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Talking Simpsons - Family Guy "Death Has A Shadow" (Patreon)

Published:
2019-10-02 03:00:00
Imported:
2026-06
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We've reached a very important moment in Simpsons history: The premiere of Family Guy. The controversial series has been airing next to The Simpsons on-and-off for the last 20 years starting on Super Bowl Sunday in 1999. And so we take a little pause on our chronological breakdown to explore the creation of Family Guy, how the first episode debuted in such a major spot, and how the pilot episode looks with the eyes of 2019. Listen now with a Pawtucket Patriot Ale!

Special Family Guy retro cover is by 8-Bit Universe!

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Comments

notsmohqe

The earliest “fat guy top bunk” joke i remember is from The Three Stooges with Curly collapsing the triple bunk.

Bennett Billard

I'm suddenly craving some Kool-Aid for some reason...

SomeBloke

It's still wild to me that Family Guy, this short-lived show I only learned about from a friend loaning me some DVDs, gained a cult following large enough to spawn a revival and has gone on to last as long as it has. At the time it seemed like the impossible had happened. Maybe it actually was impossible and the temporal anomaly that caused it set us off on the dark timeline or something. That would explain a lot.

Chris K

Bob, you sounded genuinely pained and somewhat ready to die when Henry went "freakin' sweet Bobby"!

ShyRanger

Hey Henry, would you believe me if I told you there was Kool-Aid Man comic book series made?? Would you also believe me if I told you it was made by freakin' Marvel?

Dylan (batmanboy11) Freitag

I find it very bizarre how Brian sits like an actual dog a few times in this episode, which I can't remember really seeing anywhere else. -- Revisiting this episode for the first time in easily a decade, I was surprised how many "jokes" (that suck for the most part) that I think of when Family Guy comes up are from the pilot - Koolaid Man (obvs), the "fajitas" line, and Peter laughing at Philadelphia. I don't know why they left such an impression, but maybe it's because I watched the DVDs of the first 5 seasons a lot when I was younger.

Frank Grimes

I always get this one confused with the episode that had Norm Macdonald as Death.

Devin Hoffarth

Just a few days ago I sat down and watched a bunch of clips of Family Guy on a twitter (you know its name) and honestly I enjoyed myself. I feel like that's the best way to Watch Family guy. Short 5-20 second gags and references where nothing matters.

Dayken

Honestly while I get that it's part of the aforementioned "they're not really people" factor, what really turned me off to Family Guy as of late is not the overly long gags and reliance on cutaway but rather just how much everyone seems to straight up hate each other; I know American Dad has shades of it at times too (especially regarding Klaus; don't get me wrong though, I love American Dad) but never to the quite frankly aggravating level of Family Guy.

Kat Heagberg

I sort of hate that I know this, but McDonald’s did serve fajitas in the ‘90s. I remember it well because my grandma DID earnestly ask me “so do you like those fuh-jite-uhs?” And when this episode aired when I was 13, my embarrassment felt validated. In hindsight, though, it is a terrible, terrible joke.

Justen Brown

Family Guy was my Simpsons. It premiered when I was 12 (and EVERYTHING is better when you're 12) and my friends watched it religiously. We can speak to each other in Family Guy quotes, we sing the songs, and we started hating the show around season 8: basically all the annoying shit Simpsons fans did by the time the show aired. The big thing was that in '99 The Simpsons felt played out. They were already making Family Guy style jokes and getting meaner but while the show was cutting edge in '89 by '99 it was the safest thing on television. King of the Hill was realistic and really evocative of suburban mundanity, South Park was full blown crude, and Futurama wasn't laugh-out-loud funny but we all loved it for its action and high concept jokes. Family Guy existed in this weird middle where it's fast paced like Dexter's Lab (which Seth worked on) but mostly down to earth but every once in a while it can get really high concept in ways The Simpsons just couldn't. I maintain their Y2K episode to be one of the best in the series but even season 1's final episode hits a good balance of drama and humor. American Dad is definitely the torch bearer of good Family Guy. It can do bizarrely high concept episodes while still returning to family drama and still be entertaining. Even though Family Guy accepted that nothing matters in service of jokes early on, it still tries to maintain some semblance of realism in its narrative. American Dad don't give a fuck.

Joe Hodgson

I applaud your dedication to spotlighting the shows that aired around The Simpsons and are forever tied to the brand, but I kind of wish you just referred listeners to the WAC episode you already did on Family Guy. This episode, as you rightly pointed out, is pretty much trash. It has some of Family Guy's hallmarks, the good and the bad, but it's mostly just a poor animated sitcom that's trying to figure out how edgy it's going to be allowed to get. And it looks bad, really bad. The Kool Aid Man joke is at least legitimately funny the first time you see it, but of course Family Guy has run that thing into the ground. The only interesting thing I can find in this episode is seeing just how much Peter has changed. Here he's a well-meaning father who takes pride in being a provider for his family, but he makes short-sighted and ultimately bad decisions when confronted with a problem. Now he's basically a mean-spirited sociopath who is considerably dumber than even Homer and is truly unlikable. And mostly, I think I just prefer to hear you guys talk about things you like. I was going to suggest that maybe a third voice who was willing to defend this episode would have made for a nice addition, but I don't think I actually want to hear from someone that adores this.

Boomer Spacely

Everything I had to say about this has been said better by someone else. But I DO look forward to seeing the cobwebs on your anti death jingle button next week.

