Thursday, April 6, 2006 |
09:44 - SP to FG: You Got Served
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While it's certainly gratifying that South Park is tackling the Cartoon Wars issue head-on (and not folding it in with the Chef episode, though they easily could have, since they deal with similar issues of censorship out of fear of religious fundamentalists), I think I was even more happy to see them lay the smack down on Family Guy.
It's a tricky situation, when you're one example of a form of entertainment and you criticize another member of the same genre; you know you're just opening yourself up to retaliation in kind (though that might be plenty fun to watch and kick up the ratings for both shows), but more importantly you know you're alienating people who might happen to be fans of both. It takes a lot of guts to write an episode that criticizes the writing of a peer show. It takes a lot of self-confidence, a lot of arrogance—and by God, you'd better have the goods to deliver. Nothing's sadder than seeing a mediocre show bash a better one. (Which, I might note, Family Guy has done more than once.)
That said, I can't guess how Family Guy will mount its retaliatory effort. It's just not its style. There's no equivalent in its humor of the kind of self-confidence that would depict their specific writing style getting critiqued by Ayman al-Zawahiri. Indeed, the very discontinuousness of the writing that's at the heart of Trey and Matt's criticism is what will prevent Family Guy from retaliating in kind without looking like a completely different show.
I'm pretty sure that "Part Two" of this "two-parter" doesn't exist, at least as presented in the "preview clips". But it would really be something if it did—and I'm really hoping it does after all—because this week's episode, despite its subject matter, didn't show the Muhammad cartoons. There was nothing controversial about it, really. Which leads me to believe that they must really have something up their sleeve this time.
They're going to crack this issue wide open and claim the controversy all for themselves—and dance all over Seth McFarlane's face at the same time. Trey and Matt have huge aspirations, far more than and far different from what any comparable show has... and at this stage they've got the tools to really realize them.
I'm surprised that the blogosphere isn't all over this already, though. At least one person is (via VodkaPundit).
UPDATE: Cartoon Brew has a similar opinion of Family Guy and last night's skewering of it—and links to a "perennial blog post" on the subject that links back to me! What a small world.
And the next post there links to this, which might be worth following.
Though I wonder how this fits into the puzzle.
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