The Simpsons vs. Family Guy vs. South Park

Anyone that knows me even a little bit usually has knowledge about my insane addiction to cartoons and animation. Ever since a kid, I was in love. The terrific shows of the 90s got me hooked and I never stopped. I still watch the kid's shows on Nick and Cartoon Network when I find a show I actually like. However, the one show that took me down a completely different animated road, was of course, The Simpsons.

The Simpsons premiered in 1989 on Fox. (The show. Not the crap filler clips from Tracey Ulman) I watched it and instantly loved it. Even though it was so simple and hadn't even come close to reaching it's potential, the show was amazing. The main cast were easy to relate to. Homer the idiot, Marge the stereotypical housewife/mother, Maggie...the..umm...baby? Lisa the know-it-all, brainy little sister. And Bart, the rebellious little hell raiser that kids wanted to be.

The show progressed rather quickly, and by the third season, it was easily the funniest show on television. By then I was ridiculously hooked and did the best I could to watch every Sunday. However, my parents made that very difficult for me to do. The Simpsons had a reputation in the beginning of being a edgy show. An openly alcoholic father that was completely stupid and a near out of control child that swore at adults, broke the law, and slacked at his schoolwork were just not things you saw at that time. And thanks to President Bush 41, a lot of families did not watch the show, believing it to be a bad influence.

The show progressed however. As everyone knows, controversy makes people pay attention. And people payed an ass load of attention to The Simpsons. As soon as season four had completed, Fox, and everyone that worked on the show made about 320 dump trucks full of money each from the syndication. And the show kept rolling on.

The show came to be known as the height of intelligent, witty humor of the sitcom landscape. During seasons three through about season twelve, every episode were packed with so many insanely witty jokes, that you almost relish the commercial break because your sides hurt so much from laughing. But the people getting those big laughs have a much more sophisticated appreciation of humor than others.

Let's move ahead to 1997. Comedy Central noticed the success adult oriented animated shows were having and decided to jump on board as well. So, two guys named Trey Parker and Matt Stone cut together a 22 minute episode of a show they called South Park. That show was made entirely out of construction paper and shot as a stop-motion animated show. That episode is known as Cartman Gets an Anal Probe. The show went out, people saw it and people laughed. They laughed hard. Why did they laugh, because South Park began to cater to the side of humor that The Simpsons didn't. The youth. The show was full of swears that were perfectly censored so you could pretty much still hear the swear, but enough not to make sponsors of the show pee their pants.

In the beginning, South Park was brilliant in a whole new way. They had a very effective way of delivering outrageous, raunchy, disgusting humor that had been absent since the days of Beavis and Butthead. And the youth ate that shit up like hand fulls of ecstasy pills. This was the opposite of the Simpsons. They used outlandish, ridiculous situations (Barbra Streisand Godzilla for one example) to drive their humor. A long with a long list of creative swearing, anti-antisemitism and plain old gross out humor. The redeeming fact that South Park had was, they always had a moral to the story. Usually very good ones.

So fast forward to 1999. Fox Network is enjoying great success with The Simpsons and King of the Hill. (The Critic was terrific but could never gain any kind of viewer foothold. Still wondering where syndication is for that show. It deserves it.) So, Fox decided to take another chance on an up and coming cartoonist/actor that had a pretty good idea. Seth MacFarlane was given a chance to do a pilot for his show Family Guy. The show was funny. Really really funny and Fox obviously thought so too. So Family guy got picked up for a season and they began to run.

Family Guy filled in the gargantuan gap in comedy styles that The Simpsons and South Park had. The Simpsons were cleaver, witty comedy. South Park was raunchy, shock value comedy. And Seth jumped right in the middle, taking from both. Family Guy had a thin line to walk ask to not get too dirty and had many many rewrites to do from the Fox censors to make the show fit for airing on Fox. MacFarlane's main character is Peter Griffin. An alcoholic, lazy, idiotic man that generally ignores his kids because he has his own adventures to take on. If that description sounds familiar, it should. Peter Griffin is Homer Simpson. Undeniable, complete and total ripoff. A point that The Simpsons have pointed out in at least two instances in my viewing of the show.

Family Guy went through hell in it's run on Fox. There was no Animation Domination block like they have now where all their animated comedies run on one night. Family Guy was bounced around from time slot to time slot and was failing miserably because viewers never knew where to find the show. The show was fantastic and funnier than 90% of the comedy of that decade. They just couldn't get a steady audience. And after three excellent seasons, the show was canceled not once. Not twice. But three separate times and eventually died it's terrible death.

Meanwhile, The Simpsons were still going strong. During Family Guy's run they had gone through seasons ten through twelve. Sure, they're numbers were dropping a bit, but they (In my most expert opinion being as big of an avid watcher as anyone) were still making high quality and wonderfully entertaining shows, and still making those dump trucks of money for the network.

