Family Guy

[DannyM]

I will agree with DannyM, however, that Frasier is a great show (don't like Friends though). Its relatively sophisticated...

Don't get me wrong, Friends can be silly at times, but the 'comedy' and ‘timing’ at times are impeccable. As for Frazier, this is on another level. I think it is one of the all time greats. It is huge over here as the sophisticated yet at times absurd humour really does strike a chord with the British. Frazier and Niles are superb!

[Kenzel]

The Simpsons is better anyway

[narnia4]

I will agree with DannyM, however, that Frasier is a great show (don't like Friends though). Its relatively sophisticated...

Don't get me wrong, Friends can be silly at times, but the 'comedy' and ‘timing’ at times are impeccable. As for Frazier, this is on another level. I think it is one of the all time greats. It is huge over here as the sophisticated yet at times absurd humour really does strike a chord with the British. Frazier and Niles are superb!

Yes that's one of the things I like about Frasier. They have a lot of the "in" jokes, but they don't shy away from physical humor or gags either.

[Kenzel]

I will agree with DannyM, however, that Frasier is a great show (don't like Friends though). Its relatively sophisticated...

Don't get me wrong, Friends can be silly at times, but the 'comedy' and ‘timing’ at times are impeccable. As for Frazier, this is on another level. I think it is one of the all time greats. It is huge over here as the sophisticated yet at times absurd humour really does strike a chord with the British. Frazier and Niles are superb!

Yes that's one of the things I like about Frasier. They have a lot of the "in" jokes, but they don't shy away from physical humor or gags either.

I love Frasier..I always laugh whenever they try do describe Maris

[zoegirl]

Family Guy is very obnoxious although I will admit that the creator has a lot of wit and talent, the tragedy is he feels he needs ot direct it so vulgar a level.

I think, if we are going for wit, then futurama is far better, far more witty, and even though there are irreverent parts, it's far more....high level irreverence.

[Silvertusk]

^

I suppose everybody has different tastes.

I do not find humor in mocking a man who changed my life so drastically for the better, and that is what family guy is starting to do more and more. Think about what jesus did for you, think about how he would feel if you mock that. God has humor I suppose, but I do not believe he finds humor in mocking him being tourtured and dieing on a cross, I believe he holds that as a gift to us. If your father gave you 1 million dollars after he died, would you go on the streets with signs telling the world what a awful man he was and make fun of all his faults. The answer should be no to that.

I agree with you here Murray and I admire your stance on this. This is certainly a weakness of mine - watching things that as a Christian I really should not. (My main weakness is vampire movies). And I am getting better and turning them off. For instance - stopped watching True Blood because that just got too "dark". Stopped watching "Being Human" for the same reason. Having trouble stopping watching "The Fades" at the moment (a new BBC3 series). As Paul says we need to go with the good and pure things of life - and I know I should not be watching it - but it is really good TV. It does have an overarcing good vs evil theme to it. But as we all are - I am certainly a work in progress.

Silvertusk.

[La Volpe]

Personally I've never liked family guy. I tried watching it I just didn't get it, and now that they have all these religious jokes I just don't get why people enjoy that you know? I do like the Simpsons and yes they have religious jokes but they're subtle and not incredulously offensive like the episode about catholics for instance. Yes it mocked catholics but it never called them wrong or stupid in any way. I think Fraiser is one of the greatest shows ever I watch it just about every day. Theres even one episode of Fraiser where he teaches a small religious message in the show and the humor is just more original and theres no overdone gags or anything.

[Rob]

I used to watch and like Family Guy. Now I don't call it "Family Guy" anymore. I call it "Kinda like that time when I."

So if someone's watching it, I'll ask "Oh, watching some 'Kinda like that time when I,' eh?"
It sometimes takes a minute, but they usually get it.

[Callisto]

I watched maybe the first year of it when it started and was getting popular. It was actually pretty funny. Then it went downhill and got crass, vulgar, offensive, etc. I'm not going to watch (or pay) anyone to make fun of God. Yes we'll all get the last laugh in the end but that's not the point.

