DVD Review: Family Guy Volume Seven
Seth MacFarlane's Animated Comedy on Fox Television
Jul 6, 2009 Dominic von Riedemann
In the two-part episode "Cartoon Wars," South Park's Trey Parker and Matt Stone claimed that Family Guy's writers were merely manatees who wrote jokes by pushing random "idea balls" into a hopper.
After viewing Family Guy Volume Seven DVD – a 3-disc set that features all 13 episodes of Season 7 – there's only one thing to say: the manatees have jumped the shark.
Seth MacFarlane, Seth Green, Mila Kunis Voice Roles in Fox's Family Guy Volume Seven
Technically, Family Guy follows the misadventures of the Griffin family: bumbling dad Peter (creator Seth MacFarlane); long-suffering mom Lois (Alex Borstein); teenage daughter Meg (Kunis); dumb-as-a-bag-o'-hammers son Chris (Green); megalomaniac baby Stewie (also MacFarlane) and talking dog Brian (MacFarlane, yet again).
However, the real action isn't with the threadbare stories that jump around like an epileptic spider on a hot skillet. It's the digressive jokes – sample gag: "Remember that time when Freddie Krueger, Bill Murray and Barbara Bush had a threesome in the Star Wars cantina?" Cue the visuals – that show up at random points during each episode.
It's the show's trademark, and also why everyone from Carol Burnett to music publishers Bourne Company have taken Family Guy to court over copyright infringement.
It's a concept with a limited shelf life (South Park eventually stopped killing Kenny in every episode). Unfortunately, MacFarlane hasn't figured that out yet. It's not just that the cutaway gags have become cliché and something you can set your watch by, they're simply no longer funny. Worse yet, the sequences keep going long after the initial reveal, like a comedian who says "Eh? Eh?" after his latest joke just bombed.
Spread that out over 13 episodes – each running between 20 to 23 minutes – one's eyeballs eventually start to bleed. It's like that time when Joan Rivers and Orson Welles tried out their tag-team exotic dancing act.
DVD Extras
Not even the presence of Seth Green (who co-created the genuinely funny Robot Chicken) can save these painful audio commentaries. MacFarlane and the rest of the Family Guy crew use them as a gab-fest, discussing all their favourite in-jokes that no one else will get. It's like that time when Todd Bridges, Corey Haim and Brigitte Nielson got together at a party and traded drug overdose stories (Are these digressions beginning to annoy you, too?).
There are also 3 animatic episodes with commentary, deleted scenes (good for half-a-chuckle, max) plus 4 behind-the-scenes featurettes.
"Take Me Out to Place Tonight" shows how Frank Sinatra Jr. got involved with the episode "Tales of a Third Grade Nothing:" genuinely interesting, and there's clearly a lot of love between Old Blue Eyes' son/musical director and MacFarlane. "Family Guy Cribz" is a tour through the show's offices, where the viewer sees how Family Guy is put together, and why everyone's 30 pounds overweight by the end of the season.
"Comic-Con 2008" shows the Family Guy panel discussion at the popular comic convention, while "Family Guy Art Show" films the show's artists auctioning off their work for charity.
The Final Analysis
Just to make sure it wasn't this reviewer who mysteriously had his funny bone removed, this DVD was screened with a group of friends.
After two episodes, one decided that reading Romeo Dallaire's book Shake Hands With the Devil was more enjoyable, another tried to remove her eyes with a rusty spoon, and a third hopped in his car to go hunt down Seth MacFarlane and feed him through a meat grinder, feet-first. Seth, consider yourself warned.
Family Guy Volume Seven gets a 2/10.
Family Guy V7 DVD cover
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