"The Family Guy" scores a touchdownBy Helen Lee, syndicated Jan. 31, 1999 Picture this: a cartoon series about a family run by a clueless father, featuring a loving mother and three children -- daughter, baby and underachieving son. Sound a lot like ''The Simpsons?'' Not quite -- just call it the next generation of animated family dysfunction. It's ''The Family Guy,'' which gets a sneak preview this Sunday after the Super Bowl at 10 p.m. ET and returns as a series in March. ''At its most basic, it's an animated show about a family,'' says producer David Zuckerman. ''I think the stories we're telling, though, are probably on the more unusual side in that they start from very ordinary kinds of places and take unusual turns that are specific to our show. And the humor is probably a little more -- pardon the cliché -- politically incorrect.'' Actually, ''The Family Guy'' is the creation of wunderkind Seth McFarlane, whose journey to become the youngest person to create, write and perform in his own TV series (at 24 years of age) sounds a little like the rise of ''South Park'' creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. It all began when he created an animated short film called ''The Life of Larry'' while in school at the Rhode Island School of Design. Fox discovered the short and approached McFarlane to air it as four segments on ''Mad TV.'' Though that deal fell apart in late 1997, Fox offered him a budget to put together a pilot. For six months, McFarlane did nothing but animate and draw a seven-minute pilot, which he delivered in May. Zuckerman says, ''I've never heard of a pilot being entirely produced by one person. But to actually have a guy who was 24 years old at the time come up with a concept, sell it to them, write it, produce it, perform most of it, and then get a 13-episode order is pretty remarkable.'' What sold Fox on ''The Family Guy?'' Well, the show is about a family who lives in the fictional town of Quahog, Rhode Island. Peter Griffin is the thick-headed but good-hearted father, whom Zuckerman describes as ''the classic New England bumbling, well-meaning idiot who talks before he thinks, one of those guys who just doesn't understand the concept of social grace. He just says a great number of hackless things having no idea that he's doing it.'' MacFarlane adds, ''Every week he learns a lesson. And by the next week he's forgotten it.'' The family also includes Peter's wife Lois, who tries to keep the family normal; Meg, the angst-ridden teenager; 13-year-old Chris, the underachiever, Brian, the well-educated and sarcastic family dog; and youngest child Stewie, who is certain to steal the show. He's a diabolical baby bent on conquering the world. Unfortunately, his physical body doesn't quite stack up to his mental capacities. MacFarlane describes him to us as the cartoon infant equivalent of Rex Harrison, star of ''My Fair Lady.'' Zuckerman refines the statement a bit: ''If Rex Harrison had ever played a villain in one of the James Bond films, that's pretty much where you get Stewie, I think. And if he were like one year old with no muscle tone.'' Stewie, who considers his birth a very cleverly planned escape from his mom's womb, can always be found sawing off chair legs in hopes of breaking his mother's neck, hiding weapons in his sandwiches and making plans that are completely ignored by other household members. Or maybe it's the show's sense of humor that attracted Fox. Though comparisons between ''The Family Guy'' to fellow Fox comedies ''King of the Hill'' and ''The Simpsons'' are inevitable, Zuckerman and MacFarlane feel that their show is edgier and has something new to offer. ''I think we're employing a lot more reference humor and spoofing of popular culture than I think either of those two shows do,'' McFarlane says. ''We are literally doing them in every episode.'' For example, a scene in an upcoming episode features guest voice Dick Van Patten in his ''Eight is Enough'' role as Tom Bradford. In the pilot, ''The Brady Bunch'' and ''The Sound of Music'' are targets. Other spoofs include ''One Day at a Time,'' ''The Six Million Dollar Man,'' ''Dick Van Dyke,'' ''Mad About You,'' ''Dharma & Greg,'' a segment called ''Suddenly Susan After Dark,'' and ''Homicide: Life on Sesame Street.'' The program plans to use as many celebrities in cameos as it can. Naturally, some probably won't like the way they're portrayed: Zuckerman says, ''We're doing an episode now where we have Charlton Heston in a couple of scenes. It's pretty pro-gun but maybe not in the way that Charlton Heston would like it, so I doubt we're going to get him -- but we're going to ask.'' MacFarlane laughs, ''We're mining a lot of classic television. What we've got is a bunch of writers who grew up just fixated on television, so we have this vast storehouse of memories of television that we're drawing upon, in most cases poking good-natured fun at it -- and in some cases, we're being kind of mean.'' Zuckerman, who has also worked on ''King of the Hill,'' says, ''Part of what Seth sold Fox was his kind of politically incorrect sense of humor. I don't think we ever do jokes just to shock, but some of them are pretty audacious, let's say. And I think that's what's going to help separate us from other shows.'' What kind of future would MacFarlane and Zuckerman like for their brand new series? ''We see a cult,'' MacFarlane says. ''Thousands of people laying down their ordinary lives to follow our show, sending us money.'' Zuckerman adds, ''I would like a crown.'' Top of page |