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June 18, 2013

Family Guy and The Simpsons

by Adam Finley, posted Jul 14th 2005 1:06PM

Responding to an old "slam" against Family Guy by Simpsons creators (a scene in which one of Homer's clones is none other than Peter Griffin) Seth MacFarlane says: "The Simpsons and Family Guy are really the only two shows of their kind of television, there'll be comparisons made." McFarlane is right, but I've never completely understood why so many people want to compare the two shows directly. To me, Family Guy has always been very much a cartoon that just happens to be on primetime while The Simpsons have always been an "animated sitcom." The Griffin family exist wholly in a cartoon world where one can have his head lopped off with a Frisbee and then be back good as new in the very next scene. That's not difficult to understand when you take into consideration MacFarlane's past work on shows like Johnny Bravo. The Simpsons, while it certainly uses the cartoon format to its advantage, never strays too far from quasi-reality. Yes, they're both popular shows about an animated family, but I think the similarities end there.

 

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Adam

"hey hey, bart has an evil twin brother in the attic, remember? :-p" Halloween episodes don't count. That's a separate thing all together. :)

July 15 2005 at 11:11 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
PhantomProphet

Calibur, you have earned my respect.

July 15 2005 at 3:51 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Calibur

hey hey, bart has an evil twin brother in the attic, remember? :-p

July 15 2005 at 10:08 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
PhantomProphet

Absolutely! For instance, compare how many catch phrases Stewie has to the number of catch phrases Maggie has, oh, wait, she doesn't talk, why is that? She is a baby and the Simpsons, while maybe not keeping a foot in reality, still keep their big toe in there, where Family Guy is just a grown up kids cartoon, sometimes very literally, like when Megs Daffy duck style bill gets blown up and she proclaims "you realize of course, this means war!" That would never happen in the Simpsons. They are both GREAT animated shows, but just because of that one, admitidly large similarity, they will be forever compared. It's just like the Southpark that pointed out how hard it is for an animated show to seperate itself from the Simpsons.

July 14 2005 at 2:46 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
LarriveeJP

I couldn't agree more. When I hear people call Family Guy a Simpsons clone I can only assume their knowledge of the show is limited to a publicity still. Watching any episode of FG should clear up any doubts about its originality. Other than the fact that both families have 2 parents and 3 kids there aren't many legitimate comparisons to make between the two shows.

July 14 2005 at 2:04 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply

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