Shawn

I guess I have a soft spot for this pilot since I first saw it after the super bowl, I love seeing the rough edges and many of the gags still hold up for me. Matt J had it right in comparing it to Freakazoid, it filled not only that void, but I couldn't get enough comedies making fun of pop culture and media back then. Simpsons was changing into being too earnestly sitcommy, so a show that stepped even further into using sitcom tropes, in a self-aware excuse to make gags, was perfect for me. It was never going to hit the highbrow levels of Simpsons but it didn't need to.

Zak M

not gonna lie i laughed at the audio of "scream real loud into my ass", you can take away my woke card i guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Kiefer Fulsom

I think my reaction to family Guy over the years is everyone else's, loved it when I was in middle/high school, bought the DVDs, stopped watching and thought it was just awful when I was on college and now I think it's okay. There are some recent episodes that to me really knock it out of the park for example the episode where it's revealed Quagmire hates Brian and gives that now memed speech on why he hates him, as well as another episode where Quagmire meets a girl who's as sex crazy as he is (maybe more than he is) that turns into a very abusive relationship. I also find it interesting how the final joke of the episode would have episodes based around each one in a certain way, maybe not directly though. Peter would discover he had a black ancestor and receive reparations for it. Sexual harassment: Peter would be sexually harassed by his boss Angela. Disability: Peter is diagnosed as mentally retarded and *sigh* yeah. Also side note guys: I would actually give the Orville a chance. Like others my first thought was "oh boy Seth's ego has gotten so big he wants to take it to space." But it's actually really fucking good. Like it's a love letter the Star Trek The Next Generation and has episodes that do knock it out of the park. Oh and did I mention that even though Seth McFarland does play the captain his ego doesn't break though most of the time and there are cases in the series where he's (for lack of a better word) pathetic.

oldmetalpossum

I never saw Giant Baba wrestle but I DID see Grappler Baki and the character that's essentially just him- Mt. Toba. The fight between Baki and Toba is one of my favorites in that first run of Baki.

Mark T. Sedita

seth macfarlane come from a family that worked at Kent School where he went. Kent School currently costs $48,000 a year. seth macfarlane's life is not a working class story.

Mimi Kenny

Not necessarily disagreeing with your critiques of this episode but the first couple seasons of Family Guy are better than Mike Scully’s run as showrunner. The show get really terrible post-cancellation, but season 1-3 is perfectly amusing, with nothing even half as egregiously awful as Kill the Alligator and Run.

littleterr0r

Family Guy sucks and has always sucked don't @ me.

Jesse Onland

Curious that you hate megalomaniacal genius Stewie but yet love megalomaniacal genius Dexter.

SilkiePJ

I really appreciate the attention to detail and amount of research done for this episode, but this is easily the most venom I've heard Bob and Henry spit about a show. A lot of moments where Henry goes "That joke sucks. It's just bad, just sucks. They shouldn't of done it." I do think it's a flaw sometimes you guys have when doing "What a Cartoon" is that by covering the pilot, you both become to focused on what the pilot fails at and ends up changing so it doesn't feel quite as pure as representation form the show. When you all covered "Brian Wallows and Peter's Swallows" that was a bit more of a fun episode cause it captures more what the series does right.

Betsy Williams

I started watching the damn show when I was on a high school band trip from Chicago to Toronto. A dude named Roy had all the eps on various VHS tapes and we watched them for so many hours and we laughed our high school asses off. I’m so glad this show exists but it’s a specific time and place

PurpleComet

They made a reference to Philadephia again in the Season 5 episode "Mother Tucker". In that one Stewie and Brian become DJs at a radio station. At one point Stewie accidentally plays a monologue Denzel Washington gave in Philadelphia instead of a wacky sound effect. The joke was a dud but it ate up a lot of time and required no animation, which I assume is why they kept it in the episode. Initially I thought revisiting the Family Guy pilot was unnecessary, but I learned a lot here. I had no idea about all the drama around Futurama and the Super Bowl time slot. With regards to Lois, Alex Borstein takes credit for making Lois crazier and crazier on the DVD special features. Finally, I enjoyed Stewie's verbosity, although I do think it's a bit overused here.

Jack Christmas

I can confirm that The Rugrats Movie has the expected amount of scatological humour and Dill is indeed very annoying, BUT I'd say it's worth a watch just for the sheer gall of it putting its main cast of literal babies in so much mortal peril. Considering that "my children have gone missing and they could be dead already" is a pretty grounded, adult fear, it's kind of brutal, at least for its target demographic. Like, there's this one scene where Tommy is alone with Dill in a tree hollow in the middle of the night, and a thunderstorm is raging outside, and they're just cradling each other and crying. The most unrealistic thing in Rugrats is that there are any episodes after this that aren't just therapy sessions and parental neglect assessments.

Aaron Alcott

I still absolutely love Family Guy. Don't feel bad about that at al.

Aaron Alcott

And the Orville is a wonderful show. You should absolutely watch it.

PurpleComet

Man, if anyone was considering jumping back into Family Guy the season premiere took some of their worst impulses to new heights. The first segment revolves around Peter possibly losing his job (told via some hacky Bachelor parody) but he faints before learning what happened and that plot thread is dropped altogether with no resolution. The second and third segments have the family take a cruise ship which crashes and sinks. All of the characters are on the verge of drowning when the show cuts to them sitting on the couch with a tossed off "Wow that was crazy". No explanation or even acknowledgment of the abrupt change is given. If the problem was they ran out of time they could've easily cut several overly long jokes that were duds anyway.