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pegusus123456 posted...

I feel like some people ITT are forgetting pre-cancellation Family Guy where Brian is definitely a candidate for best character.

I recently went back to Family Guy due to a combination of YouTube clips and me getting really sick and needing to stay home. I had season 3 on DVD when I was a teenager so I started there.

When I started season four, I got reminded of this other YouTube short I saw from that two parter where South Park was ripping on Family Guy. It was that part of an FG episode that plays at the start, where the characters just make meaningless references and go to pointless cutaways. At one point Peter makes a delivery to Captain Kirk, who says "I'll be the Captain, you be Tennille!" - and the comments were like "wow South Park predicted exactly what the show would become, a soulless husk of stale reference humor".

It stood out for two reasons. First, it was genuinely a solid pastiche of a Family Guy plot, especially from season 4. The cutaways are often references for the sake of references. Even a lot of season 3 episodes were like that, filling in time with non-sequitur jokes that banked on references - but season four took the cake.

But secondly, it was laughable that people could see that clip and go "wooooah south park depicted the future of the show", because it was pastiching the then-current state of the show. The episode of South Park where that clip came from was from April 2006. Season four of Family Guy, which was where that style of humor began to come in even more heavily, aired between 2005 and 2006.

But I sincerely think that any self-proclaimed Family Guy fan would go "no it got even worse later on, it wasn't this bad at all until around season 11!" because season four is where a bunch of classic jokes made their debut.

I'm still watching the show, because for better or worse I'm nostalgic for it and its general stupidity is something easy to put on and laugh at. But season four, the first season after their second cancellation, is absolutely where forced reference humor and non-sequiturs began to fill in as much of the episode as the actual plots. The show was always bad for that, at least come season 3, but season 4 is where the show took a turn. Shit, even if she wasn't treated the best in prior seasons, season 4 is (I think) the first season where Meg began to get regularly bashed, and the first season where someone said "shut up, Meg".

All of that to say - personally, I prefer Stewie. Brian is a good character, he's a devoted friend to Peter and he seems like a good person caught up in his ego and in an environment where he isn't thriving as much as he would like to. But come season four, he's lusting after Lois about as much as Quagmire is, and the show is outright saying "if Peter wasn't in the picture, Brian would 100% be making a move on Lois". There's an early episode where Peter gets lost at sea and Lois marries Brian because he became a provider, and a later episode outright has Peter and Lois commenting on how badly Brian wants to fuck her.

Stewie isn't consistent with his supervillain thing, but I would say that his character stays the most entertaining. He switches between upper crust supervillain and emotionally immature baby, and maybe I'm a dope for liking that contrast but it's always funny when the show plays with that. He's always selfish and murderous, and that only changes as much as his more metrosexual personality style comes into focus.

Peter becomes a cruel, child-abusing idiot, Lois becomes a physically abusive rapist, Chris is always an idiot, Meg is the show's designated butt-monkey, Brian goes from loyal friend to wanting to stab his best friend in the back to fuck his wife. I think Stewie ends up being the most well-rounded and entertaining character.