Family Guy Presents Stewie Griffin - The Untold Story

Family Guy must be the single greatest animated comedy show ever made. There is not one episode that is not funny. The creator, Seth McFarlane, is a genius. His humor is witty and he makes use of every scene to bring out laughs. He has a unique style in his writing that incorporates flash back sequences. This tactic gives him the opportunity to put in hilarious (and often ridiculous) scenes into the show without disturbing the flow. The characters follow the basic formula for a sitcom family. Peter is the fat, stupid father. Lois is the smart, sexy wife. Chris is basically his father with an adolescent twist. Meg is the daughter that is desperate for attention. These characters alone are enough for a hit show, but McFarlane adds a few twists. He includes a cultured and facetious dog and a one year-old boy that is bent upon world domination; that is after he kills his mother, Lois, first. Each character is guaranteed to make you laugh and those are only the primary characters. The secondary characters (for example, the sex obsessed friend of Peters, Quagmire) are pure gold. One thing that is found in the Family Guy series that is not found in many other comedy cartoons is the quality of animation. Dont get me wrong, the animation does not look anywhere close to realistic, and I am not advocating that it is. I am saying that the animation plays a role in the comedy. It is entertaining watching the look on Loiss face when Peter tells her something crazy. It is a shame that the show was cancelled, but there is news that every Family Guy fan should hear. Since Family Guy started to air on Cartoon Network, it has gotten better ratings than Jay Lenno and David Letterman for the 11:30 time slot in the 18 to 35 demographic, which is the most valuable demographic by the way; and the DVD sales have grossed more than they could have ever hoped for. As a result, Fox is bringing it back on the air sometime in the beginning of 2005. The will also be sporting an unheard of 15 writers to be on their team. Not only that, but Seth McFarlane is also creating a new show that will be on Fox later this year. Spread the news. Not all TV shows have gone to the dumps. Salvation is on its way.

Other very detailed reviews already cover the episodes listing etc, so its pointless to add to the clamour. The show is a witty and darkly hilarious look at our society, and fans of the show (which really should be anyone with a couple of brain cells or more) should definitely pick up this terrific set. Ill pitch in a word about the DVD itself. The show is presented in its original 1.33:1 full-frame aspect ratio. The picture quality is good, although theres the occasional issue with jagged lines that occasionally appear on the earlier episodes (an issue with the animation itself?) The picture does offer the shows bright color palette though, vivid and well-saturated throughout. No instances of edge enhancement or pixelation appeared, as do on some of The Simpsons DVDs. The sountrack is Dolby 2.0 and my copy has subtitles in English, French and Spanish. The shows dialogue remains crisp and forward throughout, with the surround sound providing some reinforcement for music and occasional sound effects. Audio quality is superb, as sound effects remained clear (and occasionally punchy) throughout. Plus, the extras are great. Creator Seth McFarlane and various members of the cast and crew provide commentaries, there are over 20 deleted scenes provided in animatic (moving storyboards) form, the original pilot pitch (a rough, shortened version of the pilot episode), a 7-minute featurette on how the show pushed the envelope across its three seasons and a 17-minute documentary that takes a look at the overall series, from development to characters the voice talent. If you want to own a fab show, get these couple of seasons. The DVD is worth every penny and probably a little better than the 3rd season.

A consistently hilarious and original series that produced characters every bit as funny and memorable as any in the last 20 years. Comparisons to The Simpsons are inevitable, but where The Simpsons takes sharp jabs at a variety of cultural icons Family Guy beheads them with a guillotine. Many of the jokes are truly unique and no doubt horribly offensive to the sacred cows they are aimed at, but unlike many over-the-top animated series that seek laughs strictly from their ability to annoy, the satire, non-sequiturs and insane plot-twists of Family Guy are spot-on and brilliant. Owning the DVD is especially handy for catching many of the more subtle jokes that often fly by so quickly and mixed with so many subtexts at the same time that a single viewing wont come close to mining all the gems this show has to offer. In fact, the release of this series was my own primary motivation for buying a DVD player in the first place! Im serious, its that good.

The first two seasons of family guy were awesome, Edgier than the simpsons and funnier than everything on televison. There was nothing sacred to Peter and the clan but the star of the show is baby Stewie, his multitude of attempts to kill Lois or supervent her authority are priceless, in later seasons this running joke has been deminished as has peters war with the chicken. All appearing for the first time in this volume. There are only 7 episodes for the first season as it was an experiment that they didnt think the world would love. The second season is 21 episodes long and make up tapes 2-4 of this box set. Watch it with the subtitles on to discover phrases arent what you think you hear, especially from stewie. The jokes are crude and sometimes tasteless but the majority of them are pop references that everyone can relate to. Family Guy Rules!

