Fox is continuing with the promos for this summer’s Family Guy reruns, and here they are for Sunday, July 12, for “We Love You Conrad.”

As always, these spots are “sponsored” by Tasty Juice.

Okay, so the first episode of The Cleveland Show has been leaked. You can watch it here. Here’s my notes on the episode:

- Cleveland cries to guys about losing house

- Kathleen Turner cutaway

- Bathroom scene with Cleveland Jr. on the toilet talking to Cleveland in the tub

- Peter launches rocket into house, Cleveland falls out in his tub

- Cleveland calls meeting of neighbors, says his family is moving

- inside joke at three different Family Guy episodes

- Lois and Bonnie kiss for Cleveland’s last request, and they kind of really get into it - husbands watching on the couch

- Stewie says “Goodbye chocolate people”, so does Joe

- At first, the Brown family is moving to California so Cleveland can be a minor league baseball coach

- They drive to Stoolbend, Virginia first, so Cleveland Jr. can see dad’s home town

- Visit to Stoolbend High School, and Cleveland runs into Donna, his high school sweetheart

- Flashback to their semi-date, where Cleveland almost says “I love you”

- Donna offers her spare room for the Brown family

- First look at white trash neighbors, they’re protective of Donna and the “two black guys” that are in her driveway

- First look at Rollo, who has been kicked out of school for pulling down the teacher’s pants

- Sister makes up big story as to why she ditched babysitting

- Cleveland threatens sister’s boyfriend Federline Jones to treat her right

- We meet the bear, he has a Swedish accent and smokes

- Cleveland and Donna sing “Hey Mickey” substituting their names for Mickey

- Rollo goes back to school and gets Cleveland’s help on becoming a dirty old man

- Donna asks ex-husband Robert to come back, Cleveland is shocked

- Cleveland pours out his sorrows to the neighbors he just met at the local bar

- The neighbors feel sorry for Cleveland and hatch an elaborate plan to trap Robert cheating, it does not work

- The Browns leave to go to California

- Cleveland realizes he loves Donna and turns around to tell her

- He tells off Robert, and tells Donna that he loves her

- Flashback at their lives together, and then they get married.

- Andddd…FIRST OBAMA JOKE.

So, it had a few funny moments, but nothing really THAT funny. It felt more like a typical sitcom than a Seth MacFarlane vehicle. I think that this show has about six episodes to really crank it up before it gets cancelled.

Comic-Con is happening in July, and Family Guy cast and writers will be there in force. Here’s what you can expect if you go to Comic-Con:

Saturday, July 25:

11:15 A.M.-12 P.M Join Seth MacFarlane, Mila Kunis, Seth Green and the brilliant creative minds behind Family Guy for a raucous discussion of what goes on behind the scenes of tv’s most subversive animated hit. They’ll also be offering a not-to-be-missed sneak peek at “Something, Something Dark Side,” the Empire Strikes Back parody follow-up to Star Wars: Blue Harvest. Giggity! Ballroom 20.

12-12:45 P.M. Con fans will get the FIRST LOOK at The Cleveland Show, the wickedly funny new spin-off of Family Guy starring America’s favorite beleaguered animated African American, Cleveland Brown. Co-creators Seth MacFarlane, Mike Henry and Rich Appel and voice cast Sana’a Lathan and Kevin Michael Richardson will all be on hand to discuss this new series premiering on Fox in the fall. Ballroom 20.

1-1:45 P.M. Futurama: Life or Death?! BE A PART OF SCI-FI HISTORY! Join Executive Producers Matt Groening and David X. Cohen, and stars Billy West, Katey Sagal, John DiMaggio and Maurice LaMarche for high-stakes thrills as a top-ranking Fox executive decides live, on stage, whether Futurama will make yet another triumphant return, or whether it is gone forever! The very fate of Futurama hangs in the balance! Paramedics will be standing by in case the intense excitement causes any panelists to collapse. Raucous celebration or abject despair to follow the news. Ballroom 20.

1:45-2:30 P.M. Now entering its record-breaking 21st season on the air, The Simpsons is the longest-running series in the history of American television, and a household name around the world. Get a behind-the-scenes look at what’s coming up in the Simpsonverse, including never-before-seen highlights from the upcoming “Treehouse of Horror XX”, with a panel including Simpsons Creator Matt Groening, Showrunner Al Jean, Executive Producer Matt Selman and Supervising Director Mike Anderson. Ballroom 20.

