Second only to his freakishly comprehensive knowledge of forgotten pop culture ephemera, tenacity has always been Peter Griffin’s strongest suit.
Family Guy’s broadcast schedule practically qualifies as myth, the show’s legacy inextricably tied to its arc from cancellation at Fox, un-cancellation, re-cancellation, cult embrace in reruns on Adult Swim, and reinstatement on Fox to smashing popularity. The dedicated viewership that compelled the suits to reconsider has now carried the series into its 22nd season, a longevity that suggests the permanent-fixture enshrinement enjoyed by The Simpsons. (And not even Homer and company could nab the holy grail of an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Comedy Series, an honor held only by Fred Flintstone and the Griffin clan in the two-dimensional realm.)
Cheap to produce, readily merchandised, and unencumbered by the aging of actors, animation offers an inflection on the sitcom formula that can conceivably be prolonged ad infinitum. With an episode count well over 400, it’s not hard to imagine a consistent, modestly-liked Family Guy coasting through the end of the century or the death of creator Seth MacFarlane, whichever comes first.
But the ratings over in Springfield have long held a skosh higher, and Family Guy doesn’t share the Simpsons knack for bolstering relevance with a few headline-grabbing event installments per season. In the surest sign of decline for the Griffins, their post-football midseason return—following through on an already truncated episode order—sees the family shunted to Wednesday from Fox’s blockbusting Animation Domination lineup on Sunday night, its first weekday airing since 2002. The spike in ironic Lois memes on TikTok has yet to translate to a measurable bump in numbers for the show itself, and as it enters the beginning of the end for its least-watched season ever, one gets the sense that a cancellation wouldn’t be so passionately overturned this time around.
By turns gleeful and smug, the bull-in-the-PC-china-shop attitude toward provocation that got the flagship property in the McFarlane universe repeatedly pulled and revived seems to have cooled. This week’s “Cabin Pressure” draws on a stock half-hour comedy premise, as the cast of characters pack up for a trip to a faraway locale that won’t even require location shooting in animated form. At a company picnic (attended by a cameoing Bob Belcher, spared the animosity of his previous crossover appearance), Peter wins five nights at his boss’ luxurious lake house in Maine, a forest idyll where charging moose will continue to pursue you through a canoe chase if they have to. That gag meets the high bar for absurdism set by The Simpsons at its best, as do a handful of others: bears for sale strapped to the roofs of cars like Christmas trees; a rueful mention of “the barn owl that pushed my wife down a staircase;” an amateur electrician ending a cautionary tale about shocks with “now our spoons move when he walks in the kitchen.”
Formerly the writing staff’s signature, the belabored cutaway jokes taking a long path down a short allusion have been mercifully minimized, mostly confined here to a crack at the expense of Barbara Bush with a strong callback payoff in Stewie’s “perfectly coiffed lady-fro.” (The baby is little-seen this week, a prudent move for a show continuously figuring out what to do with the would-be Bart Simpson breakout whose overplayed schtick soured into its biggest hindrance.) Though Family Guy first made its name with subversiveness, that quality now varies wildly from week to week. In the last pre-hiatus episode, Brian issued a vague, easy grouse about how “penises and vaginas don’t mean anything anymore,” a faint dogwhistle from a dog. This week, a running bit contrasts Family Guy’s own promo with grim NFL-on-Fox telecasts featuring grievous player injury. In either case, whether propagating the woke mind virus or nobly battling it, there’s an air of the obligatory in the lunges to ruffle bipartisan feathers.
The substance of “Cabin Pressure” chiefly concerns a contentious poop and the subsequent scheme to cover up the culprit’s guilt, which would imply a veteran series staying close to its roots. And yet markers of wear and tear have developed here and there—in Chris’ reduction to a pervo creep servicing a client base of Reddit fetishists, in the third-act bid for pathos not quite pulled off, in a slipping hit-to-miss joke ratio. A premiere needs to re-engage existing viewers while hooking new ones; it’s an opportunity for a show to re-introduce itself and model its appeal.
If Fox intends Wednesday night as a retirement home where this former ratings titan can putter around until it expires once and for all, Family Guy isn’t making the strongest argument that it has much time left. After more than two decades of ups and downs, trials and triumphs, the saga of this animated lightning rod has taken the most unexpected turn of all: It’s just another show.
