Fall 2006 Returing Shows Rank: 7 During it's 9th season, South Park ran a two-part episode entitled "Cartoon Wars". The gist of the story was that Cartman despised the cartoon Family Guy, so he Power Wheel-ed out to Hollywood to destroy it. The story was actually about censorship, but South Park took some pretty brutal digs at Family Guy (the FG writing staff turned out to be a group of trained Manatees). Their complaint about Family Guy was that their jokes are totally random and rarely have anything to do with the story. If you've ever seen an episode of Family Guy, you know about these jokes. A character will finish a sentence with a line that resembles, "..like the time when ____." Then, we will flashback to what the character was reminiscing about.
There are two things we know about these flashbacks (if you can call them that): 1) They have nothing to do with that episode's story, and 2) They are (usually) funny, at least to me and the people I know. South Park iterated that all of their comedy arises organically from the story. This is, more or less, completely true and it begs an important question about comedy: Is it important for laughs to be organic? Or is a laugh a laugh, doesn't matter how apt it is to the plot? Comparing South Park and Family Guy in this regard probably isn't fair; South Park is the far better show. However, at times, Family Guy may seem like a funnier show. The reason for this is that Family Guy simply has more jokes per episode, a result of their format, which relies on random, plot-free jokes. South Park, while attempting less jokes per episode, succeeds at a far greater percentage. Where laughs come from is important, but a show like Family Guy serves a different purpose than South Park. All Family Guy wants to do is make you laugh for a half-hour every week, and has no agenda. You may not remember any of the jokes an hour later, but you will remember that you laughed your ass off. -Oscar Dahl << Return to Fall Preview 1-10