1. What are the two episodes per disk people talking about? Theres 5 to 7 on all of them. 2. Simpsons folks - there is no comparison. The two shows are too different. This is not a copy; its more creative and hard edged. The Simpsons is more polished; but Family Guy is funnier. (Sorry, its the truth.) 3. For a 2 1/2 season show; Ill let DVD sales and Cartoon Network ratings speak for me. It has been reported in TV Guide that Adult Swim is beating the ratings of Letterman, Leno and Kilborn (each) in 18 to 34 males. (Amazing) 4. I watch a lot of TV but I never knew Family Guy existed until it was already cancelled and they were showing the last episodes on Thursday. (2 hour blocks) If I didnt know about it; I doubt most others did. So its ratings were actually amazing. 5. DAMN FOX TO HELL!!! Fox totally screwed this show!!!!!!!

The thing that struck me most about Family Guy was how it was so much more than the sum of its parts. Each individual character has a creativity and charisma of his own but its the dynamic that exists between them that breathes life into the show. For example the dialogues between Brian and Stewie are just hilarious! And Peters idiocy is magnified 10 fold simply when contrasted to the reliability of Lois. Other characters such as Quagmire, Cleveland, Joe and especially Tom and Diane provide the unpredictability and enrichment that makes each Family Guy moment a unique experience. There are only a few shows that I would not hesitate to spend $ for. Family Guy is most definitely one of these shows. A brilliant comic gem filled with all the ingredients of creativity, wit, humor and political incorrectness that will make it a treasured memory for years to come.

Think of the dry cool wit of the Simpsons, combined with the provacative humor of All in the Family, and I think youll have a pretty good idea of Family Guy. There are parts where youll laugh out loud and immediately feel guilty about laughing at the joke. Stewie is by far the utlimate evil genius and closet drag queen, always foiled by Lois, his mother. Brian, the talking dog, seems to provide balance, despite being an alcoholic and recovering cocaine addict. Then of course there is Peter, the dad, who is your stereotypical stupid father and would be strongly compared to Homer Simpson on his worst days. This is perhaps the funniest two and a half seasons of a show that has ever been. However, with this collection you only get the first and second seasons. Adam West as the mayor is a great touch too. I think you can tell that Im a huge fan, since this review is all over the place. Before you sit down and purchase this, it might be a good idea to check out the Family Guy on television, I believe its on one of the Cartoon channels at night sometime. The show isnt for everyone, and some people might be a bit offended by the humor.

So now we come to Family Guy and their interpretation of The Empire Strikes Back. Its a follow-up to their previous Star Wars effort, Blue Harvest. How does it stack up compared with the first one? Its entertaining, but not quite as much so. Its funny, but not quite as much so. It looks great, and some of the jokes are wonderful, but theres something missing, and Im not sure what. It just didnt blow me away like Blue Harvest did. I did enjoy some of the jokes, especially when its pointed out that the Rebels fleeing Hoth could go in any direction, but charge straight at the enemy fleet anyhow, but other jokes (like one about robot camels), went on a little long and just didnt work. Fortunately one of the great thing about Family Guy is that if you dont like one joke, just wait a few seconds and another will be along. Overall theres just something lacking from the first effort. Its still good, and funnier than the vast majority of entertainment options out there, but its not quite on the same level of Blue Harvest.

I watched the Blu Ray last weekend and I thought it was great. Yes, the 4:3 bugged me, but Im sure they started the animation on this a while ago and animation is expensive, so give it a rest already. In fact, I know they did because some of the info in the pop-up video was well over a year old. It really felt longer than an hour, even the second and third times when I watched the pop-up and commentary versions. I loved the feature about recreating the original movie poster, that showed a lot of class on Seth and the Producers parts. Check out the level of detail in the ships, its crazy. I laughed out loud many times, got all the jokes and loved the profanity. A+ Seth! And again with Robot Chicken at the end! Freaking fabulous! I <3 MacFarlane and Green. Cant wait for the next one, and Ill be buying

I knew I loved FG, I already had these eps in season compilations but they were censored and no way to hear or see otherwise. This ones case AND the DVD inside should have an asterisk - its not uncensored by default, you have to select a separate audio track while playing the movie. I tried setting it BEFORE the movie begins & it goes back to the default CENSORED setting. Maybe newer editions dont do this but this one IS from 2005 so maybe youre better off with a newer copy. 3rd time Ive bought a DVD that wasnt supposed to be censored but was...