[DannyM]

I saw an episode where Brian met a likeminded female atheist, and all they could do was make puns on their atheism, even when ordering a meal in restaurant. They could not have a conversation without reference to their atheism. That episode seemed to ridicule the atheist's obsession with their unbelief.

There was also an episode where the anti-Conservative Brian was shown up for being just as dogmatic about Conservatives as (he was complaining) Conservatives are with Liberals. Just as biased, just as entrenched.

[zoegirl]

that's about it, though, sadly the pot-shots he takes at Christians, Jesus, and Christianity are far more than the occasional one. (although the one where Brian was taken to task did surprise me)

[Dudeacus97]

It seems that atheists love those kinds of jokes and take them seriously. And by "atheists", I mean the "closeminded, ignorant, stupid, rage-filled ones that accuse everybody else of the same things." Or, as I call them, YouTube atheists. If you go onto YouTube, or as I call it, the Sewer of the Internet, you will find a lot of Family Guy religious jokes with titles like "Family Guy Explains Religion", "Family Guy Teaches Evolution", or "Family Guy Destroys Religion". Of course, there are also more serious ones... explained by Family Guy, such as "If Christianity Never Existed" (The only funny thing about it is how BS it is), and "Religion in a Nutshell" (a bunch of Hebrews stabbing each other after hearing about the birth of Jesus.)

It's not just with Family Guy, either. I've seen it for Real Time With Bill Maher, Penn & Teller, Futurama, and Monty Python and the Life of Brian. It seems that most comedy today will make fun of Christianity. South Park seems to be an exception, since they seem to make fun of everybody. In one two-parter called "Go God Go", three civilizations of atheists in the future kill each other over what to call each other, spawining lines such as "Oh my Science!", "Science H. Logic!", "Praise Science", and, my personal favorite, "SCIENCE DAMN YOU TIMECHILD!!!" ("Timechild" is what the people in the future call Eric Cartman, since he time-traveled by freezing himself in the mountains in order to get a game console.) After watching that episode, I convinced an atheist to say "Oh My Science!" instead of "Oh My G-d".

[Stygian]

If you go onto YouTube, or as I call it, the Sewer of the Internet

Spend an hour on 4chan... I dare you...

Personally, I enjoy shows like Futurama. There are parts that are sac-religious, but the creators are smart about it. Seth McFarlane, however... isn't that clever. Family Guy is just tasteless, and not smart comedy at all. I can deal with atheist humor if they legitimately point out the absurdity in it. To really observe something and be able to find the absurdity in it, you need to be smart. This is why I often opt for comedians that show some sort of intellect.

Futurama is legitimately thought-provoking at times, especially the episode Godfellas. Here we see "The God Entity," which is a gaseous, sentient cloud in space that the character Bender comes across. Bender asks it if he's God, and it replies "Possible. I do feel compassion for all living things." In this same episode, Bender gets to play god for a civilization of small people living on a asteroid who get stuck to his body. These people assume Bender is their 'Metal Lord' and Bender abuses his power by making them create a giant brewery to make him some beer. I won't go much farther, but let's just say there's some great quotes...


God Entity: Bender, being God isn't easy. If you do too much, people get dependent on you. And if you do nothing, they lose hope.

God Entity: When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.

And my favorite...
Bender: So do you know I'm going to do something before I do it?
God Entity: Yes.
Bender: What if I do something else?
God Entity: Then I don't know that.

This is really my favorite Futurama episode. It has a very open-ended ending (which is also why I love the film 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?'), it's not outright hostile or mean-spirited toward either side. The episode's writer, Ken Keeler, is an atheist, and tried to refrain from the entity calling himself 'God.' The entity even denies having omniscience (not knowing which direction Earth is, and doesn't know English until Bender says something), and doesn't seem to be omnipresent (limited to a large, yet finite area) or omnipotent (isn't able to help Bender get home right away).

But all-in-all, Futurama is simply a much smarter show. Family Guy is immature, ignorant, and at times, downright hateful and mean-spirited... not to mention plagiaristic.

South Park seems to be an exception, since they seem to make fun of everybody.

One of the creators of South Park, Trey Parker, doesn't seem to friendly to the story of Christ, saying it doesn't make sense to him.