By the time 2000 came around, South Park used up the best material it had. The last episode of South Park I had consistently laughed through the whole episode was their boy band parody episode. From there, the humor died. It was replaced by more and more disgusting situations. More and more taboo topics that were merely controversial and offered very little humor aside from seeing someone get shit on and getting the gross out laughs. From that time on, the fans of South Park (Sorry Dan) were basically idiots. The show still offered their morals to the story, which I always thought were a terrific part of that show. But the humor died, replaced solely by too much swearing, too many disgusting jokes and no humor to drive the story along.

However, the legions of fans South Park had kept following the show regardless of the falling quality. The rebellious nature of the youth of the last few decades is basically what kept a once fantastic show going, well past it's prime. South Park does still come up with some good ideas and funny concepts for shows. However, any episode I watch now is humorless dialogue splashed all over the episodes, only to be broken up for two minute segments of gross out humor. Their stories still push along, they still have some morals to tell you about, but the funny died too many years ago.

Now we'll fast forward yet again to the years 2002-2004. Cartoon Network decided they wanted to start an adult comedy show block later at night. Before, their regular, kid targeted cartoons would run all night long and obviously get very poor ratings due to the fact that the little brats had school in the morning and weren't staying awake watching Dexter's Laboratory. Thus, Adult Swim was created. In the beginning, Adult Swim was populated by many anime series. They figured they could cash in on the Japanese shows seeing as they had unbelievable success with the show Dragonball Z that played in the afternoon. It worked to some extent. There were plenty of anime nerds that enjoyed the shows but they weren't doing too much better than they were running the kid targeted shows they previously had done.

Cartoon Network rallied up their cash and they bought two canceled animated sitcoms from Fox under syndication. Those shows were Family Guy and Futurama. The episodes ran. In the beginning, just one episode of each per night. Then run their anime block after that. Both shows exploded in ratings. Family Guy was much more popular than Futurama was, but they both did indescribably well. On several occasions, Family Guy would pick up higher ratings than the broadcast network shows running their popular late night talk shows such as the Tonight Show and Late Night.

For over two years, both shows ran almost nonstop. Family Guy would run two shows a night. Futurama would run two shows a night. All the success from those shows gave Cartoon Network the money they needed to create their own original adult programming to fill in the block. Hence things like Space Ghost: Coast 2 Coast, The Brak Show and others were born. Later on fueling popular shows like Robot Chicken, Aqua Teen Hunger Force and many others.

Side note here. Every single original Adult Swim show is complete and utter shit. There is not one, even remotely watchable series that has ever been created from their adult programming. Any of you that watch or enjoy any of these shows are complete idiots. Don't try and convince me, I'm not buying it. They are all god awful and you should be ashamed of yourselves for supporting such embarrassing shows.

And moving on to 2005. After the wild success of Family Guy on Cartoon Network, then eventually TBS and one or two more Turner owned networks, Fox reevaluated the series and it was picked back up again. And Family Guy has been going very strong until this very day. Sure, the series has dropped in quality a bit. It isn't quite as good as it use to be. However it is fairly watchable and can give me a chuckle or two when I watch.

The Simpsons are now in their 21st season on television. The longest running scripted television show in history. (Gunsmoke ran for 635 episodes but only ran for 20 seasons. The Simpsons have made 456 episodes as of today but are in the 21st season due to expenses now days that weren't present in Gunsmoke's day.) Many cry for the death of the show. It isn't nearly as funny as it were back in seasons 3-12, however, they still come up with fresh ideas every week. No matter what, I will always get a chuckle or two from an episode.

The Simpsons have gone beyond that of a simple animated TV show. It is a dynasty. It's a benchmark of quality that every other comedy show has to live up to, animated or live action. Every comedy writer that really aspires to get places in the world of comedy television always looks for a job at The Simpsons. You take them the same way you take Saturday Night Live or you take The Tonight Show. Sure, they aren't as great as they use to be. But they are pivotal series that mean more and are more than just giggles and chuckles. The Simpsons have carried Sunday nights for Fox for 17 years. It is the perfect lead in show for their new animated series. (God, Cleveland Show, please go away. I hate you so much. Send Cleveland back to Family Guy where he belongs and mercy kill this turd of a show)

Matt Groening has said that the show still makes money. They are still creatively active and still have many ideas to run through. He sees no reason for the show to stop as long as it is still generating viewers and revenue for Fox. Yes, production costs are going way up. Mostly due to the cast asking for larger and larger salaries as the years go on. Not that I can blame them, during the first 10 years of the show each actor were getting $30,000 per episode. That may seem like a lot, but when you compare to things like Kelsey Grammer and the cast of Friends making around $300-500,000 per episode, they really were getting the shaft money-wise. Now each cast member is making 300,000 per show and the cost has gone way up. But if they can still turn a profit. If the the shows that follow The Simpsons are still benefiting from them, then damn it, let the show go on.

I don't really know what happened to this post. It kind of just got away from me and kept going and going. I appreciate any of you that might still be reading after all this insufferable analyzing and oratory about adult animation. It happens to be a huge passion of mine and it gave me something to kill an hour or two with.

Thanks for reading,
Keep it gangsta internets.