Before you get confused like I did, the UK’s Family Guy seasons are different than in the US, which is why they’re getting what is Family Guy Season 6 as Season 7 on November 10.

(Actually, I don’t know if that could have been any LESS confusing.)

Anyway, click the image below to play a fun game of Griffin vs. Griffin:

image courtesy Substance001

Just click to play, bb’s! More Family Guy games: Family Guy Games

Family Guy is among the top ten comedy and drama shows favored to get Emmy nominations this year. The following shows haven’t been “officially” nominated, but they’re being released as in the running TO be nominated, in order to stave off wild rumors that went around the Interwebs last year, apparently. These shows will go on to two Blue Ribbon Panel screenings to be conducted throughout this weekend (June 28-29). The results of each panel will represent 50% percent of the vote and will be averaged together to determine the five nominees in each category. (you can read more about this somewhat complicated process here). Okay, so here are the ten nominations:

• Family Guy
• Curb Your Enthusiasm
• Entourage
• Flight of the Conchords
• The Office
• Pushing Daisies
• Two and a Half Men
• Ugly Betty
• Weeds

Official Emmy nominations will come out July 17.

I love Family Guy, honestly, I do, but sometimes they go too far into the realm of “trying to be funny but it backfires because it’s REALLY NOT FUNNY.” Case in point:

The time when Peter Griffin was doing a stand-up comedy routine in a hospital full of terminally ill children.

Making fun of Lou Gehrig’s disease. Sick.

Michael J. Fox and Parkinson’s.

Quagmire finding the tied-up cheerleader in the bathroom.

However, here’s the thing: Family Guy is going to offend everyone eventually. That seems to be their main goal. So even though they do push the envelope a wee bit too far sometimes, that’s why we keep watching.

The only bad part is when the really poor taste jokes are not done well - like the Prom Night Dumpster Baby. That was just stupid. Also, when they do the same joke a hundred times in one episode - that’s just lazy writing! What do you think - are there any moments or jokes in Family Guy that made you go “oh, they went too far!”?

Over at DeviantART, one of the best places on the Web to find really good (and really bad) amateur art, I’ve discovered a whole treasure chest of Family Guy art. Some of this is actually pretty good. Some of it….well, let’s just say that these people need to keep their day jobs.

First, Brian.

Luke Chueh vs The Family Guy by ~Luke-Chueh on deviantART

I would actually buy this one and hang it up somewhere. It’s pretty good.

More Family Guy art after the jump: Read more

There’s a great new interview with Seth MacFarlane in the Boston Herald. Here are the good bits:

On the show’s humor: “The thing that I try to do with ‘Family Guy’ is to have this balance between the classic and the edgy. We do a lot of poop jokes, but at the same time, we use a 45-piece orchestra every week with a full string section. And, you know, we don’t try to shock for shock’s sake. If something is just shocking and not funny, then we’ll cut it out. And we have these table reads every week, which we do for each episode, in which we have a very good cross-section of artists and people from the outside and writers, and the studio network is there. And no one is shy about gasping in horror if we have crossed the line, and so it’s a very good barometer.”

On the show’s cutaway scenes: “We see them as, in a weird way, these animated versions of one-frame ‘Far Side’ cartoons that are something you can only do really, I think, effectively in the animation medium. And they’re just laughs for laughs’ sake. You don’t have to know what’s going on with the plot. You don’t have to know what’s going on with character drive. It’s just pure comedy, we hope.”

Image credit Newscom

This Pirate Chase clip is from the episode titled “Long John Peter”, Family Guy Season 6. In this clip, we see Peter Griffin and his sea dogs (literal sea dogs) battle on the high freeways with their car, a sword, a big hat and a feather, and cannons. You know, standard issue for cars these days.

If you’ve watched Family Guy or the Simpsons for any length of time, you’ll notice some pretty glaring similarities. Let’s list a few:

• They’re both, uh, “big-boned.”
• They both have long-suffering wives who for some reason put up with all their stuff.
• Each man has three kids.
• Both men have issues with their fathers.
• They’ve both had a ton of very odd jobs.
• Both are heavy drinkers.
• Both count watching TV as their favorite thing to do.
• Both have small attention spans and think of other things when their wives are talking to them.
• Homer and Peter both had strokes; Peter from eating thirty hamburgers at once, Homer from eating a giant feast including a turkey.

I know there are a lot more similarities; can you think of any others?

©2008 Fox Broadcasting Co.THE SIMPSONS ™ and ©2008 TCFFC ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

From Family Guy Season 2. In this clip, Chris is sitting on the diving board too embarrassed to take his shirt off and get in the water. Instead of gently asking him what’s wrong and perhaps working through it together, Peter instead uses this moment to teach Chris a valuable boob-licking lesson. Accomplishing pretty much nothing but further humiliation for Chris. Here’s the clip:

In an interesting and never before done move, the folks at Family Guy have put the animated show up in two different Emmy categories: the live-action, half-hour comedy category, and the animation category.

This hasn’t been done before, but they got away with it because of the Blue Harvest animated special. Basically, this would put them both in the animated category AND the live-action half-hour comedy category, according to the Emmy rules, and would put them not only against the Simpsons, but also The Office and My Name Is Earl.

My opinion? It’s too much. They could possibly grab a win in the Animation category, but there is NO WAY they are going to win against The Office. What do you think?