"The story of Jesus makes no sense to me. God sent his only son. Why could God only have one son and why would he have to die? It's just bad writing, really. And it's really terrible in about the second act."

However, he says the atheist explanation of life is far more ridiculous.

"Out of all the ridiculous religion stories which are greatly, wonderfully ridiculous, the silliest one I've ever heard is, 'there's this big giant universe and it's expanding, it's all gonna collapse on itself and we're all just here just 'cause'. That, to me, is the most ridiculous explanation ever."

The other creator, Matt Stone, is 'ethnically Jewish,' but says he's an atheist. But I believe he's a libertarian of sorts, which means he probably believes that if atheists have total power or religious control in the world, there will still be conflict due to important differing ideas.

[Dudeacus97]

Spend an hour on 4chan... I dare you...

Personally, I enjoy shows like Futurama. There are parts that are sac-religious, but the creators are smart about it. Seth McFarlane, however... isn't that clever. Family Guy is just tasteless, and not smart comedy at all. I can deal with atheist humor if they legitimately point out the absurdity in it. To really observe something and be able to find the absurdity in it, you need to be smart. This is why I often opt for comedians that show some sort of intellect.

But all-in-all, Futurama is simply a much smarter show. Family Guy is immature, ignorant, and at times, downright hateful and mean-spirited... not to mention plagiaristic.

I remember there was another episode of Futurama where several Egypt-like aliens say this:

Priest: Oh, Great wall of Prophecies, we subject ourselves to you!
People: And give up free will!
Priest: Oh, Great Wall of Prophecies, we give up free thought to please you!
People: We are dumb!

I saw it in something that some atheist posted on YouTube, saying "Futurama explains religion." That was the first time I saw any Futurama clips, so I wasn't interested in it at first, seeing that it was probably another stupid atheist show. Also, Godfellas, according to the Futurama wiki, is used to help teens in Youth Groups.

Also, the only other episode that largely had religious themes is their episode on evolution. The episode starts out when Farnsworth's son interrupts his experiment saying that he couldn't go into school past the proetestors for "Creaturism", which totally isn't Young Earth Creationism in strawman format. They are led by Dr. Banjo, a talking, super-intelligent Orangutan that leads the Creaturism movement. After debating evolution with a presentation of missing links, Farnsworth sets out to find the final missing link, which he finds and names Homo Farnsworth. When he presents it to a convention of scientists, Dr. Banjo shows Farnsworth a picture of Homo Farnsworth riding a dinosaur, saying that it disproves evolution. Angered, Farnsworth goes out to prove evolution by putting nanobots in a tide pool. After the crew witnesses the nanobots turn into the equivalent of modern-day humans over a span of a few days, Farnsworth tells the robots their true origin. They think that evolution brought them to the state where they are at over the span of eons, but Dr. Farnsworth tells them that they were there after a couple of days. They call Farnsworth a creationist and put him on trial, but he responds with a hologram of Bender riding a robotic dinosaur. In the end, Dr. Farnsworth and Dr. Banjo both agree that theistic evolution makes the most sense, but then say that they find God ridiculous.

I also refused to watch Ted because I hate Seth's shows. They're not even that funny. Family Guy used to be very funny. A few nights ago, I watched two episodes of Season Three family guy that involved the Grim Reaper and I laughed out loud. Of course, this was before Seth MacFarlane went all preachy, and if they were made now, then it would probably involve something very stupid, such as Death saying "You believe in that heaven BS" or having Brian talking to God about how no afterlife would be better in Seth's opinion. American Dad isn't even that good, either, and the Cleveland Show is terrible.

[Stygian]

Also, the only other episode that largely had religious themes is their episode on evolution.

Ah, yes. A Clockwork Origin I believe. I enjoyed that episode as well, with Farnsworth's famous line, "I don't want to live on this planet anymore." Just a correction, though, I'm pretty sure Farnsworth left Earth because he was fed up with the Creationists, and found a little 'planet' for him to live on. The water wasn't clean, so he sent out the nanobots to clean it up, and then they began evolving, much to Bender's joy. =D

I liked that episode too, since it challenges the notion that all can be explained with science.

Futurama is generally a smarter show, but it's not free from the blatant, less intelligent remarks most shows have.