Seth MacFarlane, you’re not funny. Give it up.

Hey, you know what Family Guy, American Dad, and The Cleveland Show all have in common?  Assuming you’ve even heard of the Cleveland Show by now and have also NOT committed suicide knowing it exists, I’ll tell you: all three are the projects of a guy named Seth MacFarlane.  Seth, after an attempt in the 90’s to make children’s cartoons (and failing miserably), was eventually responsible for Family Guy, a mostly garbled animated sitcom with a lot of pointless pop culture references and segues that veer straight off a cliff into the unfunny unknown.  The show’s low percentage of actual humor is countered by shock laughs, sex gags, and uncomfortable subjects that kids shouldn’t be watching, but probably are because hey, it’s a cartoon right?  Cartoons can’t be bad.

Warning: Cartoons can be bad.  Very bad.

See, the thing about MacFarlane’s humor is that it’s funny to him and was never very funny to anyone but him, until he convinced a lot of idiots that his formula was a display of utter brilliance and laughs, the same idiots that still watch the Simpsons hoping it will ever be as good as it once was, and even then it was overrated.  The allure of making an animated sitcom is hey, you can make your characters do practically anything without worrying about budget or props, and thanks to MacFarlane, they can say anything they want too, much to the dismay of people who aren’t impressed by constant flashbacks, and those who don’t drag their knuckles when they walk.  Can anyone count the number of times in one episode without losing track, just how many times Peter “remembers the time” he <did something zany> with <famous person>?  If you said yes, there’s a good chance you’re a liar, seeing as sitting through an entire episode of that shit means you probably can’t count nearly that high.

The sad thing is, Family Guy is his best show.  It gets the most attention from writers and advertisers and as much as I hate to admit this, has a broader base to build upon than something like American Dad or The Cleveland Show.  (Trivia: The theme song originally contained a line referring to Cleveland’s “happy black-guy face,” but this was replaced with “happy mustached face” to make the song more racially sensitive.^[8])

They actually changed the song to an animated Blaxploitation sitcom to be more “racially sensitive”.  Amazing.  Even if by some miracle this show does not get canceled, its fans can feel dead on the inside knowing that they kept a humorless husk plodding along.

Another project of Seth’s is the internet “sensation” Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Comedy.  An internet (possibly Youtube) exclusive show (and I use the term loosely, MacFarlane manages to make even funny things horribly boring.  I mean let’s take a look at this first one.  It’s about cats.  Cats are cute, cats are funny, but if you put them in the hands of a jackass, they become at LEAST a minute and 30 seconds of droning failure without a good punchline.  The title should give away how much I hate the man that produced this complete garbage:

I thought they would do something catlike, but it ended up being a Dogs vs. Cats gag, and I didn’t laugh.  In fact, if it were possible to get my minute and a half back, I would do it even if it took forever.

That one was just boring though.  There are times when he goes completely over the top and in what seems to be a tireless crusade to make everything that could have been funny in random conversation, into a Seth MacFarlane joke that will be talked about briefly and then swept under the carpet never to be amusing again.  Like this:

Wow.  Holy shit Seth MacFarlane, Jeff Goldblum sure does talk a lot.  I’m glad we didn’t find this out in the 80’s, or I never would have been so enlightened.  Talking Jeff Goldblum crackers.  Sort of like American Dad’s perverted German goldfish and prissy alien, this one sends the WTFSTUPID meter off the scale and into a hilarious retelling of the time I once met Barbara Streisand and we fought over the last tube of Preparation H.  Jesus H. Christ, someone arrest this fucking cunt.

I’m not done yet.  This one, though thankfully much shorter, seems no less uncomfortable to watch.  In fact, I thought it was a bit worse than Jeff Goldblum’s fucking crackers for that exact reason.  How can you totally make someone wish they were dead in such a short time?  Seth MacFarlane knows.  I pity the people who have been left alone in a room with him:

And before you tell me I don’t get it, I get it and it’s still not funny.  It’s painful.  I am resisting the urge to double over in abdominal pain it was that bad.  To think such a complete imbecile is making millions off of the stupidity of a humorless culture makes me feel violently ill, if only briefly, because then I remember, not only did it take him years to get people to accept his cookie cutter formula, but I’m still funnier than he is.  So are pineapples.  I’m not a pineapple though.  And Seth MacFarlane’s brain is a turnip.

If you want more horror from the inexplicably famous cartoonist, take a gander at one of his earlier works that utterly bombed and hey, even has some of the jokes that are in Family Guy.  When you can’t come up with new stuff, recycle the old stuff with new characters, who really aren’t that new.  Seriously, look at the dumb guy/talking dog setup and tell me you’ve never seen that before.  Hint: AMILYFAY UYGAY.

Take that concept, add a ridiculous amount of crude jokes and make the guy fat and the dog an alcoholic, and you have entered the zone Seth MacFarlane finds himself in when he has an idea.  Woof.  Only in America.

- Wells

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