Family Guy Season 9 Review

Okay, before i start, i have to mention the debatable contest. It's over cuz russellthedog  got them right. You'll see those right ones in a sec. I'm still waiting for his notepage request. In the meantime, let's do this!


And Then There Were Fewer: Good

Excellence in Brodcasting: Good

Welcome Back, Carter: Good

Halloween on Spooner Street: Meh

Baby, You knock me out: Good

Brian Writes a Bestseller: Meh

Road to the North Pole: Good

New Kidney in Town: Debatable

And I'm Joyce Kinney: Good

Frends of Peter G: Debatable

German Guy: Meh

The Hand That Rocks the Wheelchair: Debatable

Trading Places: Good

Tiegs for Two: Debatable

Brothers & Sisters: Good

The Big Bang Theory: Good

Foreign Affairs: Meh

It's a Trap: Good


10 Good

4 Meh

4 Debatable


Okay, 4 Debatables again!? Let's do this fast:

New Kidney in Town is ambitious, in a good way. Peter is having kidney failure, and he needs a donor, or he'll die. What ensues is a ...dramatic story that almost works! Brian wants to be the donor, since he's the only option left,  but....his two kidney's are so small (being a dog and all) that they would need to take both. He would die. Yeah, it's actually not too badly done compared to the show's other attempts to tackle serious subject matter. What makes it debatable? I don't know, it had some bad jokes, as usual and some parts were botched.

For example, Stewie learns that Brian is going to die and he can't handle that. This should been amazing and it almost is, but when Stewie asks Brian to hug him, he starts crying. This causes some snot to come out, and it gets messy, and it's a really failed joke that takes out the drama of the scene.

So...I'm not sure. I don't know why Mr Enter had on the runners of his worst FG episodes list since it's almost great, but it falls short.

Also, DR Hartman says that he once tried to clone a chicken, and the result was....a man-sized, hostile chicken.

...Yeah.


Friends of Peter G has some good stuff going for it. Peter and Brian are forced to join AA after  getting in trouble and we have good stuff, and bad stuff, and also a song.  Eventually, Death shows up and shows Peter what his life will be like if he keeps drinking...but he also shows him what it would be like if he never drank. He would be a friendly guy who had never meet Quagmire and Joe, but he would also be a tool in Peter's eyes, so the ultimate message is moderation. It's a good message, but the moral I'm getting is if you don't drink at all, you suck. ...Yeah, let's move on.

The Hand That Rocks the Wheelchair is actually worth watching for the subplot where the writers, I mean Stewie, realize he's not that evil anymore, and accidently make an evil clone that goes out of control. But the main plot is...eh. Remember Barley Legal? Yeah, it's a ripoff/remake of it. It doesn’t help that that mention it at one point.

Meg takes care of Joe while Bonnie away and because he's so nice to him, she gets into him, and yeah, you know where this is going. But unlike Barley Legal, it seems to progress naturally, and there's a much better reason this time, She sees something of herself in him, and he's nice to her which is better than “He went to a dance one time”.

Plus, she seems to her lesson better this time. So yeah, I wasnt' sure how to rate it since it's best trait is being a better version of a concept I don't care for. The subplot is good, though.

And finally, we have Teigs for Two, which is a sequel to Jerome is the New Black. More specially, a sequel to the Brian/Quagmire plot. I'm not quite sure why I had put as debatable, but it might be  cuz their bickering isn't as funny here, oh and Brian's a dick again. He pretty much steals Quagmire's love just to spite him. Yeah, Brian doesn't look like the good guy here, and I don't know, it just wasn't all that good for me.

But the odd thing is, all 4 Debatables were close to being good, or watchable for me. Even Hand that rocks the wheelchair, thanks to the subplot. But I'll get into that in a bit.


LEAST FAVORITES:

German Guy: The pedo is a hero, and the German is a Nazi ...Yeah.

Brian Writes a Bestseller: Brian does the “fame goes to his head' thing except he doesn’t learn anything. Seriously, when he apologies he claims he was just reacting to something Stewie did, and he wasn't apologizing for anything he did himself. Wow, Brian sucks.

Halloween on Spooner Street: WHAT IS SO FUNNY ABOUT INCEST


FAVORITES:

Road to the North Pole: I know this one divides people, but despite a few weak jokes, it was awesome to have an actually good message, a sweet ending, and disturbing content that's actually there to serve the plot, and not just for a terrible joke. Also, I love the songs.

And Then There Were Fewer: Hit or miss jokes, but a well written mystery plot makes this one pretty good.

The Big Bang Theory: Easily the most consistently good episode in awhile.


Now, if the Non-Hand that rocks the wheelchair debatables  were Good (cuz that one would be Meh without the subplot) there would be 5 Meh, and 13 Good. Yeah, this Season was...mixed.

It was way more consistent, there wasn't a BAD episode, and the ones that weren't good weren't THAT bad. So, it's a good Season, right? Not exactly. On one hand, holy crap a lot to like here. They even fixed some issues I've been having.

Less cutaways, less Asshole moments (for the most part) and most importantly, LESS FILLER. Seriously, most of the episodes didn't have pointless filler stories before the plot starts. Even when there was (New Kidney in town, Trading places) it actually flowed with the main story. Hey, I can buy that a red bull adventure leads to kidney failure, more than a Surfin' Bird record leading to Jesus.

There was just less filler in general, but there were filler parts here and there. German Guy had a really long old man fight, and we had a pointless music video in Foreign Affairs. But eh, that's only a few. Oh, and the songs in Friends of Peter G goes on a bit too long but it was catchy so I didn't mind it.

But on the other hand....the Season was kind of forgettable. Yeah, with 3 exceptions, the Good ones weren't THAT good, and most of the episodes have been forgotten by now. Sometimes like Brothers & Sisters was only “Good” because in the end, I didn't mind it too much.

I'll give credit to this Season, and say it was a bit ambitious in certain area. The premiere killed a few characters for real, and some stories took chances. But not many, to be honest. Also, this Season, they changed the intro and gave it newer animation. Yeah, they switched to Wide screen, which was lampshaded.

The new intro actually sums up my feelings on the newer animation, but I'll talk about that another time. This Season was at it's best when it was trying to do interesting things with it's stories, like in “Baby, you knock me out” and to a lesser extent, Trading Places. However, for some reason, I found myself underwhelmed by some of the episodes.

I mostly liked the general fixes, like less filler, more so than the specific episodes, for the most part. None of the Good ones had really awful moment (mostly) but...I don't know. For some reason, this Season was underwhelming. It's better than the last 2 Seasons, but Season 8 at least had more notably good episodes.

I understand some people don't like Excellence in Broadcasting, but I liked that Rush Limbaugh was able to make fun of himself, and I liked the implied message of not just following something because it's not popular. ...Yeah, Lois points out Brian has to be into what isn't on top because he's just a Contrian  That's a good point. Granted, I may like it cuz I know nothing about politics, so if I did, I may be offended, but it's still okay either way.

I have a feeling most of these episodes would be easier to forgot is they were placed in a more memorable Season. This Season fixed problems but seemed to think that was an excuse not to be as memorable.

However, I can't say it's bad since, as I said, it didn't bug me as much as previous Seasons. As for trends...well, there's a few. For one. American Dad references. Stan makes a cameo in Excellence in Broadcasting, Roger and Klaus have roles in “It's a Trap” and most notably, there's a cutaway in Foreign Affairs where Joe sings the American Dad theme. Yeah .they just play the theme ...but with Joe. It was pointless but interesting.

Also, Ashley Tisdale made 2 appearances this Season. She had a slightly important role in “And then there were fewer” and a small cameo in “Brian writes a best seller”. Honestly, her talents were wasted, mostly in the former role. The character mostly existed to die, which is fine, but she could have been voiced by anyone.

Oddly enough, she has more of her...Ashley-Ness in Brian Writes a Bestseller, despite her role being small. I liked seeing her, but it would have been awesome for her to get a bigger role. I guess she only came on to balance out Seth being in Nerds of a Feather.

Speaking of Seth, the best moment in the whole Season appears at the very end of It's a Trap. There was a joke earlier where Emperor!Carter and Darth Stewie bash Seth Green (in which Carter claims Buffy wasn't popular, making him the biggest idiot on the show), which was amusing. At the end, Peter tells Chris he thinks Seth Green is a douch. Then Chris says..

“I think Seth Macfarlane's a douche”

The next minute is magical.

“You watched TV in the 80's, we get it!”

It's awesome. By the way, the ones voiced by others bash him, but the guys voiced by Seth defend him. Yeah.

Actually, It's a Trap is a good representation of this Season. In the opening crawl, they pretty much admit that FOX forced them to do it, and they tell us bear to with them.

TV Tropes says the Commentary confirms this is not a joke, and yeah...I believe it. It's not bad (it got the Good rating) but it did feel a bit stale. It had some great jokes, like the one I just mentioned, but it was a bit...slow. It seemed like they didn't have that many good ideas this time around and they were on Auto-Pilot. The other 2 at least attempted to throw in many types of jokes, most of them being clever references to the films.

This one though, was just kind of Eh. Not bad, and there are only 2 jokes I disliked, which is good for a 40 minute special. Also, there's an incest joke I actually didn't mind. Why? It was making fun of the...Luke/Leia. Thing.

Also, in that opening crawl, they claim FOX said they had to do this, or they wouldn't “leave to make your movie”. Something tells me this won't be the last reference to Ted on Family Guy..

(Spoilers, I've seen He's Bla-ack and it's not. Now i'm waiting for as reference to A Million Ways to Die in the west. 5 bucks says its in the upcoming Liam Neeson episode)

Anyway, the good ones had more to them than It's a Trap, but it shows things wre a bit slower this Season. That line in the crawl makes me wanna blame Ted but I think he went to do it after the Season ended.

But eh, it's still better than the previous 2 seasons, on the grounds that, at least, there were no truly BAD episodes.

And that's what I got. It's an uneven Season, that at least tries harder than usual. For that, I am grateful. By the way, I'll stop doing the Season ratings cuz..meh. Season 10 should be interesting, as it it even more uncharted territory than before. Of the 23 episodes I've seen Seahorse Seashell party (first airing), Screams of Silence (for the note page I did), Back to the pilot (watched after hearing how good it was from AV Club), Thankgiving (first airing, I think), be Careful what you fish for (watched for the hell of it), and Viewer Mail 2 (first airing, I think). That's   6 out of 23.

This should be...fun.


So yeah, see ya. Oh, and again, thanks to russellthedog  for guessing the debatables right!