wayne movies you can fall asleep to in between 10-hour Fox News marathons.  I love you.