Who said I had to limit idiots of the year to just sports. The honest and cruel reality is that idiots are everywhere, not just in sports. You can see an idiot in the street. Maybe your boyfriend/girlfriend/friend with benefits is an absolute moron. Yup, they can qualify too. Nobody is safe. That's why this week, we're going to take a look at the creator of one of my favorite TV shows and nominate him for idiot of the year. His name is Seth MacFarlane.
Yup, this guy has made more money than I could ever dream of in my lifetime. He has followed in the footsteps of other famous adult cartoonists such as Matt Groening and Trey Parker/Matt Stone. His flagship show, Family Guy, was pretty good over the first three seasons. MacFarlane used the same formula that the other cartoonists used to start out their show: Take an everyday example of what a family would do and blow it out of proportion.
For example, in the first three seasons, there were great episodes. "Lethal Weapons" remains my favorite Family Guy episode ever where Lois takes karate lessons and becomes an ass-kicking machine and eventually tries to overtake Peter as the man in the family. As you can see, it's an everyday situation that goes absolutely out of control.
However, then came the money. Some people can handle money. Money has never went to Joe Mauer's head (or so we think, let's wait until next offseason for that one). However, it went to Manny Ramierez's head pretty quick (Manny being Manny as an example). MacFarlane is more like Manny Ramierez than Joe Mauer at this point.
He got away from the formula that made him so successful. As a result, his shows have greatly declined in quality, but now we have quality. In addition to Family Guy, we now have American Dad. A lot of people like this show, but I've never liked it for whatever reason. He's also given us the Cleveland Show, which is like a carbon copy of Family Guy...only worse. However, MacFarlane earns about 50 million a year for writing these shows, so we're not going to see anything change.
Because MacFarlane is spreading himself so thin, he's started to write random stories such as Peter buying a challenged horse, then the US Army comes in to take it away, but then Peter builds his own terminator to help keep the horse.
Also, the character development doesn't make sense anymore. Remember when Stewie was smart and wanted to take over the world. Now he's a homosexual baby? When did this happen? More importantly why did this happen? Sure, maybe I'm looking into it too deep, but I think the show would be better if they stuck to Stewie's world domination bit.
I have the space to get into MacFarlane's "Live but not live but live why the hell did I just waste 30 minutes of my life watching this piece of @#$% special." But I'm not going to because instead of making him entertaining, he just looks like an arrogant asshole.
Sadly, this won't change as the audience that watches Family Guy has one common trait: ADHD. I am included (but I don't have that disorder...let's go steal a car!) in the people who still watches it because sometimes there is a good one (such as last week when Stewie tried to get Hannah Montana tickets and found out that Miley Cyrus was a cyborg) but that is happening less and less.
McFarlane may be getting paid 50 million a year and he may have a gigantic cartoon army that he could sick on me, but there is one truth that MacFarlane may never know. No matter how big Family Guy gets, it will NEVER be as good as the Simpsons was and in some ways still is. So Seth MacFarlane, you are now in the running for the 2009 Idiot of The Year Award.
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