Sunday, July 26:

11:15 A.M.-12:15 P.M. American Dad showrunners Mike Barker and Matt Weitzman and stars Seth MacFarlane, Wendy Schall and Dee Bradley Baker are back to regale the fans with an insider’s look at how an episode of the hilarious Fox animated comedy is made, from table read to animatic to color. Don’t miss this one-of-a-kind Comic-con event. Ballroom 20.

According to the NY Times, Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane has landed a dramatic role in a new ABC series titled “Flash Forward”, a series in which everyone in the world gets a two-minute glimpse of their futures. Seth is “FBI Agent #3″; this will be a recurring role. You can see him at about the 2:48 mark in the video below, he does have a speaking part.

Family Guy Volume 7

Family Guy Volume 7
is now available for purchase!

According to Barnes and Noble’s product description, this is what you can expect on your copy:

* Family Guy: Back to the Woods
* Family Guy: Play it Again, Brian
* Family Guy: The Former Life of Brian
* Family Guy: Long John Peter
* Family Guy: Love Blactually
* Family Guy: I Dream of Jesus
* Family Guy: Road to Germany
* Family Guy: Baby Not On Board
* Family Guy: The Man With Two Brains
* Family Guy: Tales of a Third Grade Nothing
* Family Guy: Ocean’s 3.5
* Family Guy: Family Gay
* Family Guy: The Juice is Loose

Features:
Closed Caption; ; Commentary by Series Creator Seth MacFarlane, Writers, Directors, Producers and Cast Members; ; 3 Animatic Episodes with Optional Commentary; Deleted Scenes; 4 Featurettes: Take Me Out to Place Tonight, Family Guy Cribs, Comic-Con 2008, Family Guy Art Show.

Oh, and just for fun? Deleted scenes! Here’s the list of all the deleted scenes from various episodes:

World Of Books
Where To?
The Birds And The Bees
Never Sleep With Peter Griffen
Tears
Brian’s Myspace
Downer
You Hate Entourage?
I Earned The Money
The Club Is Dead
Pope Poop
Working As a Sheep Dog
Loud And Confusing
CrissCross
You Are My Best Friend
This Isn’t Going To Work
Fabulous Dustin
Scale Model
Don’t Flatter Yourself
Hispanic Book Report
Freezer Fort

If you already have Family Guy Volume 7, what do you think? Good? Bad? Meh?

image via Amazon

Seth MacFarlane’s series of short comedy blurbs, better known as the Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy, have been coming our way now for the past six months or so, and wouldn’t you know it Fox put them all together in a DVD - an uncensored DVD, at that. I finally got a chance to sit down and watch it this weekend and was not disappointed. Grossed out and vaguely offended, but not disappointed.

There are 50 shorts on here in all, which sounds like a lot until you realize they are only about 30 seconds each. Most of them are spit-your-milk out funny, there are a few misses (the whole StickNipple family thing was kinda lame), but overall, this DVD is a good complement to your Family Guy collection. Should I buy it? If you are a FG fan, absolutely.

Seth MacFarlane has always been a great advocate for gay rights, and in this clip, we hear him giving some great relationship advice to a bisexual caller. Summed up, he comforts and gives her advice on how to deal with her parents and their opposition to her lifestyle.

According to a report in Variety, Family Guy will be going for the Best Comedy Emmy category, traditionally occupied by sitcoms. Here’s what Seth MacFarlane had to say:

“We don’t produce our show the that way SpongeBob does,” MacFarlane told Variety. “We’re much more analogous to traditional sitcoms. Our writers don’t come from animation; they come from comedies. I hear people all the time tell me that they love The Office, 30 Rock, and our show. Then why are we not all competing in the same world?”

Family Guy will be going up against shows such as “The Office” and “30 Rock”; this didn’t work for him last year, and I’m not sure it will this year, with how this season went.

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?

Here’s the clip of Seth MacFarlane on Nightline that orginally aired on April 6; he talks about Family Guy, cartoon rivalries, the Parents Television Council, etc.