Family Guy Season 7: A Review

Season 7 of Family Guy is officially over, and it’s time for the retrospective/review posts. First, let’s take a look at the list of episodes we got this season:

Love Blactually
I Dream of Jesus
Road to Germany
Baby Not on Board
The Man With Two Brians
Tales of a Third Grade Nothing
Oceans Three and a Half
Family Gay
The Juice is Loose
FOXy Lady
Not All Dogs Go to Heaven
Stew-roids
We Love You, Conrad
Three Kings
Peter’s Progress

Lots of new stuff this season, lots of pushing the envelope, and a fair amount of exploring the show’s characters. For the casual watcher who perhaps had not watched Family Guy before, this season might have pulled them in.

Or not.

Family Guy Season 7 was, frankly, a big disappointment. After the prolonged writers’ strike of Season 6, I think we were all expecting something…well, better than what we got. Unexplained delays between new episodes that went on for weeks is not okay. Using a Conway Twitty video – the ENTIRE video – to fill up space in an episode (and that’s all it did) is not okay. Stupid stereotyping jokes that we’ve already seen in previous seasons is NOT OKAY.

Here’s the thing. We all understand by now that Seth MacFarlane is basically a genius on wheels. He’s a funny guy with lots of creative talent – Family Guy, The Cleveland Show, Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy, and American Dad are the proof of that talent. However, this season felt like an afterthought. With everything that Seth is doing, is it possible that Family Guy has gotten the VERY short end of the stick? Has Seth given over this show to lesser writers in order to manage his burgeoning empire? Say it’s not so!

I haven’t given up on Family Guy – far from it. I look forward to Season 8 this fall, as well as the premiere of The Cleveland Show. I want to believe that this was just an off season and the next one will be better written and more appealing to true Family Guy fans. I think we ALL want that, right? Right.

Seth…are you listening?