All 13-year-old boys are on board with “Family Guy.”
They love this show, and no wonder. It’s silly, subversive and caters to a 13-year-old boy’s endless craving for humor about bodily emissions.
Among this particular demo, the fact that “Family Guy” is also breathtakingly smart is just a bonus or even beside the point. But the deft blend of the ingenious with the raw helps account for its much broader appeal, as it taps into every viewer’s inner 13-year-old boy.
This Fox animated series airs at 9 p.m. Sundays, as well as on TBS and Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim; check your listings.
In its absurd incongruities, the show catalogs the detritus of modern life. In its devilish flights of fancy, it targets how things might be, if the world were only slightly more deranged.
Peter Griffin is a cheery, melon-bellied dolt. He is married to randy redhead Lois, a closet kook who indulges Peter’s almost limitless shortcomings.
Teenage son Chris is not only slovenly and overweight, but, by every indication, mentally disabled. Dowdy daughter Meg hates herself; her parents hate her more.
Stewie is a pint-sized megalomanic, raging at humanity with an aristocrat’s haughtiness. (“Fie on your toilet!” the diapered toddler blasts his elders on the issue of potty-training — “it’s made slaves of you all!”)
The only character who can hear Stewie is Brian, the Griffins’ dog, who stands upright, speaks several languages, reads the paper and likes his martinis dry. He has an unrequited lust for Lois, but otherwise, his tastes are those of a sophisticate.
“Family Guy” mocks politics, pop culture, celebrity, show-biz shtick and TV in particular, beginning with a sitcom sendup as Peter and Lois, at their piano, sing the theme song:
”… Where are those good old-fashioned values on which we used to rely? Lucky there’s a Family Guy …”
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