In a comment on my post about Optimum Cruise Speed, Gabe J (Check out his awesome blog here!) and I discussed changes over time in sitcoms (such as the appearance of Butters in South Park) and I wrote :
"I just watched the latest family guy episode, and rethinking of the first episodes, the whole show has drastically changed course and the characters have evolved much later than POCS or TOCS.".
The episode of Family Guy (FG) I was referring to was S10 E03 - "Screams of Silence : the Story of Brenda Q" that apparently got pretty controversial as you can see here.
Now I just watched the latest FG episode, "Back to the Pilot", it seems the creators wanted to show how much the series has changed. Brian and Stewie go back in time to the very first aired episode of FG and, to their surprise, everything is much different.
The drawing is less precise, characters have drastically changed, some even changed voices... So Brian and Stewie crack jokes on the original episode : for example, when hearing 1999 Stewie talking, 2011 Brian says "What, did you carry a thesaurus around with you?", or seing 1999 Peter and his friends drinking in front of the TV, 2011 Stewie says "The TV isn't even plugged in.".
They are also confronted to the cutscenes FG is famous for, but just see the 1999 characters standing still for a moment after saying a cutscene worthy quote and then start talking after a long pause.
Times have changed and so the show did as well with better animation technology, in-depth analysis of certain characters and funnier and funnier jokes.
You know how a lot of shows have a clip show episode when they go back to the funniest parts of past episodes ? Well this was FG's way of doing it. Sitcoms return to the past for three reasons :
1. To show us that the show has always been good and so we should keep on watching.
3. To thank us for our loyalty as in "This is what we went through together".
3. To show the evolution of the show and why the end justifies the means.
What FG did in this episode was break the traditional method of nostalgia to make not only a funny show, but also reflect on the necessity of renewal, adaptation and evolution of any art form. Trying to follow the Simpsons's footsteps in 1999, FG has, through nine seasons, become an independent show that others try to imitate. Not really a cycle, Art is a spiral getting larger and larger.
That's one of the things I like most in FG, it strives to break these codes that we are familiar with. That's one of the reasons why episode S10 E03 was so controversial : people don't expect a sitcom to adress issues such as spousal abuse because we think the only purpose of sitcoms is to be funny and make us feel good in the end (there are other reasons that episode was controversial that I won't talk about here).
The funny thing is that yesterday I was listening to NPR's "Wait wait don't tell me" and the guest was Seth McFarlane, creator of FG ; available here.
Breaking the rules is what always makes great Art.
All in all, a very good FM episode and I know (by reading comments on different forums) that some of you have been waiting for it.
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Thank you
TRJ
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