Family Guy

I'm not a Family Guy fan. It's occasionally funny, but more often than not it's just the same collection of weird nonsequitors juxtaposed against long, drawn out, intentionally awkward moments of silence or repetitious dialogue. A lot of people love it and that's great, but I've never been one of them. But I've been known to sit though an episode every now and again, and I always laugh at least once.

I did sat last Sunday's much-hyped episode featuring the entire cast of Next Generation, and... well... it was a Family Guy episode. I'm sure I laughed once.

Actually, I'm sure I laughed more than once, but I can't really remember. I just remember that it wasn't the non-stop laugh-a-thon I was hoping for. The cast of Next Generation were all funny, but their scenes were actually pretty limited. It was mostly a Meg episode, and her plot line about finding religion by watching Kirk Cameron on TV should've been funny, but it lacked bite, wit, and just took precious time away from Patrick Stewart and the rest of the Next Gen cast.

I mean, you've got 8 guest stars. Get rid of the Meg plotline and give Brent Spiner more than one line. Why did Whil Wheaton get more lines than Spiner and Jonathan Frakes combined? I know I'm being way too critical of what was a cute, funny episode, but I was let down because of the amount of hype it somehow built up over the past few weeks.

I should've known better than to expect too much from an episode of Family Guy. I haven't felt this let down since that time I got tickets to see Roseanne Barr in a production of Cats...

(Show a clip of me, watching Roseanne dressed as Tum Tum Tugger, acting annoying and eating a bowl of chicken wings.)

Anyway, here's the episode if you're curious: